My guy has always been very go with the flow and I am not a person to
keep much of a routine. He always transitioned so much easier than any
of my friends kids. I was completly stunned to hear that he has
problems with transitions in school. But I think it is pretty common that
asd kids do very differtly in different environments. My son is pretty easy-
going at home but he has been having a very hard time in school. Other
kids might be no problem in school but have massive tantrums at home.
It has to do with many things :different levels of visual and auditory
stimulation, situation-dependent learning, structure provided,
expectation levels. So I would not discount when your preschool says that
he has problems with transitions, it is quite possible.
My son has seemed more impaired as he got older. Not so much that he
regressed but his peers progressed faster.Especially his social skills are
noticable behind his peers. Things that still fall in normal range at age 3
do really stand out at age 7. My son was an easy toddler and
preschooler, always cheerful and up to try anything new. People would
say that they wished their kids were like mine. My son is seven now and
at this ag he is harder to parent than his peers. I am amazed when I see
how other seven year olds key into the environment and can be trusted to
do things. My son has at times an amazing lack of common sense and I
always have to keep an eye or at least my mind on him. I have a feeling
that gap between him and his peers is going to grow as years go by. Thanks for the reply.
He does not get upset when I wont do the scenarios. He just moves on,
if I don't give him the response. Breaks in routine do not seem
to upset him, althought his teacher at Head start claims he has a
problem with transitions, but I don't really agree. Just
beacause he is not used to the routine of school they seem to think
that. (It's only been 2 weeks) The problem is, that he is
not used to routines whatsoever because at home there really is no
routine. Every day is different as far as my schedule so he goes
with the flow. What really seems to upset him is when he tries to
do something and it wont work he gets VERY frustrated and will start
slamming for example the train tracks if they won't connect the way he
wants he starts slamming them. He doesn't reaaly have tantrums too
much. I was horrible with tantrums as a child and I am not
ASD...so I don't read into that too much. What concerns me most
is that although at 3 now his conversation limitations are subtle, but
will it become more noticable as he is older??
Thanks for the reply. My son was evaluated initally by Early
Intervention and then refered to a hospital and evaluated by
them. Early Intervention thought he was Asbergers and the
hospital pediatrician said PDD-NOS, however neither one of those
entities had any action plan whatsoever. (discouraging...) He has
yet to receive even 1 speech thearpy session. I am hoping to find
another parent out there whose child has similar autistic symptoms as
my son, to offer me specific suggestions on things they have had
success with. ie GF/CF diet toxin elimination speech therapy
special schools...etc. I live in the Boston area.
For more specifics on my son's symptoms:
He was able to count to 10 at 12 to 15 moths old
He knew the entire alphabet by 2 years(including recognizing the letter visually)
He memorized evry brand logo, store logo, car brand logo, tv channel logo. This started before 2 years old.
He is a little hyper and is not able to sit still for very long.
He has a hard time following directions.
He headbuts and hits himself and others for no apparent reason.
His is able to communicate his needs, but says things they way I would
say it in the situation ie: "Are you hungry?" instead of "I'm hungry."
He likes to repeat the same scenarios over and over ie: He takes me to
his room and says. "You have a nice room." Then he sits by
all his stickers and says "You have a lot of stickers" Goes to
his bed and says " Do you like that cars bed" He feels the need
to repeat this more than once daily.
His teacher claims he has sensory issues but I don't notice that. What does that mean anyway??
Anybody relate to these autistic symptoms??
Your son sounds alot like my Jacob. The only therapy he's receiving right now is ABA, and yep...I'm a do it yourselfer and finally comfortable enough that I know enough to actually talk about it on here. Let me go back a little and I'll explain how this came about. My oldest son was diagnosed with classic autism, and I didn't get a little pamphlet that said "What to do Next". I enrolled him in school and I joined these forums. I first heard about ABA here on these forums. I divorced my ex husband and moved back in with my parents. We didn't have a custody arrangement at first and I was afraid my ex would kidnap B from school if I sent him, so I started looking for different routes we could take. I got a neurologist to approve speech therapy and found a therapist thorugh a home health agency who would come to our house. I thought what she was doing was just speech therapy, but it wasn't. I turns out that was ABA. When we lost our wonderful speech therapist due to moving, I continued with Brendon using the methods she'd used. They worked. All during this time I kept hearing about ABA and how it really works with these kids. One day I pm'ed one of the do it yourselfer moms on here and asked her if I could see her son's ABA charts so I could learn to do it myself. It turns out that I already was doing ABA with my kid and have been doing it myself since January of this year. Now my youngest son has a diagnosis. He's been in ABA since I first suspected something was up. He's really progressing with it and is to the point now that's he's picking up new skills quickly. OOPS...sorry this turned into a mini essay.
ETA: I'm saying ABA is a standard "next step" for some. There are some other great therapies out there, but I don't know enough about them to be able to give any advice.