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Here are some suggested organisations that offer expert advice on special needs.

I am a mother on a hunt - does anyone recognise these symptons? I really need help.

31 replies

senatorvass · 24/12/2008 20:58

I posted this in behaviour but was advised to try here. [http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/behaviour_development/672067-What-ALTERNATIVES-to-time-out-are-there-fo r-a-2?msgid=13671696 please read posts by senatorvass]]

many many thanks. He seems very disturbed by all of this... emotionally he is a wreck and I cant sort it out. I am beginning to wonder if there is another problem. I have been told he is G&T so perhaps its stuff to go along with that but I need to cover all my bases and I badly need help. I have a gorgeous lovely little boy who is sometimes drowning in panic/emotional distress etc.

OP posts:
coppertop · 26/12/2008 23:14

Children with AS/ASD can have very vivid imaginations too IME. Ds1 used to talk a lot about a solar system that he had invented. He could tell you not only what each planet was like (number of moons, gravity, climate etc) but also what the aliens living on each planet were like, including which other alien races they were at war with.

One of the criteria for AS is that the child had normal language development at/by the age of 2yrs. It's not always so straightforward though. Ds2 has a dx of AS as he was talking by the age of 2, but now he is the one with language difficulties. My late-to-talk ds1 is now very verbal and sounds more like an adult than a little boy.

amber32002 · 27/12/2008 07:54

Speaking as someone with an ASD, a vivid imagination, what appears to be excellent verbal skills (note the word 'appears') and who's learned how to care for other people, I'd say beware of any stereotypes.

If a child has real problems with unexpected noisy social stuff, has intense interests, and a real problem with their routine changing, and real problems with sensory things, it could be found by a professional to be an ASD.

It's very, very early days for the ASD scientists and experts. Because they only discovered it and tested for it fairly recently, and then only tested the badly behaved boys (Why? Easy - why test a child who's well behaved in the classroom, eh?), they ended up with a really silly checklist. Now they're realising that the majority of us don't tick the original boxes in the same ways. Some do of course, but the majority don't (not least all the adults who were never discovered as the tests were never done for us until we asked for them ourselves).

We sometimes seem helpful when we're actually trying to get control of a situation so it's not so scary, e.g. 'helping' a parent to wear clothes that don't scare us, jewellery we can expect, etc. The difference is that a non-ASD child will cope if you appear in an unexpected outfit with your hair styled differently, whereas I wouldn't know if it was you or not. If people change their appearance, my brain actually loses track of who they are. Not all ASD people do, but mine does. I lose old friends in shops if they're wearing their hair differently from normal. All very really.

Verbal ability - mine is really odd. I started by speaking in very long words indeed, more like a 'little professor' than a toddler, and people often mistake me for someone 'posh' because I can't hear tone of voice so never learned the local accent properly. I can chat to people about expected things, I can write like this for hours by putting together phrases that I know. But my brain actually sees pictures, not the words. Words are an add-on skill, and if there's a word that doesn't have a picture (like 'spirituality' or 'love'), and I can't think of a picture to explain it, it might as well say 'spoo' or 'flobble'. No meaning at all. None whatsoever. The emotional responses don't connect up in the right way to allow me to 'see' (understand) those words.

PeachyBidsYouNadoligLlawen · 27/12/2008 10:08

DS1 is I feel a bit like AMber verbally (may be wrong)-,definitely little professor and posh.

He ws assessed at 6 and registred at the 16 -21 (highest) level

yet... he has a slow processing time, very literal speech and told me that he often says yes or no because he cannot understand what i mean; if he is stressed things worsen drmatically

OneDS · 01/01/2009 18:34

Peachy my DS sounds very similar to yours.

Amber hows the book coming on?

thaliablogs · 01/01/2009 20:47

senatorvoss, of course you are going to get a referral and speak to the experts, but from what you've said I wouldn't go straight to ASD, there seems to be quite a lot of SPD in what you're talking about, prob worth researching that too.

amber32002 · 01/01/2009 21:42

Book 90% done, thanks. But the last 10% is the hardest...

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