Hi,
I just wanted to ask you if you would give me a bit more information on something you said in response to a post I made a week or so ago.
You said: It has been my observation (tho only my observation, not backed up by any research and based only on the spectrum teens I personally know) that kids end up at 21 at about the functioning level they were at at kindergarten age. Between birth and age 5, LOTS usually improves. Of course, they also learn quite a bit between age 5 and age 21, but where they are in relationship to the gold standard -- where their NT peers are -- remains about the same.
Do you mean they stay about the same in functioning level like physical things: brusing their teeth, dressing, etc. Or their emotional level: easily stressed, crying easily etc. I love your insight and thanks for your response
Remember, this is my observation only.
What I 've observed (with some exceptions) is that by about kindergarten age, kids are at the point on the spectrum where they will continue to be. I don't mean that they won't learn. They WILL learn. They WILL improve. They WILL benefit from interventions. However, so will other kids, so they seem to remain in about the same relative developmental place compared to other kids their age. It's hard to explain. Let me try this way. Let's say that kids on the Spectrum are assigned numbers from 1 to 100, with 1 being the most severely affected and 100 being nearly indistinguishable. By about age 5, the kids seem to have a number that remains the same throughout the rest of their childhood. That means they stay on the spectrum at relatively the same degree of affectedness. However, I've seen younger kids get to a higher number on the spectrum (based on this example). I don't know whether that is because intervention before age 5 actually helps change the brain, as some people believe, or whether it's because brain development in a younger child is not that predictable, so strides sometimes get made in spite of the intervention or lack of it.
Nothing I'm saying here should change what any parent does in terms of intervention. I don't actually know whether this observation is important in any way. It's just that I now know many kids who are teens whom I also knew in preschool. And none of them are that different, relative to one another or to typical kids, than they were relative to each other in preschool. Of COURSE, they all know more. But I guess what I'm saying is that their degree of autism has stayed around the same. This may be why many professionals hesitate to give an official medical dx until kindergarten. Because less seems to change to alter a diagnosis after that age, but more developmental surprises can happen before that age.
Hope this posts helps and doesn't just confuse things. It's just my personal observation, after all.
Compared to his NT peers? Or to other ASD kids you know? He has always sounded higher functioning ASD to me in your posts. The truth is, our kids are our kids. They are who they are. We can give them every opportunity to learn, succeed and be happy. The rest is up to them and what God gave them. As it is with the rest of us humans.Tzoya and Conner's mom. This makes perfect sense now that you have further explained what you mean. Adam is almost 13 now and at times I think he is worse than when he was dx'd which was when he was 7. But when I look back to K-5, I can see that as far as level of performance is concerned Adam is about the same compared to his peers now as he was then. Also, Adam had no interventions until he was 7. He is better with his sensory stuff, because we had him go through much o.t. That does help with day to day functioning in the world, but he is definetly low functioning compared to his peers.