Educating About Autism

Tomorrow I will be meeting with a lady from KXGN news about Autism.
She is looking at doing a story on the services and treatments available in Eastern Montana.

I am more than happy to do the interviews. The more people can learn about Autism, the better off we are.

People need to know that it is not going away and that the far reaching effects of this disorder are going to get phenomenally huge as the Autistic person ages.

Kathleen's Speech

Kathleen is 5 yrs old and she is more than moderately Autistic. She also has mutism.

Lately though we have noticed that she is trying to formulate words and if you listen closely, you will find that she almost has a language of her own.

She can say yeah on a regular basis and she uses nah for no also regularly.

She says mama, or mummy, depending on her stress level.

Occasionally she says juice but that is not really frequent enough to count.

She has what I call a patter.

It is her very own language that she uses on a regular basis and it doesn't seem to mean anything. It has no discernable words.

She has a kind of sing song melody along with her patter. We do a lot of music therapy with her at home and she will often wander around the house singing songs with different tunes that she makes up accompanied by her own words. It seems to please her and she appears happy at these times.

We have tried her with multiple musical instruments but her attention so far has not been great. She prefers to be held and have you dance and sing and will often initiate these contacts.

If the CD player gets turned on, she will make a beeline for the counter and sit and wait for you to be ready to pick her up no matter where in the house she is or what she is doing. And when she has had her fill, she will move away.

I am more likely to get tired than she is.

She actually has a very tuneful voice. She sings beautifully.

She also attends speech 2x a week during school sessions.

If we could get more speech from her, I think that a lot of her Autistic behaviours would reduce as most of them appear to be borne from an inability to communicate and the frustration that develops as a result of this.