My 4 year old has been diagnosed with pdd-nos--and is very mild--if you met him you would never know unless I told you...
so this leaves us in a rather strange limbo type of a place--not quite typical--but yet we dont exactly fit in with the other families of autistic children that we meet through our school system.
I signed my son up for one of the "Surfers Healing" programs--and we got a slot--we spent the day at the beach watching all of the other kids surf--and when it was our turn--my little guy LOST it. He was terrified--shaking, sweating--he told us he was terrified of the waves--and he thought it was just too scary. We tried to push him--but decided not to--b/c he was genuinely fearful.
so--no surfing....we were so disappointed. It is yet just another day of being in limbo--so much higher functioning that many of the kids--however when it came time to do the activity--we had a huge meltdown and couldnt participate in the same way as all the other kids.
its such an awful, yucky feeling. I felt so badly for my little one-b/c he missed out on a great opportunity--and i am feeling sad for us as well.
my husband is being a lot more rational and feels that its okay to be afraid fo the ocean--and good for the child if he can think about it and express it.....
maybe typical parents of typical kids go through this too??
I bet a lot of NT kids might be afraid to surf at 4. Especially if it wasn'tI'm remembering when i took my kids to see Thomas live onstage. they had never been to anything like that before not even a movie theater. I knew it could possibly be one of those meltdown moments for both of them. So I started a few days before hand talking about it at bedtime, drawing pictures of the arena where it would have been held. We talked about how there would be many many seats and how everyone would have to sit and watch the show nicely, ect. It worked, they remembered what i told them and i also reinforced once in a while at the show.
I also noticed a few children have meltdowns which i had feared my children would do, I felt bad for the parents knowing the cost and how you just want your children to enjoy things the way other children do.
Mostly now if we are going somewhere i will go over with them what to expect. I will do it daily for a few days beforehand.
Hope this helps.........carol
jenkovo,
Your story reminds me of an experience that my family endured recently. My son is 4 years old and was invited to a birthday party by a girl in his nursery school class. My wife and I did not know the girl, but thought that it was nice that he was invited to a party. Her party was at a facility called "Pump It Up", where they have lots of those air-pumped jumpy contraptions that I would have loved as a child. Heck, I wouldn't mind going in them now!
However, my son has some auditory issues and the sound of those machines causes him to meltdown. We could not get him in the room. We stayed in the lobby area and tried to coax him into going in, but he would not.
The girl's parents were very nice and did not seem to know Matthew. We noticed that the birthday girl was whispering to her mom and dad quite a bit, and she did not seem happy to see my son. When the girl had a moment away from her parents, she whispered into my wife's ear that our son was not the intended recipient of the invitation; she had a different friend with the same first name and last initial.
We were pretty upset about the whole thing, and decided that it would be best to leave.
Some kids are afraid of the water and need time to get comfortable. My