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.

An Ability To Show Concern Even When Autistic

Nathan is moderately Autistic. He also has mutism in addition.

He is currently 8 yrs old and will turn 9 in August.

Nathan is undergoing NAET treatments under the care of a chinese herbalist in Glendive. He has treatments approx once a week.

Since he started his treatments, he is more inclined to talk on a regular basis. He will answer questions, when he wants. He will also add his two cents to a conversation.

He is more inclined to stay out of his Autistic world and willingly participate in family games and general tomfoolery, at which time, he stays completely with us and doesn't retreat back to his world.

He is also noticing more what his brothers and sisters are doing at these times and attempting to emulate it. He is aware that they throw comments out at different intervals depending on what is going on and I have noticed that he is forcing himself to do the same.

For example, with the karate or wrestling games when someone makes contact, inevitably an oomph or an arrgh will be heard. Nathan is now doing the same.

Yesterday I had the mother of all toothaches. I was reduced to tears on multiple occasions, the pain was worse than labour. I would have liked to rip my jaw off as the pain was that severe.

Finally I ended up going to the ER in Glendive and they gave me pain relief and antibiotics.
It finally kicked in at 310 this morning and I can honestly say, since then, I have had no pain and all I am taking now are the antibiotics.

Nathan spent the evening visiting me at intervals after I returned from the hospital. Looking in my eyes and smiling at me and stroking my arm and hair.

He saw my coffee cup in front of the microwave that I had put coffee granules in while waiting for the water to boil and while I was elsewhere, he poured my water from the jug, added milk, and brought the coffee to me in the bedroom where I was supervising the girl's baths.

He had never done that before.

When I was laying on the floor getting jumped on by the girls and Eric, Nathan came and stood beside me and when it looked like someone was getting too rambunctious, he put his hand on their arm and held them, as if to tell them, to take it easy.

When I lay down on the bed to tell the girls a story at night, Nathan lay down beside me until I had finished and got up then he left too.

He stayed up until 4am. At which time we were both able to get some rest.

Nathan has always been close to me. My ex-husband used to joke, if there was a fire, you lead and Nathan will follow you, the other kids will just follow Nathan.

Even though Nathan doesn't speak much. It is almost like we have a special way of communicating. He will look in my eyes and it is like he is telepathically trying to communicate with me.

I believe it is entirely possible that my son, despite having Autism, sensed my level of distress and responded with empathy to help alleviate it as much as he could.

He is such a sweetheart. A teddy bear with a good heart. That's my boy.

Children with Autism Don't React Well to Change

Naturally enough that comment depends on the level of Autism that the child has.

Kathleen does not respond well to change.

The three nights that I spent in Bismarck were hard on her.

She went from a little girl who would jump in the bath tub and spend ages in there playing to a screaming mess each night when I would either start the water running or she saw the signs that I was getting ready to bathe them.

There is nothing that may set them off. It is simply the change in routine but if anyone has read the prior post on Kathleen and bathing, they will know that it took me probably close to 8 months of intensive, concentrated work to get her to the point where she would enjoy her bath and tolerate having her hair washed.

The night after I got back I realized that I would have to practically do it all over again.

It was a little sad to have my little girl back to screaming and wailing when the bath was turned on.

Fortunately she would agree to get in but was wailing the whole time and she would hang her head over the side of the tub.

It has taken her this long to figure out that I didn't want anything from her but to have her sit in the bath and wash herself or agree to let me do it for her.

Last night she jumped in the bath wailing but was prepared for flight at any time.

I leaned on the counter and asked Rachel to hand her the face cloth and indicated to Katy that I just wanted her to wash her face which she did.

All of a sudden she stopped the wailing. She would occasionally lean over the tub to reach for the towel to wipe the tears from her eyes but the incessant noise had stopped.

She looked over at me and gave me a quick smile and sat in the tub.

She had Rachel and Sarah in there with her and I instructed them to stop being mermaids for a wee bit which they agreed to do.

Kathleen just sat there for about 10 minutes. Occasionally she glanced my way and gave me more smiles and I got one giggle from her.

When she was ready she hopped out and we played the cuddle game which she loves.

Hopefully tonight she will be better again. It just takes a lot of time and patience and of course with children with the degree of Autism that Kathleen has it may take a little while so you just have to persevere.

I would rather have the children want to do a task than force them and have them hate every second of it. It can be done.

Later.

Summer is Coming

Less than 3 weeks till summer vacation.
I have to come up with some neat stuff to keep the inmates from getting bored.

It is hard to organize play dates for children with Autism. Not a lot of other parents think of inviting your children to their houses to play with their kids.
It is kind of a shame really as John would like to play with other children but being Autistic, he doesn't have the skills to initiate a freindship.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough of the other parents around here to develop a relationship with them that would foster reciprocal visits.

Yes it is true that my children being Autistic have a few idiosyncrasies but they are not leppers and they are not dangerous, they just sometimes do somethings differently.

They love to kick around a ball, they love to ride bikes and they love to play tag.
Just like any other kid.

They may not talk as well as some of the children around here, but they are not mean spirited and they will not say hurtful things. They are just children plain and simple who by an unlucky draw of nature have Autism.

I hope to get a swingset set up in the backyard before summer comes and I will call as many parents as I can think of to see if any of them want to send their children over here to play and hopefully that will break up the monotony of the long summer.

Sometimes it is hard to get things done around the house as I am only one woman and unfortunately I don't have any menfriends who can do things like fix bikes and the such. But I try to do what I can.

Hopefully my friend's husband will bring a mate to help set up the swing set or it is going to be a very interesting day I am sure.

And of course, there is always the play pools.
Later

Noise Sensitivity for Children with Autism

It is difficult to determine how much noise really affects children with Autism but, it certainly seems to have an adverse effect on a majority of them.

When Kathleen first started showing signs of Autism, at first, I thought that she had a hearing deficit as she wouldn't turn her head when I called her name and if I banged two spoons together behind her, she didn't get startled or look to see where the noise originated from.

When she started stacking blocks and lining up all the animals in the house however, I had my answer.

A number of children with Autism can't stand the noise of common things like vacuums and lawn mowers leading them to have massive size meltdowns when these activities are being performed. It is not so hard to adjust your schedule around the needs of your child but it is a little difficult to try to explain to the people two doors down that your child can't handle the sound of their lawnmower and could they please warn you in advance so that you can plan for the inevitable meltdown.

Sometimes desensitization can enable your child with Autism to cope a little better with the noise.

When they were smaller, I kept a radio running 24/7.

At first, it was only on very softly and of course it was on an easy listening channel not something that was designed to shock their ears. I kept this up for several months before turning the volume up just a wee bit higher. This continued in minute increments for some time and I am pleased to say that usually normal noises do not bother my children.

However, currently we live fairly close to a railway track and that took some getting used to as it is a busy line and trains travel through town frequently throughout the day and they blow their whistles. Really, really loudly!

To start, the children would get upset and scream when outside when the trains blew their whistles. I found that if I heard them coming and covered up the children's ears, that helped a wee bit but not really enough so it was back to desensitizing.

First off they were kept inside. We can still hear the trains from inside the house but it is somewhat muted.
Then I cracked the kitchen window open a bit. Once again, a little muted but louder than before.
This went on for a bit and the window kept getting opened wider and wider and then I advanced to the back door.

Now I am pleased to say that none of my children with Autism are bothered greatly by the train.
My 4 yr old is still a little shy of them but she doesn't run to me as often now to hold her ears.

Assembly time at school is a little trial for John. There is a lot of noise and the gym echoes. Some days he handles it better than others. Ear phones were trialed for a while.

The nice thing about John is that he can now tell you if it is too loud and request to leave. This avoids potential behaviour problems and is a lot more comfortable for him.

Last year I took him to the Halloween party at the elementary school and I will say that the music was too loud even for me. He walked in there, covered his ears and said "mum, I can't handle this, there's too much noise. Can I go home?"
So he was taken immediately home.

I don't know if it the volume of the noises so much as the fact that there is just so much going on and it is too busy when you add volume. I know for a fact that John can hear what people say when they are standing next to him, meanwhile he is also hearing what people are saying standing apart from him and also what others are saying a distance away, all the while hearing all the environmental noises. A regular person can block out all the other noises and just listen to the one conversation while still being aware that there is other things going on.
An Autistic person seems to hear everything at the same time and to try and process that all at once must be really mind blowing.

Desensitizing takes a bit of time and energy but for the Autistic child's comfort, I think that it is well worth it.
Later.

Conference on Autism

On Monday and Tuesday I had the pleasure of attending an Autism conference run by the Anne Carlsen Center in Bismarck.

It was presented by Dr Stacey Goresko who has an Autistic son.

The focus of this conference was to present a treatment for Autism that was developed by Dr Steve Gutsein, a psychologist, who himself apparently has ADHD.

His theory is that the children with Autism deserve a "do over".
Their social development comes to a halt when they become Autistic and if they are taken back to the same time, this is a little hard to express, but basically they need to learn the social skills of babies or toddlers.
They need to go through a stage where they discover for themselves that they can learn from their mentors or guides. (parents or caregivers)

From what I could determine, it is a social basis for the child to draw on.
ABA teaches children to remember things by rote e.g. if I do this then this happens.
That is nice, but the world is not in black and white. If you throw something out of the ordinary at these children, they can't cope with it as they may not have a learned behaviour for it.

I can see what Dr Gutstein means. His consultants teach the parents/teachers who teach the child with positive dynamic interaction to think about why things are happening rather than giving them the answer and expecting them to learn it.
This way, the child has something to fall back on and also, this can be built on so the child has more episodic memories to draw on.

It teaches them to think for themselves.

I think that some of this can be used with my three children and will probably attempt it several times a day to see how it works.

The consultants, once they have done their initial face to face assessment conduct the rest of their coaching via videos posted by the parents on a website.

To contact them www.RDIconnect.com

I really missed my kids while I was gone. I had a couple of good friends who stepped in for me. I think that the kids were happy to have me back too. Thanks so much to those who helped me attend this and to West River Special Ed for providing the opportunity.
Later

Nathan

Nathan is 8 yrs old now. I would think that he is moderately Autistic with little speech.
I will add that since he started the NAET treatments, we have seen greater clarity in his speech and today I think that there was a little bit more intonation to his speech.

Usually he speaks in a kind of monotone. It sounds almost like a deaf person. But it has improved significantly.

He is also starting to become a little more active. He is running more now and it seems that he is becoming more inclined to walk off.

I am unable to determine where it is exactly that he wants to go but, he just meanders off. He is not upset or angry when he is brought back so who knows, maybe he is just enjoying the sunshine.
After we get back from his NAET treatment tomorrow, I think that I will take him for a walk and see if that does well for him.

The more progress that I am seeing with his NAET treatments, the more excited I am about going to them. The last 3 weeks, it seems that everytime I go, I have something new and exciting to tell his practitioner.

I believe that we only have about 15 more treatments left so I remain very hopeful that we will see a significant difference in regards to his Autism by the end.