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4 y.o. with autism.

T

timur

Active Member
Hello,

Our daughter was just diagnosed with autism this week by children behavior doctor. She will be 4 this months. The main symptom that bothered us to request appointment is speech delay for her age. We noticed recently that she speaks much less than 1 year ago. Her development was normal until 3-3.5 y.o. and she was speaking short sentences before 3.5 but now she rarery says a word. Would you please tell us does it common for autism to suddenly appear after 3 years?

Thank you.
 
In NT circles, that is referred to as "regressive" autism. That has been the kind that appears to be an epidemic. It is an acquired learning disability on top of autism, not the autism itself.

What I mean is that autism without that learning disability just looks like nerds, geeks, eccentrics, engineers, etc. Weird, but functional.

It is too early to know how this change will effect your little one. Some won't mature past a certain mental age, while others eventually come around.

If you are in the USA, reach out to one of these organizations,
"Autism Speaks" is fairly useless when it comes to day-to-day living with autism.
 
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Crossbreed said:
In NT circles, that is referred to as "regressive" autism. That has been the kind that appears to be an epidemic. It is an acquired learning disability on top of autism, not the autism itself.

What I mean is that autism without that learning disability just looks like nerds, geeks, eccentrics, engineers, etc. Weird, but functional.

It is too early to know how this change will effect your little one. Some won't mature past a certain mental age, while others eventually come around.

If you are in the USA, reach out to one of these organizations,
"Autism Speaks" is fairly useless when it comes to day-to-day living with autism.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Can you please tell how do these organizations help?
So far we had assessment at school district and we will have another appointment with them at the end of this months to discuss results and options. I requested the list of the ABA specialists at my area from insurance company.
In general we don't know what should be our next steps and how can we help our kid.
 
timur said:
Can you please tell how do these organizations help?
Click to expand...
To start with, they have good general information, links and public meetings that train in managing ASDs to extended family members and other interested parties. (They tend to be more cutting edge.)

Also, they maintain lists of autism-competent providers. General physicians & psychologists are still often in the Stone-Age on this matter.
 
Crossbreed said:
To start with, they have good general information, links and public meetings that train in managing ASDs to extended family members and other interested parties. (They tend to be more cutting edge.)

Also, they maintain lists of autism-competent providers. General physicians & psychologists are still often in the Stone-Age on this matter.
Click to expand...

This is very helpful information, thank you.
Can you please tell on what should we focus mainly right now? As I understand getting the special education from the school district and ABA specialists from insurance but is it enough?
 
timur said:
...and ABA specialists from insurance but is it enough?
Click to expand...
I would delay ABA until you get further recommendations from whatever competent source you approach. Special ed. just more-or-less happens as you get involved with school.

If I understand your daughter's situation correctly, your she has TWO issues.
  1. She is autistic.
  2. She has a learning disability.
When someone is just autistic, it is similar to living with a gifted person. You just have to learn to communicate differently with them.

Learning disabilities further hamper one's ability to communicate.

The best approach is to deal with each issue separately. Learn which is autism and which is LD.

Autism Speaks (and those who share their paradigm) tends to conflate those two issues, doing more harm than good.
 
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We never seen autistic people but she probably looks autistic. She is like in her own world, sometimes it's hard to get her attention. She has favorite games and activities like jumping, riding scoters, playing with pazzles, some small toys, cartoons. When she wants to play or needs something, needs help she let's us know usually by taking hand. She understands everything we say he or want from her, she is good with dayly rooting and in great physical form.
 
Would you please tell us what specialist should we start looking for. Are they at hospitals or special centers? Our child development doctor said us onlu about ABA program. Does ABA includes speech therapy?
 
timur said:
Hovewer, we can't teach her due to lack of attention and speaking.
Click to expand...
That is a learning disability on top of her autism. Many on this forum have autism without a [co-morbid] learning disability. They are separable.
timur said:
Would you please tell us what specialist should we start looking for.
Click to expand...
It would help if I knew what state you were in.
 
Why do people find being non-verbal such a big problem? I would often talk too much well into my young adult years. Apparently people can't talk and think at the same time.
 
Crossbreed said:
In NT circles, that is referred to as "regressive" autism. That has been the kind that appears to be an epidemic. It is an acquired learning disability on top of autism, not the autism itself.

What I mean is that autism without that learning disability just looks like nerds, geeks, eccentrics, engineers, etc. Weird, but functional.

It is too early to know how this change will effect your little one. Some won't mature past a certain mental age, while others eventually come around.

If you are in the USA, reach out to one of these organizations,
"Autism Speaks" is fairly useless when it comes to day-to-day living with autism.
Click to expand...

I don't understand the distinction between regressive autism (loss of speech) and autism wherein the child does not stop talking. If a child is speaking at age 2, often at either an advanced level of speech/vocabulary or at a level consistent with NT children, but then ceases to speak, how can that be a learning disability separate from and independent of autism? My nephew spoke normally until about age 2 when he stopped talking virtually altogether. If a child can learn and use speech up to age 2, then what kind of disability would commence at age 2 that did not previously exist? My nephew is about 30 years old now and rarely speaks. He can force himself to speak - and I can tell it is a huge struggle and effort for him - so I'd like more information about what kind of additional disability he may have. Perhaps there is something I can do to help him speak freely or spontaneously.
 
Mary Terry said:
My nephew spoke normally until about age 2 when he stopped talking virtually altogether. If a child can learn and use speech up to age 2, then what kind of disability would commence at age 2 that did not previously exist? My nephew is about 30 years old now and rarely speaks. He can force himself to speak - and I can tell it is a huge struggle and effort for him - so I'd like more information about what kind of additional disability he may have.
Click to expand...
Is he still able to write or type? If so, he is still literate (with a different problem).

In regressive autism (which we would identify as ASD3), the child's literacy begins as normal, but for an as-yet undetermined reason, they "revert" to their pre-literate state in their development. It is as if they forgot their budding language. No writing, no typing, no signing, no effective use of assistive communication devices.

ASD2 usually acquires language, if late, but doesn't meet other early neurological milestones.
 
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Can you consider homeschooling? Sometimes that can be a great way in the early years. My daughter loved the freedom of homeschool, and was able to concentrate on her favorite subjects, writing, art. It also gave her plenty of downtime to process and rewind.
 
Crossbreed said:
Is he still able to write or type? If so, he is still literate (with a different problem).

In regressive autism (which we would identify as ASD3), the child's literacy begins as normal, but for an as-yet undetermined reason, they "revert" to their pre-literate state in their development. It is as if they forgot their budding language. No writing, no typing, no signing, no effective use of assistive communication devices.

ASD2 usually acquires language, if late, but doesn't meet other early neurological milestones.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply. My nephew is literate, he can read, write and type. But he cannot compose a written story or write an essay. He just seems to lack comprehension of how to string words together to express a complex thought. He attended main stream public education with lots of tutoring and speech therapy and he made good grades as long as he did not have to volunteer words of his own. He is very good with true/false, multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank types of tests.

As he lost language starting about age 2, he began echolalia and would flawlessly quote the entire dialogue from Sesame Street TV shows. Eventually, I realized that he was actually communicating with me by his choice of the TV dialogue he quoted. He somehow found a way to convey his thoughts by using TV characters' language.

I'm pretty upset right now. His mother just emailed me that he was formally diagnosed with tardive dyskensia yesterday which she blames on Abilify and who knows how many other psychotropic drugs she has imposed on him over the years. She wants to sue his psychiatrist for malpractice which, of course, would fail. I've mentioned before that I consider it a conflict of interest for a psychiatrist to treat both an autistic mother and her non-verbal autistic son because the only information received by the psychiatrist comes from the mother. If the mother has mental issues such as my sister-in-law, then she may misinform the psychiatrist about the non-verbal son and actually seek drugs for him that makes her life easier but are unnecessary for him. I can't say it to her but a better lawsuit would be for my nephew to sue his mother for what she has done to him. But I digress.....
 
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