The Great and Good of ASD tell me that ASD can't get worse. But ds3 definitely is. SO??

[PeachyInCarnivalFeathers]

The tertiary psych and others atwho have lectured at Uni say that ASD can never go backwards.

But ds1 really has done; school has noticed and it is getting ever more dramatic.

It might be becuase his language is getting a bit better, and he is mroe able to kick out (not literally) against all the sensory things that are acusing him pain, but he has become a very different child and now we are into the whole no-crowds-no-noises world.And that's horrid step backwards.

Anyone else any expereince?

I hada client oncewith Alzheimers who did that with pants

I fiond that alot of the things we did there in terms of routine, giving a sense of where he ws in his universe (spacialawareness etc) ttransfers well into the boys world

Saintly, I hope you don't mind but your microwave story had me in hysterics only in an i-soooo-know-what-that-feels-like way, you understand. DS's current impulse which cannot be ignored is to walk through 'flipping signs' (those swing signs you often get on pavements outside shops? like sooo many other things, they weren't really on my radar until DS.....) and now he's old enough to see them when we're out driving and all but demand we stop the car so he can get out and 'go through the flippin sign'

DS is only 5.5 but I think I already agree that it's a peaks and troughs thing, like others have said, as one challenge disappears another one comes to replace it at different stages of his development.

Peachy I have had many days where I feel exactly like you, yesterday was one, when we were at the park and he was licking fence posts and shouting random nonsense at some lemon-sucking children from his school who were looking over in my direction as if to say 'why don't you do something about him?!' and I was frantically trying to intercept without abandoning his 2 year old brother on a very tall climbing frame. Times like this I admit to thinking to myself 'he's just a farking liability, we can't go anywhere'.

But then that moment passes and my despair temporarily subsides. I think I'm slowly en route to acceptance. But it's never going to be easy, is it.

Ha ha @ flipping signs. Soon you'll be taking special routes to avoid them then having conversations such as " well we can't go that way there's a flipping sign" which would sound mad to anyone listening in and you'll wonder How Did My Life Become Like This?

On a positive note it has become much easier since ds2 and ds3 both reached school age.

Not only can we get worse or better in bits of our lives, there's good research to suggest why. Instead of our brains developing a proper structure and staying that way, bits of them move round and connect up to different things that perhaps they shouldn't do, it seems. Children's brains do that naturally as they grow, but in adults they thought it stopped. Doesn't seem to stop in adults with an ASC.

So abilities that seemed impossible can happen. Some of us can do things with our brains that others can't, because the bits are arranged differently. Some can't do things at all, because those bits aren't connected (yet?). And abilities we have now can become worse or disappear, only to re-emerge later on.

The brain keeps on rewiring itself to get round the changes, I guess.

All of this from brain scientist lectures. I'm not a brain scientist, so can only relay it.

I've got Lucy Blackman's book and have started it several times but I find the style really difficult to follow.

I'm going to pursue the mould issue though - the onset of autumn is always a difficult time for DS2. Atm he has an awful rash on his groin/buttocks which he had last year - we thought previously it was wearing nappies at night but he's out of them now and it's got worse. Dr dx it last time as a fungal infection - so could be mould-related, do you think? My sister has aspergillosis (sp?) - an allergic/asthmatic reaction to mould.

I also notice it gets worse if he has yeast.
Sorry - have digressed from OP rather a long way...

Does sound related. I think she talks about it in Autism and the Myth of being alone as well. I'll try and look for you.

If you ever see something Lucy has written straight off you can see that it's sort of not easy for her - it doesn't sound like a first language put it that way. I found the concepts quite difficult to grasp because they are so off the planet, but she is very like ds1 so I was transfixed. She's my spyhole into his brain!

Mould / yeast sounds inteiguing,doesn't yeast often eman a low sugar diet though? I draw my limits at new diets LOL. I think GF / CF is probably enough for anyone, I remember the days of GF / CF and feingold, never again!

Swing signs- another one PMSL! DS3 is the worst but ds1 seems to have a thing also. Fortunately not as many around here as other places- phew! The biggest isues are lifts and toilets for us. Oh and a T shaped piece of concrete he has started to trace again weach say after a breeak of a year from the compulsion.

roundwiindow thank you. I do have acceptance of the boys ASD- I didn't for along time, took me ages to get past thinking it as my fault or I was imagining it. I stillstruggle with the effect it has on our lives, though. Our lives were set up in such a non-autism friendly way before,lots of performing an dnoises and carnivals etc- now that's becoming impossible (DH and ds2 will continue but I will have to stay home and look after the other two) which I do find hard. I'm down to one firend who we almost never actually visit becuase ds3 was developing a compulsion to wee on her carpet (!) and that's the bit of it all I find hardest I guess. Next two nights I have to stand and watch Dh and DS2 perform, knwoing that I have to make a choice between both of us giving up our hobby, or just me giving it up (DH's skills farmore needed than mine) and staying hom alone a lot.