autistic children being unable to cope with things moving whilst they're out - any experience?

[yurt1]

ds1 is shaking and crying from fear because I went out in the car whilst he was out (and its now parked in a different place). This is a new one for us- assume it represents some developmental change. Anyone any experience with dealing wiith this sort of thing.

ds2 is like this a lot his psych said it was more to do with his OCD than ASD & about the need to control his world.
She also said it showed an awareness of the world around him, not sure if I really agree as I find it a very insular controlling type thin, concentrating on the detail rather than the bigger picture iykwim
He became hysterical today because the dustmen had been & not put the bin back.

Yurt.
DS2 can be like this at times but it ebbs and flows. Sometimes change is OK, sometimes it is the end ofthe world.
I think it is more OCD that ASD but I have also noticed that it seems to be something that comes into play if he is stressed about other things IYSWIM.
For example he likes to keep a l;ot of his precious things on the bed with him. When I strip the bed I put them all on the shelves and when he gets home he will take them down again ({grin}) .
He is going away from us on Sat and I know it is an anxious time for him. When he came home yesterday and I had cleared his bed he got very upset.
It can be hard to predict what will bother him and what will not. But it is always related to his internal level of anxiety.
Does that make sense?

This seems a bit different (he does all that stuff as well). It was almost as if he didn't understand that the car could be moved whilst he was out. So for him he'd gone out then for some unknown strange reason the car had moved. He calmed down considerably once I explained that I had moved it. He's fine if he sees the car go. Thinking about it he has to watch the entire washing machine cycle and freaks if he misses a bit. It's like things can't happen when he's not there or something.

Developmentally he's come on so much in the last year I just wonder whether he's made some sort of cognitive leap, or rather HALF made some sort of cognitive leap.

I now remember Florica Stone saying that when autisric children rewind videos at a certain point it's often a bit where the plot jumps so for example you see someone throw a stone, then you see a window breaking, but you don't actually see the stone going through the window.

Must dig out her book.

yes that does sound different from my boy - and it sounds too like it is a joining the dots kind of thing.

It is always surprising to me ( although it shouldn't be by now) that the steps in cognition /understanding are usually accompanied by a 'stutter'in his behaviour where the connection that has been made raises questions or confusions. Dh always says that when DS makes improvements that he is thrown like a man dealing with a hangover - the bright lights and noise are just too much .

Gawd - not making much sense tonight ! Still i know what I mean

glad he is feeling better.

I know what you mean too. I've been thinking about whether it could be the stuff you were saying and I don't think so because if it was I think he would have been very insistent that I should move the car (he does that sort of wanting things in the place he wants them quite a bit) and he didn't even try- he was just terrified.

Yurt ds2 needs any change that he hasn't been a part of explaining, so if he had witnessed the bin men emptying the bin he would of been OK, BUT because he missed the action that moved the bin it throws him.
For ds2 it is the anxiety part of the OCD that causes him to have such rigid routines, change anything in that security blanket of his world & we get theses tears & shaking with fear, a very different response to a tantrum when we don't do something his way.
I do feel for that him its having that bit of control of his world that helps him keep it all together.
Its so frustrating when they can't express why they behave & feel the way they do.

Oh yes that bit about the bin emptying sounds just the same. That doesn't seem that related to anxiety in ds1's case. He does get like that about somethings. For example he decided he wanted the washing line up a couple of days ago and it now has to stay up - that seems more controlling.

ds1's TOM isn't all that bad (he can tease for example). It's presumably some cognitive gap though, whereby he doesn't quite understand cause and effect properly- or he can't fill in the gaps if he hasn't seen it (hypothetical reasoning maybe - just thought of that as I wrote this, perhaps he can't hypothesis about what might have happened..... hmmm I know a few experts in that sort of field, will ask them when I get the chance).

Do you think it's possible that your Ds1 just hasn't noticed that the car has changed position in the past but it's something he's now noticed and not being used to it it has panicked him?

The RDI premise is that autistic children tend to like to keep their environment static because they have had many failures with change in the past. So they try hard to control things to avoid being threatened with a change that they can't cope with.

However I don't think RDI would offer any immediate solutions, more that as you work back through the developmental stages the ability to respond more flexibly would develop.

Thinking about what you suggested - the research shows that autistic children have trouble with dynamic thinking which would include things like hypothesising - so they can be good at learning facts but less good at reasoning or adapting an idea to fit the situation. So I would guess your idea about him not being able to hypothesise is right - that if he can see the car drive away and come back he has a clear illustration of why it has moved but he is not able to adapt that idea to the same situation in his absence.

No I don't think that's possible really- he always checks cars (notices if someone he hasn't seen for 2 years changes a car- always checks my parents car when they arrive etc, will look for his therapists car before going downstairs, also notices minute changes in rooms that I don't notice iyswim). I'm beginning to suspect that previously he didn't really try to think about 'what might have happened' as he didn't understand the relevance of himself in the world. I really think that he's only started to develop a true sense of self - and an understanding of his place in the world and how others relate to him - since learning to imitate which was only a year ago.

Must read up on baby development.

oh x posted - my post was to whether he might not have noticed the car at all before

UNfortunately almost all (if not all) the research in this area is on high functioning children so its hard to tease out the relevance iyswim, particularly as some of the assumptions about low functioning children made in the literature just aren't true.

although weirdly he's been able to tease since he was 2- so he's always had some understanding of other's beliefs and that they might feel differently to him. He is a master at teasing.

I was thinking about this some more. Do you think making a short video of the car going away and coming back into the different place would help? Then you could play it to him when he gets back from school as a sort of visual experience of what's happened? It might help him to associate it with the idea of the car moving in his absence.

I find the use of video clips really helpful with Ds2. It's not the same situation, but for example, he has been watching four clips from an OT session he had back in the summer - they are very short clips of him being successful at different activities. When we went back to OT last Monday after 2 months break, they were the four activities he chose first - the clips obviously helped him create a memory of his ability to do the activity and helped his confidence (which is low with any physical activity) to try them again.

If he is beginning to realise that things can change when he's not there, could it cause anxieties about what else might change?

Yes that might help. I do try and do the RDI thing of a photo diary & he loves watching videos of familiar places etc. It might be easier to do it using a camera- but yes that might work. If I go through the photos with him once he gets back from school.

Thanks- good ideas.

I don't think it's anxieties as such RustyBear- it was more like us waking up and finding an alien standing at the end of the bed- something for which there was no logical explanation iyswim. Presumably he knows cars can move, but I guess he thinks my car can only move when he's there to see it. Weird.

He's been fine ever since btw- very relaxed at the moment.

thank god!

i am not very good at explaining things but will try.
is it because your DS doesn't understand that life carries on when he has gone out?
example for a long time my three thought i just stood at the school bus stop all day.
they saw me there when i dropped them off, the next time they saw me i was still there.
my lot didn't understand that we did anything whilst they were at school it was like they thought our life stopped when they were not at home, does that make any kind of sense?

yes I think it is that sort of thing. It's like he can't imagine that anything happens unless he's there to see it. A bit like does a tree falling over in a forest make a sound if there's noone there to hear it.

my lot are convinced it doesn't ever rain at the park, i guess because when it is raining we don't go to the park