New here. I am a father of a 3 year old girl who was medically diagnosed with severe autism.

[Terry1992]

Hello everyone,

Our family lives in a somewhat small town and therefore it makes finding resources for autism needs a bit difficult. I have a 6 year old boy and a 3 year old daughter who was diagnosed with severe autism as of summer last year.

Our daughter is so beautiful and is so full of joy and happiness. She is very playful and has fun energy. She does have her meltdowns. As she gets older we have many periods of easy times for her and many periods where she is having a more difficult time.

She is mostly non verbal, however we are recently seeing strides in that area. She was seeing a speech therapist privately and at school we felt blessed that she had a group of individuals working with her a few days a week. Recently all of this has come to a cease due to Covid-19 which is very unfortunate but understandable.

I have a few questions that I hope to post here in the near future of recent situations that I feel unprepared for where I aim to get as much knowledge as I can to help our family and our daughter going forward.

 

[Crossbreed]

Hello & welcome @Terry1992 .

My youngest daughter [& ward] is 25 & pre-verbal, with a mental age of 18 mos.

If you are in the USA, see Autlanders, Thriving Outside of the Box: Finding Support Resources in the USA...

 

[Terry1992]

Hello Crossbreed hopefully I am replying in the correct area as I am new to these forums.

Our daughter's name is Kiara. What is your daughters name? What does she enjoy doing?

 

[Crossbreed]

Our daughter's name is Kiara. What is your daughters name?

I don't typically give out her name so I can talk about our experience without violating her privacy.

What does she enjoy doing?

She likes dancing to the radio and looking at magazines. Sometimes she'll look at telephone listings (no pictures), but she is unable to read.

 

[Aspychata]

I learned so much how people here progressed thru childhood. It really opened my eyes and l feel blessed to understand what obstacles such as stimming, sensory overload, social avoidance that some of us suffer more than others. But it's great to hear that she is so full of life and has support at school. My daughter seems to sit somewhere on the spectrum, defintely because of me and her father has bipolar and depression issues he deals with. Good luck and welcome to the forum.
She may have a fascination with numbers, l can look at strings of numbers in coding. So interesting to hear. My daughter understood multiplication concept in preschool - l just used m&m's to help her visualize. Does she like to sort things in columns, like her toys? After reading the posts here, l noticed my daughter love to line up her little ponies or her Pokemon cards, and she always lined up and sorted out her Halloween candy no matter what.

 

[Nitro]

Hi Terry

 

[tree]

 

[Nynke]

Hey Terry,

It seems like a pretty difficult situation to be in right now with covid-19 and the care that you would like to give to your daughter which is more difficult now.

I've read some time ago about these two parents that taught there kid with severe ASD how to speak via singing with them. Initially starting out with singing the songs and leaving out a word, to see whether they respond to that. Then slowly working towards your daughter understanding that the song will go on when she says the missing word, and then building that up to more and more words missing until she sings larger parts of the song.
I study neuroscience, and music is this wonderful thing that is actually processed in a slightly different location in your auditory cortex than speech is, so from that perspective you could try and see whether something like this would possibly be able to take over part of the what is now missing from your daughters speech therapist.

Also, I mean she can't see the people herself anymore as of now, but what could maybe be done is to email the individuals working with her to ask for some exercises or tips that you could in part take over during Covid-19.

In any case, best of luck within this situation!

 

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the forums terry. Any questions could undoubtedly be answered here, but sometimes it's hard to sort through the semi-related replies if you hit anywhere close to someones special interests. if we don't have the answers someone will be able to point you to somewhere that does.

 

[Sarah S]

Warm wellcome the forums

 

[Mia]

Welcome Terry, there are several members here with young children with autism. Who are quite busy looking after their children during this time of no school and little help from the outside world. The changes that have occurred must be very difficult for the children and parents as the loss of routine can be hard on them.

 

[clg114]

Welcome to Autism Forums!

 

[Terry1992]

Thank you for all the warm welcomes everyone! I hope everyone is safe during this time and I hope to learn more about this community in the near future.

 

[Thinx]

Hi and welcome, I hope that you find it supportive and interesting here.

 

[Lauren88]

Hi Terry,
Welcome... I myself have an 8 YO Daughter with autism, I love exploring the world through her eyes it’s truly amazing!
I know how you feel with minimal support at the present moment in time, it’s taken a few weeks for her to adjust to the transition and isn’t coping that I am having to work full time from home also, while my husband who is also a keyworker (luckily I’m able to work remotely) is working full time out of the house.

I hope you find lots of answers to the questions you have

 

[Storm Hess]

Hello everyone,

Our family lives in a somewhat small town and therefore it makes finding resources for autism needs a bit difficult. I have a 6 year old boy and a 3 year old daughter who was diagnosed with severe autism as of summer last year.

Our daughter is so beautiful and is so full of joy and happiness. She is very playful and has fun energy. She does have her meltdowns. As she gets older we have many periods of easy times for her and many periods where she is having a more difficult time.

She is mostly non verbal, however we are recently seeing strides in that area. She was seeing a speech therapist privately and at school we felt blessed that she had a group of individuals working with her a few days a week. Recently all of this has come to a cease due to Covid-19 which is very unfortunate but understandable.

I have a few questions that I hope to post here in the near future of recent situations that I feel unprepared for where I aim to get as much knowledge as I can to help our family and our daughter going forward.

Hi, Terry.