Why does DS lose his skills?

[staryeyed]

Ds has autism he is 3.7. Before he was 2 he could recognise numbers 1-10 and put them in order without any prompting. This skill was learned well and generalised- he could order different sets of numbers, could fill the missing number,reorganise the wrong order etc. He could also do it months apart without any practise in between. Now he has trouble doing 1-5.

Same with shapes. In January this year he mastered drawing circles, rectangles, squares and was trying triangles he did these consistently for months. Now he has problems drawing vertical and horizontal lines.

His speech has always come and gone but why these other skills. It very frustrating to know that he can definitely master something and then not seem to be able to do something at all it makes me want to give up.

It may be that the skills have gone dormant for a while rather than gone completely. DS1 (ASD) was brilliant at pointing and showing (non verbal but pointing at whatever we asked him to point at) with his A- Z books up to 26 months then it stopped. Only now at 4 and a half, he is back to not just pointing but saying the words. Some of the words are obscure ones but they are still there in his memory.

OK, putting together the latest research, see if this helps to explain it...

In an ordinary brain, when we're born there seems to be an 'telephone cable construction crew' in the brain that wires it up in the usual way. Think of it as a big office block with lots of departments in it who all need to be connected. In a normal brain you get the eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose etc all connected up to the middle bits so they can all talk to the brain and it can sort all the info into useful/not very useful/can't be bothered. It spends most of its time checking and cross-checking the info and working out what's the same and what's different and how to spot things that might be the same. New wiring happens all the time, so if you see something that might be a cat or a dog, you can guess which.

But in the autistic brain, for some reason, the construction crew gets given a new set of instructions somehow. Instead of building a network connecting everything together as normal, they build a superfast broadband connection to some bits, and almost forget the wiring for the rest, and 'dig up' some of the old cabling and move it round. So incoming info from the eyes, ears, taste buds etc doesn't really get to anywhere useful, or does get there but really slowly and in a big queue of other incoming facts all hoping to get through to the phone the other end. The superfast bits become the 'special interests' and strange abilities many have. It also explains what happens to us when we can seem deaf or blind or badly co-ordinated - the messages just aren't getting through properly. Result - we're not at all sure what's a cat and what's a dog unless we think about it a heck of a lot. We might not hear you if we're looking at something, but what we do hear and what we do see is amazing to us. It's all very different to your brain.

Can it rewire again? Probably yes. Maybe manually, though, rather than automatically. Much debate on this. For a start, some of the new wiring is actually often very handy, so we wouldn't want to lose that bit.

Frustrating for those parents watching children's skills changing, though. Very.

my ds when tired or ill regresses and loses his skills its just the way there brains have over load i think then tend to slow down

my ds is 3.6 and obsessed with shapes and numbers has started to speak but when ill he loses how to speak it all comes out jumbled and he then asks whats that to what he would normally know

its all still there stored up but just too much imformation passes through and my ds tends to concentrate more on the latest rather than what his already learnt

Stary -((hugs)) ds was/is just the same (including loosing his triangle circle drawing skills which he still hasn't fully regained at 9 but can draw a 9 which has a circle in it)! People dont believe what he could do in the past. Its as if he replaces skills rather than adding new to old! Don't give up though - some things you thought were gone forever come back!
Amber your explanation fits ds very well I think he has a superfast connection for direction/finding important places like parks! I wonder what happens at puberty when teen brains start pruning/modifying their connections - do ASD teens miss this out?

Magso,

Any hormone changes seem to make ASDs worse, in my experience. Was certainly the case when I got to puberty, became better in some ways when I was on the Pill when we were married, worse when I had to go on some stuff that forced an early temporary menopause (just don't ask about the hysterical 'meltdowns' during that...), a bit better again when back on a different pill, worse again now I'm back to no artificial hormones and going into a natural menopause. Some research to be done there, I think, but as they missed most of the women aspies it's probably only going to happen once they've found enough of us. I think all of it alters the brain connections somehow for us.

Amber thanks!
Hmm!-- Don't little boys get a mild testostorone surge around 4-5 too - might be worth exploring that hormone theory! I have little doubt hormones effect emotions and thought processes in NTs (well females anyway - just think of PMT)- I can imagine it irritates asd brains even more!

That does make sense amber.

magso people who work with Ds ask me his skills and when I tell them what he could do they think Im exaggerating.

Yes I have had this - frankly even I begin to wonder if I imagined some skills! (Ds really did look up at a light , point at it and say 'light' consenants and all at 2 - the HV saw it!!)

Hi Staryeyed,

The same happens with our ds (3 1/2)
We have kept a diary for last 18 mos covering food (he's on special diet) mood, supplements, sleeping, bowels and behaviours.
We noticed that when he has a lot of yeast and/or bacteria he seems to regress and lose skills.
You may want to look into testing him

J
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