Ideas about asking questions, specially why and how?

[someoneoutthere]

DS (5.9, asd) is although very vocal (can comment on a picture, talk about what he wants) does not yet ask questions although can answer most questions except why and how (he can count so if we ask how many he can answer. We have been doing why questions with him for the last 6 months, by prompting him to answer with a because, but he just does not get it. He is very bright, has no learning difficulties, hence has no problem learning. But it appears that he is just not understanding the meaning of why. He asks questions like 'where is mummy or where is my toy'? He used to just say mummy coming when he wanted me there, so we taught him to say 'where is mummy' and he understoodd what it means and then generalised it to other things by himself. He is developmentally at the age of a 3 years old speech wise (that's our thinking, not the SALT as he has age appropriate language for a lot of things). His autism seems to affect his speech and social communication only (he has no other issues). And we have noticed that he is going through all his milestones but late by at least two years. Any ideas as to how to work on him asking questions would be greatly appreciated. He answers questions, so we can have a conversation with him by asking questions, but he would never ask us anything. He does not seem to have the desire to ask anything, but he is very interactive and does not like being on his own. We model language for him when he is playing with us, but does not pick any up.

Thanks in advance.

EJ1, I have actually ordered the book you mentioned from amazon couple of weeks ago. My DS was less autistic between the age of 2-4 apart from being a difficult child, had eye contact, was using words meaningfully (although very few), no hand flapping or no lining up toys to make it obviously. He is showing more signs of autism since 4.6, as he has picked up a lot of behaviour (making sudden noises or bolting) from the SN school. We put him in a mainstream school at first, but despite our best efforts to educate his teacher and his TA, he was left alone and the unstructured curriculam of the reception year did not suit him. His teacher refused to follow any of the suggestions our ABA supervisor made. After the first four months, he lost his eye contact completely, stopped responding to us, started opening and closing doors and started playing with light switch at the classroom. It pushed him back at least by 6 months. We learnt at DS's expense how important it is to get the appropriate support for our kids at school.

Ninx, gone through the denial phase at least two years ago , so you have nothing to apologise for. I like your description of DS being more HF on the third triad and therefore not presenting any problem.

zzzzz, DS should be in year 3 next year, but as he is summer born we would like him to go to year-2. We will be moving back to Guildford, Surrey.

There is no doubt in our mind that DS is different to his peers, but for us like zzzzz, speech is the biggest issue.

Zzzzz, I've been lucky to have had the 2 schools fund this particular book, but I think they are priced so high because they don't actually sell that many in comparison to the cost of the research to produce them. Schools would only need one copy. It's mass production that brings the cost down, I suppose. It's aimed at 1:1 or small group interventions at school. I'm sure lots of the resources used in schools aren't publicised to parents, I don't know if educators think we're not capable!

The DC I use it with is 10 now and he's at the top limit of the usefulness of the resource. He still surprises me with how poorly he does on some of the harder questions in comparison with his reading ability. (It shouldn't surprise me but he's so charming and mature when with adults, that it's good to have these reminders that his comprehension is actually quite limited.)

I use it weekly, can monitor his progress and use it to extend his knowledge by talking around the subject. There are 3 levels of questions, starting with basic concrete comprehension questions and you can build up to asking higher level questions such as "Why shouldn't the young girl answer the door?" etc to get them thinking beyond the quite simple story.

There is an initial assessment to gauge what level to start with and you start by reading the story to them with them having the picture to refer to. Later or for older DC you move on to them reading with the picture, finally them reading with no picture. Maybe check that the school isn't already using it?

Crossed posts again!

EllenJane1

The next step after identifying the medical or cognitive deficits / disorders is to identify the alternative cognitive skills which can be developed to compensate for the various cognitive deficits while taking into account the available working memory required to run these coping strategies, in relation to the working memory actually available.

You sometimes need to have the statement say that your child should defer a year. It depends on the number of children in the class. Unfortunately the law restricting infant classes to 30 has had a bad effect on children who would have benefitted from staying back a year, as they cannot have a place if the class is already full with DC from the 'correct' year. It's more flexible once they reach juniors at y3.

Even if a statement says a DC must be kept back a year if there is already a full class the school would have to employ an extra teacher (not TA) and this is seen as not being cost effective. It's a complete pain. If you can find a school that has the flexibility that would make things a lot easier.

To be honest, I have not looked that far yet about which school to go and what to do when we are back to the UK. DS's year in the mainstream school he went to are finishing year 1 atm, will start year 2 in September. DS was the youngest in his class when he started. We have the option of putting DS in a private school for two years (DH's company will pay as they have sent us abroad) and we are hoping that Independent schools will be more flexible, although I have not made any enquiries. We have not got a definite date yet to go back, so I will start the thread later in the year.

EJ1, you need a statement to keep back a year? I am scared of returing to the UK.

You do to guarantee it in state school. If your school has spaces in the year below, it's not a problem. This 30 places only law seems to be strictly enforced except for exceptional circumstances for a short time. Much more flexible in juniors and private schools rarely have 30 in a class. It's a real shame. My DS went to a special early years school where children had for years spent their reception year in the special early intervention class, then transferred to MS school and repeated their reception year. It worked really well and the DC quite often needed very little extra support as the extra year was enough. The 30 places law came in and it got very difficult. Children were having to go from the special school straight into Y1 which was a huge transition.

Thank you everyone for your ideas, I defnitely got enough to try different approach with DS regarding questions. I can see myself running a thread in future about schools in Surrey. I wish the UK were like South Africa where they do the school readiness test and it does not matter how old the DC's are.

zzzzz, which chanel showed the Temple Grundin flim? Is it available on iplayer?

It was on Sky Atlantic, which is one of the few channels I don't get on Virgin! Grrr. Hope it gets repeated sometime, or buy the DVD?