How obvious is your DCs ASD/AS to others ?

[TheodoresMummy]

Bit of a strange question, sorry if inappropriate.

DS (4.3) is going through assessments at the CDC - I have bored you all with this previously.

I have suspected ASD/AS since he was very small.

Friends and family members are convinced there is nothing to be diagnosed.

I am beginning to wonder if I have made a big song and dance over typical little boy behaviour.

He seems to be improving/changing, but surely children with ASD/AS change as they grow up, don't they ?

Would your DC's Autism/Aspergers be obvious to friends, aquaintances, strangers even ?

If so, in what way ?

I am aware that the autistic spectrum is vast so it's a bit of a daft question, but I suppose I am asking if it is possible for a child to have ASD/AS and for it not to 'show' ?

very interesting thread.

Coppertop and others, what do you mean by meltdowns? what do you mean by talking at children, can you give me examples?

DS is being observed by SENCO as teacher thinks there might be some Asperger traits in him - but to me he seems NT, maybe too young for school (4.6).

However he does things like pretend he's an animal and talk like an animal and he has a passion for dogs - teacher says obsession... - so he will only play games where there is a pretend dog, soft toy dog etc etc, and loves watching movies with dogs, but he will watch other type of movies/cartoons too. However, if there is a dog story or movie his eyes will lit up and he gets very excited by it and asks loads of questions about it.

Does it ring a bell?

Ds2's conversations with other children go something like this:

Child: Look what I got for my birthday, ! It's a Power Rangers watch.

Ds2: I watched the Ben 10 film yesterday night. My brother watched it too. Ben 10 turned into Stinkfly and Four Arms. I've got a Four Arms toy. And I've got a Ben 10 watch.

Child: And I've got a Power Rangers watch.

There's no real acknowledgement of what the other child is saying.

Ds2's meltdowns involve lots of shouting and screaming. He usually starts throwing things too. If there's nothing handy nearby he will pull off his shoes and throw those too. Then he starts hitting himself, mainly punching himself in the face. Sometimes he will throw himself against the wall or door too. He screams even more and then throws up everywhere.

Ds1's usually involve shouting and screaming. Very rarely he will hit out at the person he's angry with but it's still not on the same scale as ds2.

Ds1's mainly involve shouting and screaming

Very now (aged almost 9 and non-verbal). Not at all aged 2 (when an ASD specialist, after seeing him for an hour told us he definitely wasn't autistic and anything he had was very mild of indeed he had anything at all). The only sign really was lack of pointing. He sometimes would blank children if they made a direct approach to him, but he liked being around kids and he was always sociable with adults.

ds1 has got more fussed about routines as he's got older - wasn't bothered at all as a toddler.

probably not obviously ASD, but getting more obviously SN in terms of communication difficulties. Or as some charming b*tch in the park said last summer in an aggressive tone "Does this child not speak English".

We had a new neighbour moved in, who on meeting ds1 for the first time said in a panicked voice, 'what's wrong with him, what's wrong with him'

Bizarre.

Ooh interesting thread. I read a post by someone on here once who said you should take action if you think their symptoms interfere with their life.

Both my ds's have traits. DS2 has a diagnosis of dyspraxia, but there are other mild things - mostly to do with taking clothes off and melt downs and sensory issues and overloads. DS1 has no dx of anything except 'gifted' by a teacher - but he's the one who hand flaps and pulls faces and hangs upside down off sofas and doesn't socialize at all well. He just doesn't 'get it'. He is very self-conscious and talks AT people, doesn't do the give and take. He's also awkward and sensitive, can't play fight, has a quick temper, is very guarded and defensive. I think he's hyposensitive - likes very tight clothing, always on the floor, bangs feet, smells new things a lot, but not people!

But he would fail the triad of impairments - he has good imaginative life and rich play skills, brilliant language skills and has no interest or regard for routines really.

I hum and hah about ds1. I don't know when mild traits are just eccentric, or whether I should be doing something about it.

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Wow.

Have been out today.

Loads to read. . .

DS1- hardly anyone realises he ahs any difficulties at all, until they onbserve him for a bit then they notice how things manifest behaviourally. When they relaise somethings up they don't think ASD (how could he be ASD? He is so beautiful- lovely blonde curls and all- must be his aprents )

DS3- well the PECs book and alck of talking is a give away if you're in the know I guess, but again- you wopuldn't know from a photo or anything, and if you did you'd probably initially guess something else as he is small fro hsi age anyway so it seems as if he ahs mroe generalised issues until you relaise the toddler behavious (no sahring etc) is OK in the 3 year old he resembles, not the almost 5 year old he is....

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ds's asd is not obvious at all to strangers. He just appears quiet, well behaved, rather formal...and perhaps shy (he's not at all shy btw)
Family members (who live far away) have struggled to see anything wrong .
Friends who know him well can see it...and children who have known him for a long time can too (although they ofton cannot put words to what they find strange about him).
Ds's 'differentness' has become more obvious as he has got older tbh.
There were big improvements in behaviour between 4-6..but then the other odd behaviours became more apparent when you compared him to his peers.
He's 10 now

ds2's asd is not always obvious, although as he gets older the differences are more in your face.
It is obvious he has sn as he also has CP,so has a very wobbly walk & poor motor skills generally.
But he is very placid to every one outside the house & I suppose may come across as shy but his reactions to peoples attempts to speak to him now are obviously abnormal. He collapses to the floor in a heap.
But he is totally controlled by routine & order & its only when spending time with him that you realise his actions are compulsive & ritualistic.
He most certainly is not a jumpy, spinny (he'd fall over)type, his stimms are there but more subtle.

Thanks to all who have posted on this thread. It's really interesting.

What I have found particularly helpful are the 'personal' bits you have all written, the details.

mymatemax - may I ask, what are your DS's stims and when/why do they happen ?

At the moment DS can't bear to share attention, can't bear not having his own way, gets overwhelmed easily. . .

I think that his 'problem' behaviours could all stem from a need to control.

Is this typical ?

How much should I challenge this ?

His behaviour today has been awful.

He spent most of the day yelling at me, pushing me away (because others were on hand to play and i'm last choice ), generally being 'on the edge'.

He really was in 'spoilt brat' mode today.

If I challenge him at all, he loses it.

found this on the daily mail today (I am not a daily mail reader by the way...).

Have a look, I found it quite interesting;

www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/womenfamily.html?in_article_id=518631&in_page_id=1799 &inpageid=1799&ct=5&expand=true#StartComments

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I think a lot of people in our parents' generation simply don't want to know that there is a problem. And my SIL's HV recently made the point that years ago, the same conditions existed but that certain individuals were described as being "a little bit odd" or "Not quite all there" without anyone having having investigated or put them into a category. I think now, My children don't have ASD but ds1 has ADD and ds2 has dyspraxia. For years, the only people who have ever said that ds1 has a problem have been teachers. My parents, PIL, the rest of my family have usually said the teachers are over-reacting which could have been the case if it had just been one teacher but when one after the other says the same thing you have to start taking notice. I can understand it to a certain extent because even I wouldn't have realised there was anything wrong because one-on-one he is fine, it's only in a classroom full of other children that he gets "lost" and drifts into his own world. Also, because he's not hyperactive, people tend to dismiss what I say, because they don't to understand that ADD is not the same as ADHD.

I feel certain that I have traits of ADD and dyspraxia, one of my sisters is autistic, dh and his brothers have some form of ADD and were "late developers" as a result. And all of these went without a diagnosis! In fact, it's only through being on MN that I recognise now that my dsis has autism, everything points to it but as she's now 33 and happy, there's probably no point in dragging here through tests!

chipmonkey - that's very interesting about your sister.

May I ask what has made you sure she is autistic ?

AS DS now 9. Wasn't interested in other children at nursery - existed alongside unless they played with what he wanted then they got a robotic stiff arm hit to clear them out of his way. He never punched forwards.
Reception said he was immature and naughty - despite reading very early. Year 1 said he had difficulties making friends (as in none!)
He said "I don't like people". In Year 2 he was very depressed and highly anxious; but nobody thought there was anything to worry about until he started expressing the wish to die. Then he got a lot of attention - which he hated.
I look back and wonder why I didn't recognise the problems - but I had never met Asperger's before. I just knew I had a sad little boy who was unhappy at school and wanted to stay at home all the time. We had built routines to suit him without really noticing.
I still have days when I question whether there's anything different about him. Then he refuses to move until he's read his book - all 300 pages - before he'll eat! He'll stand naked in his cold bedroom "cos I was thinking" and 'forget' to get dressed (which takes ages). The answer to 'How was your day?' is "Umm.." but at 11 at night he's wide awake needing to tell me about his teacher's new earrings.
I notice it most when he doesn't talk to me for several days, when he's given a new T-shirt but won't ever wear it because it's not orange, when he's spent most of a school day under a table because the TA said hello instead of good morning.
He's my lovely boy and I wouldn't have him any other way; and I've learnt a whole new way of looking at the world from him.

TM, I remember my dsis being slow to speak and slow to crawl/walk. I knew my mum was concerned but that she didn't really talk to my Dad about it. She did eventually talk but would tend to repeat the same phrase over and over again. e.g when she went to school, she would come home and say things like "Teacher, X is not doing her work" obviously because she had heard some other child saying it but felt the need to repeat it, even though the teacher wasn't there. She did have meltdowns when she was about 6, which as a 12 year old I found embarrassing as I felt that she was behaving like a toddler but that she was getting away with it! She didn't engage well with other children and would trot out stock phrases from the TV by way of communication.
She had to have a routine ( and still does!) She would get very upset if we deviated from that routine. Even now, if my mother is 5 minutes late collecting her from the bus, she panics and gets very frightened.
She also does slightly quirky things like reading the telephone directory!
My Mum says that autism was ruled out when she was little but I think it was probably ruled out because she is fairly high functioning and at the time I think you were either autistic or you weren't, there wasn't the same notion of a "spectrum" that there is no. If I do online tests for autism from her perspective ( I know her very well!) she ticks the majoriy of the boxes.
In some ways it really doesn't matter now, she did struggle in primary school but couldn't cope at all in secondary school and was moved to s special school where she got the help she needed. It was also a tremendous boost to her confidence to be "top of the class" in the special school where in MS school she had dismissed herself as "stupid"
She ended up getting trained for a cleaning job and now works in RTE which is the equivalent of the BBC in the UK. She is in her element as she sees "celebrities" on a daily basis. I don't think a dx would now serve any purpose. She was previously in a job where I think it might have been more useful e.g they wouldn't let her do a particular part of the job because they said she couldn't read when in fact she was always a better reader than most of her peers.

God, that was long, sorry!

The main thing about my dd is she talks to herself and people stare

I guess for us it depends on the AS awareness of whoever is observing him, and any events that might contribute to unsettling him either at the time or in the few days before - the key to J is staying calm and if he manages that then the autism isn't so obvious, he can blend into the background like everyone else.

To those who know about AS J is very obviously on the spectrum - the incessant obsession-related chatter, difficulty with unstructured play, the out of context rudeness, skipping down the street with his arms folded (looks a bit daft at 9), jumping on their furniture etc. We don't get many comments from people who don't know J, I think maybe the majority of people we have come across are fairly polite and don't confront when he's behaving badly. Others know the difficulties we have with him from anecdotal accounts and perhaps don't say anything because they know we're doing our best to teach him more appropriate behaviour.

J's usually quite nice to be out with in public - that's where he likes to try out the social skills he learns at home and school, so he's quite polite in shops, coffee shops etc. Strangers in those circumstances probably wouldn't pick up on his autism because that's when it's least obvious as that's when he's trying his hardest.

TBH, as time goes on and he learns more about himself and his autism, it's becoming much less visible. He doesn't make as much of a fuss when things upset him as he used to, he'll maybe just say quietly to me "That's too loud" and slope off so he can't hear it so much, and that makes him less noticeable to onlookers.

But then again, if he was having a bad day you'd know there was 'something' even if you didn't know what it was.

my ds has a genetic condition that has a lot of autistic traits attention problems but being very sociable. this is the case for a lot of genetic conditions to have autistic like traits.
trust your instincts. i did but had to fight tooth and nail being accused of muncahusens and everything to get where we are today.