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.

My Thanks To My Brother Niall

Hats off to this guy today.
He was going to paint his house and took the time to chat with us on webcam.
Not enough, well wait till you hear what happened.

I bit the bullet and made the twenty dollar investment for a webcam on Thursday but had to wait until today to try it.
It has a built in microphone and so Niall can hear us when we talk.
The girls were having a blast.
They could see their relatives and talk to them at the same time.
Yay for modern technology!
John came by and said hello to his Uncle Niall and cousins and then went off.
The big achievement came when I called Nathan over to say hello.

I had been tossing around for a while the possibility of videotaping the children at play and then playing it back to them.
I got this idea because of their overwhelming positive response to a video that I had made of the boys pre-autism.
Even Kathleen had found it fascinating.

I wondered if it was possible that by staging different play settings like throwing a ball and running and different things that they would learn by watching themselves as they seem to be extremely visual children.

Anyway, back to the webcam.
Nathan came over and noticed that his picture showed up on the screen. He repeated "hello, uncle Niall" after I said it.
Then he positioned himself correctly so that he could see himself in the camera.
Niall waved at him and Nathan waved back.
Niall gave him the thumbs up and Nathan gave him the thumbs up back.
Niall gave him the okay sign and Nathan just about turned himself inside out because of the position he was in to place his ok sign in front of the camera.
Nathan then recited his alphabet.
Niall said that it was a lot clearer than he had heard him previously.

Then Niall and Nathan proceeded to spend the next five minutes poking tongues at each other and pulling faces.
At first, Nathan was copying Niall then he started to branch out on his own creating his own expressions, never once for a second taking his eyes off the computer screen and his Uncle Niall's face.
After a while he left, a smile on his face.

That was not the end of it.
Nathan returned to the loungeroom and proceeded to talk.
He was in there by himself throwing out 4 or 5 word sentences.
He repeated the same ones a bit. It almost seemed like he was trying to work on his pronunciation as he got clearer as he went on.
Then he also started throwing out one or two words.
He went into the bedroom and this continued.
He kept this up for over an hour.

Nathan has mutism in addition to autism. He has very little spontaneous speech but he seems to experiment with it at intervals.

Later he came out to the kitchen holding his ear and I was afraid that he had an ear infection. He is prone to them. It kept him out of the pool last summer as he was constantly on antibiotics trying to clear this up.
I asked him if I could look at it and he let me have a wee peek.
Then I noticed that he had a scratch on his ear and asked him what happened.
He replied, "cat".
Then he walked off and as he did so said, "ouch".

I intend to see if we can do more webcam sessions and see if indeed this does help his speech a little.
If this does indeed show improvement in his speech then I will go ahead with the video.
Maybe it can be used for social skills too.
It could have all kinds of possibilities.
Later