For me it's how painfully shy he is. Even going to into class
everyday for a year with kids that welcomed him in and couldn't wait
for him, he still needed to be "pushed" into the classroom. Once
he is in he is fine but even with adults, he'll answer but turn his
head away. For example when one of his teachers would say
goodmorning to him, it took the longest time for him to even say
goodmorning back and at the end of the school year he finally started
to say it but would look behind him and say it.
Also holding his body up, I tell him sometimes has to be 30 times a day to hold his body up.
Definitely, for my GIRL, peers!I would say appropriate social behavior. Even with reminders and
redirects , the moment we are in public he will go up to people, talk to
them, touch them. People did not mind while he was little ("what a
friendly kid!") but now that he is almost 8 and a physically big kid I can
see people being very very put off. Just as many kids need to withdraw to
feel safe my ds seems to need to get into people's space. If I try and stop
him he hyperventilates.
Tash
I would have to say the same as you...no matter how much we prompted, and had playdates 2x a week for years ...the moment anyone stopped prompting her she went the other way
He had homework and he took it back to school and it came back unmarked by the teacher...This tells me he never turned it in. I had to explain to him that after he puts his lunch box in the basket that he needs to take his work to the teacher. The other children just knew to do this I guess...Oh well....just another thing to add to the list of things to teach him..lol
Karrie
Well, our ds has improved a lot lately, great eye contact, responsive, aware, emotional...but the hardest think is to get him interested in peers, to initiate communication:(
He is ok with adults, but with peers not at all.
In your case, what would be the most difficult autistic trait to modify, to get rid of if possible?
Well, I guess that one thing I worry about is poor judgment due to impulsiveness. Luckily my son isn't a fearless type, but here are a couple examples of impulsiveness during the past year:
- got pinched by powerful magnets after going inside the house and being alone for under 2 minutes at age 8.
- panicked and threw himself into the grass beside the road when he saw the neighbor's car coming, despite the fact that the car was going extremely slow and the neighbor saw him.
- I had just spent hours picking berries, and he dumped the containers on the ground because he wanted to practice picking up!
There was no harm done in these incidents, but this impulsive tendency could mean big trouble in the wrong situation. Tzoya once mentioned a successful adult with Aspergers who jumped off a moving train because it started leaving the station while he was trying to get his forgotten suitcase.
Mine would be peers. For the first time ever, Adam went for a bike ride with a same age child this past weekend. I cried....
Also, for Adam it is ADL's, he has a hard time with self care
Oh boy - that impulsive behavior I guess would be my biggest worry. Especially after reading Norway Mom's post! It reminded me of how just last week, ds was riding his scooter on the side of the road going down to the twins' house (3 houses down - unfortunately, we have no sidewalks). I was right behind him and he saw a car coming. He moved over even farther to the side of the road - which initially I thought was a good instinct. But then, he bent over and picked up a rock and threw it at the car! I was horrified! Thankfully, he has really bad aim and poor upper-body strength. It didn't even come close to the car. We talked for a LONG time about why we don't do things like that. I almost didn't let him go to the twins' house, but instead took away all of his bedtime stories. He said he was trying to let the car know not to come near him. Hopefully, he now knows that is not okay, he could have damaged the car, hurt the person inside, etc.
That story about the man jumping off the train - yikes!
Snoopywoman -- throwing a rock, oh boy what a bad choice. The frustrating thing is that you just can never in a million years predict all those strange impulses and teach to prevent them. I mean, we all teach traffic safety, but who ever thought of teaching him explicitly not to throw a rock at a car, or in the case of my son, to not put powerful magnets on his, umm, wee-wee.
OMG! Ouch - a magnet on his wee-wee?
I would have hoped that ds would have just generalized that since we don't throw things at people, he wouldn't have thrown at the car. I wondered if he didn't get (or see) that someone was IN the car. He seemed to have anger at the car. Something to explore and educate on, I guess! Yes, I thought this was a strange impulse - and not like him at all. These things just come out of the blue sometimes. He was having a fine day and was excited to be going to the twins' house (they had called to ask him to come over). To be honest, if I hadn't needed the break so bad (I was trying to pack for our weekend trip and wasn't getting anything accomplished), I would have sent him inside and not let him play with the twins...
For us it is the tactile defensiveness in crowds/lines. She just meltsdown when people get too into her space. I think a lot of social things would get better for her if we could get past this.Its definitely social behaviours for us too, being able to sit still, not run around and try to touch anything in sight and especially not scream when a child picks up a toy. He is so bad with hoarding the toys that he won't let me put anything in poor bub's reach as well.
Mary
EDT Mainly the ability to sit still outside the house.