Where did you go from ASD diagnosis? Floundering a bit!

[lamandler]

Hello, I have posted before, but been in the middle of assessments since and now starting to properly see the difficulties by DS (8) has. A quick download, he as a private diagnosis of ASD (atypical, no rigid behaviours, fairly flexible) and attention and auditory processing issues but we haven't progressed with those yet. He hates school and is very anti-learning.

CAMHS has 'accepted' (but not on paper ...yet) the diagnosis, as has school. He has seen an Ed Psych and OT at school, both are writing their reports.

So school will put some of their recommendations into place, they agree he needs 1:1 mainly because of his attention, but will gather evidence in next couple of months to show this before applying for an EHCP.

My question is, what if anything have you done outside of school to help your children? Aware that every child is different of course and what worked for you may not work for us! I am noticing far more sensory issues for example now that my eyes have been open to it all, and he has started to communicate with me more about how he feels.

He needs to fidget with something to concentrate according to OT, and rocks on his chair legs in class. He finds noise difficult, and has new glasses which have helped his eyes (not a significant sight problem at all at his eye test, but optometrist felt that glasses would help him feel a bit calmer - think its worked and he won't take them off!). He also hates long sleeves, a challenge now that the temp is going down. And when he is anxious he finds some stuff like felt/velvet textures really horrible. Thankfully we don't have much call for velvet in our house!

I was trying to think of a plan to help him post xmas, to supplement (or improve) on whats happening at school - so far have just ended up flummoxing myself. There's sensory therapy, or behavioural therapy of some sort to help him with attention, or social skills therapy....but where is best to start?

I know you won't have the answer, but if anyone wants to share their experiences of what they did at this stage, I would be really grateful!

Thanks PolterGoose. Did you go with an OT recommendation on those at-home therapies, or did you use any other info sources?

Ds was diagnosed in June at just shy of 5 years old. Some of the things we do were suggested by his OT (who he's been seeing for a year) or early intervention key worker, others we worked out ourselves. For example, we've got a trampoline at home for ds, which helps with his need for movement to regulate his emotions. Our school (he starts first year of school in Feb; we live abroad) have suggested a wobbly chair as moving helps him concentrate. We've also got much more organised with things like toys, clothes etc, and have laminated labels on the drawers/tubs where they're kept to make choosing what to wear or play with much less stressful. We do social stories for big events/changes and build in time for transitions to help them go more smoothly. We're considering visual timetables for next year. He does get a bit rigid with things like certain rituals so we try to spot these as they emerge and try to redirect them before they're entrenched (unless they're useful rituals for us as a family, eg we now have Taco Tuesday thanks to the Lego Movie - fine by me as its easy to do...we're shaking it up this week by having 'Taco Tuesday, except on a Wednesday'!). We're also using some anti-anxiety strategies at home (from a program called Cool Little Kids) to try to help with that and will most likely need a private psychologist in the next few years if that escalates as its a big issue for him (we're in Australia and so a lot of therapies are private with a government subsidy or funding to help pay).