We are working on a startup to help autistic children to have better experience in pretend play and imaginative play (When children are playing pretend they are playing 'as if' something or someone is real. They are creating a situation where there is more going on that what is literally happening). I would be grateful if you answer some of my questions, so we get to a better understanding of the real problems of autistic children and their parents:

- How important is pretend play and imaginative play for autistic children and their parents?
- Are they able to do these two types of playing easily? and if don't, does this make you any problem?
- When it comes to playing alone at home, what kind of challenges should parents face?
- What alternative solutions they use to solve these problems?
- Do you think that these two types of playing affect the ability of these children to develop language and problem-solving skills?

Thanks.

Here is the online test for Alexithymia. http://www.alexithym.../test-alex.html

I'd be grateful if you could complete the poll ..Thanks

FWIW I scored 160

But at same time if I went to a generic countryside the smell could be just that little different due to things like trees it wont evoke the same things.

My home town has a little smell to it but not much but the first town I lived when I left home has a very distinctive smell i.e I thought of it as kinda like fresh cooked cookies or at least something like musty burning wood.

Hard to tell what part of that is nostalgia and what part is logical as even as a kid or when I left home I noticed certain smells more than others and that every town had its own distinct smell (obviously things like traffic, factories and shops play a part.

So even now I notice those smells and it confuses me as my brain automatically sees that as a distinctive nice smell.

Secondly is music, I used to play video games as much as 9/10 hours a day at weekends or holidays and in school time about 3-4 hours in a evening though did vary if there was something on tv I wanted to watch as not just the game but the music stimulated me that was like I liked role playing games as you had sad scenes and music to match and action scenes to pump you up.

This translated to movies somewhat, no matter if a action movie, weepie, comedy you had music to match, id rather watch a boring movie with 10 minutes of pumping action than just watch that 10 mintues action as it built me up so I assume gaming is similar.

Reason for these posts is that I don't play games much anymore due to just being low, but I ahve mixed thoughs on I am feeling low as nothing to pump me up, movies now as mad as a ASD person is saying this have no attention span its just constant in your face CGI, music (often heavy and unsuited to the scene) so no build up, I prefer older movies but have seen them so many times.

Thoughts on this?

Since I have not only an ASD diagnosis, but also a sleep disorder.. I noticed that loads of ASD folk have sleeping problems:

* sleeping to little or having trouble falling asleep (insomnia)

* sleeping excessively (hypersomnia)

* nightmares

* snoring

* sleepwalking

* falling asleep suddenly

* having muscle lapses, loosing control of facial /neck muscles when laughing or with sudden emotions

* ...

I found a topic with an BBC-interesting link to several related topic, with helpful research to fill in about your personal sleepprofile + tips to improve your sleep habits

but also loads more

Enjoy!!

hese are different from the Colormetry method because it focuses on more than just reading, but tests for all the perception issues as it is much more complex than written words. .

These particular Irlen method is 75 colours that make a thousand pieces in one lense to help my Irlen syndrome. The people i am actually seeing are from the Irlen Institute which qualified working with Helen Irlen there the only ones who allowed to say they are qualified and trained in this method.

Irlen Syndrome can be much more complex for people with autism such as

*light sensitivity - white on black gives me a headache, so does my computer screen

* Distortion white on black

* Losing my perception: waking up in morning forgetting the wall is there and banged into it.

*Flashing lights

* Bright lights hurt eyes, except for Blue, green and Red which i am calm in but cannot read in.

I've recently been diagnosed with HMS. I've got access to a physio in my area and go to one of the 'bendy' meets

once a month.

Was wondering if anyone else here had to drastically change their lifestyle after discovering they had ASD

and HMS?

off to do my physio before bed.

Parents and carers, we would love to hear from you!

Joanna Davies, a teacher at Ysgol Hendrefelin, Wales, and PhD student, and I would love to hear more about your experiences.

We are conducting some research exploring the thoughts and feelings of parents about parenting. Mothers, fathers or carers (birth or foster/adoptive) we kindly ask you to take part in our research. This would involve completing an anonymous online survey. We would really appreciate your participation!

Unfortunately, there is little research that has explored the thoughts and feelings of parents in general and less that has explored the thoughts and feelings of parents of children with an autism spectrum condition, even though it can have a large impact on a parent's family and lives. We hope that the findings will help us understand the feelings and problems that parents might face when caring for a child. This may help us provide better support to parents and families in general and to parents and families of children with an autism spectrum condition in particular.

The survey should not take longer than 45 minutes to complete. We understand that parents might not have 45 minutes to spare at once. This is okay. If you have a couple of spare 10 minutes to complete the survey in several stages that would be fantastic! There is no time-out so you can leave the survey open in your browser and come back to it. Alternatively you can enter in the same name/ID and click “Next” until you reach the point you left off – there is no need to answer the same questions twice!!

We should point out that as some of these questions deal with feelings and sensitive issues, some people may find them upsetting.

If you are interested in taking part, please follow the link below: http://psy.swansea.ac.uk/questionnaires/803205/
If a “something went wrong” message pop up after you click on the link, please just click the ‘follow link’ button. This will take you to the online survey.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like any further information: 803205@swansea.ac.uk.

Many thanks for taking the time to read this. The information you provide will make an important contribution to an area of research that is currently underexplored. We will happily provide any parent who participates in this research with a copy of the results at the end of the study.

Kind Regards,
Laura Glinn,
MSc Psychology Student
Department of Psychology

Swansea University

XKLX

Thinking I have dyslexia but I just like not taken it in and was like no I don't gave it. Thanks for mentioning it to me trekster as possible I have it

I did some digging around I did not know it affected other areas I struggled in and so I know you don't have to be able to spell to have dyslexia but I tell you this test www.dyslexia-testing.com.au/skin1/images/pdfs/senior-students.pdf and scored 31 out of 45 questions in Australian version but in the uk version of

www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/files/Adult Checklist.pdf and scored 53 on that.

XKLX

This week he was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder and also keeps his Pathological Demand Avoidance diagnosis.

I'm not happy at all with this diagnosis. I can understand ASD but to me there is absolutely no reason why ds#2 would develop ODD, what I've read assumes many of these children come from very difficult backgrounds, which ds#2 certainly does not. I know this isn't the case for every child with ODD.

The other issue worrying me is the suggested approach to ODD is very basic parenting - parenting courses, praising the good, ignoring the bad which we do anyway. I actually find these suggestions insulting.

And apparently there's nothing out there for children with ODD, no services to be accessed. No support, nothing.

Our consultant feels that in time ds#2 will be diagnosed with ASD eventually, what stopped him being diagnosed at this point was his good eye contact and how he will check the adult is watching him before he does something 'naughty', he also is very social.

I was wondering what is the basic (clinical) difference between an ASD diagnosis and ODD - I know ASD is the brain simply being wired differently, is ODD a condition a child develops and their brain are actually perfectly 'normal', it's the basic difference and cause that I don't seem to understand. Is ODD actually less 'serious' than ASD? Ds#2 is much harder to deal with than ds#1.

I'm not explaining myself very well, nor am I convinced that ds#2 does actually have ODD - tbh I'm pretty upset - but any comments are welcome.

The Trap; What happened of our Dreams of Freedom

A series pertaining to social engineering, but what is in that series of mini documentaries is a comment regarding the growth of all the disorders that we know now like ; BPD, ADD, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, GAD depression and many others and more importantly, where they originated and why.

Now it is usual that when I want to find out about something free of bias I look to edges of a subject, even other subjects that overlap for I am fully aware of bias because bias some people's livelihoods depend on it and there the interest in promoting what will keep them in employment.

So, make of this what you will ;

And up to time point 08:00 on the link below ;

And there find that elusive question again ;

What is normal.

Has anyone here used one and can suggest any specific things we could try doing with it to help? We're going to do it together and challenge one another. We've also been given a stepping machine and Beth's going to help me start a fitness regime over the holidays (Lord help us!!)

http://www.openingautism.com/Genetics/ConditionDetails/26

Which I found of interest because it is on a website concerned with Autism there suggesting a link, but readers may already understand I found my KS through researching the possible genetic causes of ASD.

When I told a therapist, she said it was likely I was simply hearing my own thoughts, and I never brought it up again, because I don't like people questioning my honesty.

XKLX

A boy with both syndromes

Are tremors part of AS and what cuases them? Is there anything he can take or do to help alleviate them?

Food is one of the hardest subjects for my SPD. I am vegetarian because of my SPD, it took time but eventually in McDonalds, I kept trying the burgers, and slowly over time I got more and more uncomfortable with the feeling of the texture, focusing on the texture made me think of cows, and well you can guess the rest, >.<. My SPD can make me very picky with foods, it annoys mum something terrible, and me, but I can’t help it. Most fruit I cannot stand, for example I find bananas, plums, grapes and oranges too fleshy, pears to be too grainy, raspberries too hairy, pomegranates, most melons, kiwi and strawberries to be too bitter. With vegetables if I see a brown mark on them then I cannot eat them. Mushrooms look a lot like fleshy overgrowths and some can really smell bad. I hate it, it makes choices of what to eat extremely few, I have a very small choice of foods, >.<. When it comes to food, it has to look right, smell right, feel right on my tongue, and taste right, if it doesn’t pass all of that, I am unable to eat it. I have tried apples, they are reasonable, the only problem is that it is difficult to get used to the fact that it changes colour so quickly. I have also tried watermelon, that is a little better, I have gotten used swallowing the seeds along with it, and the fleshiness of it is not too bad, the look of it does kind of remind me of steak though, which is disconcerting since I am vegetarian. I have tried smoothies but I have to gulp it down as I don’t like the feeling of the fruit bits on my tongue. Tomatoes by themselves are very bitter. Food is an extremely difficult subject due to my SPD, argh, it’s annoying, >.<. It is hard for everyone around me, including myself to deal with, but it is part of my SPD. That I can’t run away from. I want to try recipes to try other foods other than, tomato soup, soft rolls, breakfast muffins, pasta and pizza, but the problem is our kitchen is so very small and chaotic, making it claustrophobic, that it can be draining cooking in there, >.<. I feel I need to add a lot of spices to most dishes to increase the flavour of the foods, which also includes breakfast muffins. There have been several occasions in my past when I was much younger there was a dinner put in front of me to eat in amongst other children, the same happened once during primary school. I just stared at it and tears started to well as I knew I couldn’t eat it, but I didn’t want to make the situation awkward, as that is often the case if you can’t eat the food. It was horrible when I was asked to eat the food prepared for me but I couldn’t eat it, I didn’t want to be ungrateful at all, but I had no control over it. I also remember when I was younger and used to eat meals that my Oma (grandma in German) prepared; I had to eat them on separate plates. That was a clear sign of SPD, but mum and I didn’t know it at the time. What gets me the most is that I want to eat healthily but my SPD is preventing me. All I can do is take vitamins for vegetarians.

That is not all. Being sensitive to touch is another major difficulty to my SPD, I get a tingly uncomfortable feeling whenever someone touches my arms and I cannot shake people’s hands. The smell of metal in my hands from coins, door handles, and such creates a real irony smell in my hands which is irritating, thankfully I have found a strategy to tackle this and light touch. If someone was to accidently touch me or I had that irony smell what I do is wash my hands, it gets rid of the feeling and the smell in one fell swoop. If I need to open a door, I tend to use my t-shirt to cover the door handle. If I travel I take a hand gel so that I can use that instead of washing my hands, it is also much quicker. That is why I am never sure if it is my OCD affecting me here or SPD. For everyday tasks I find cotton gloves have helped me. To me, it cuts off the direct contact to surfaces and makes it easier to do various tasks like making a cup of coffee. I can’t hold most knives, forks or spoons unless I wrap them in tissue. I even have my own selection of knives, forks, and spoons to combat the problem to some degree.

At night I feel I must bring a torch out with me to check the floor as I hate to step on slugs, snails, and everything slimy or gooey. If I did I can hear the noise it makes, the feeling it creates and my mind will not settle until my shoes are cleaned. It is awful. I don’t know how else to tackle this other than with a torch.

Sight is more focused on my OCD, I think, but to be honest, I have no idea. I am not worried over sleeping because of my eyes at all; it is not like that at all. What I have the problem with which is why this is perplexing me is that if I see the slightest stain or hair on any surface, be it mug, plate, bowl, sink, bath, anything that I could have direct contact with, I need to wash it to get rid of it. I cannot use it otherwise. That has got to be my OCD surely. I keep seeing crossovers between my SPD and OCD that I cannot easily tell the difference.

Smells do affect me as well. I like the smell of fresh bread, coffee, candles, and even washing powder. When I go to the supermarket the aisles containing those items can get quite overpowering. I have a lot of air fresheners around so that I can combat the bad smells around the house.

I can hear much better than my mum. I can hear a phone ring upstairs from downstairs in the living room at times; it is not a major issue to my SPD though. What is a major issue with my hearing side of SPD has got to be loud noises. My family sometimes have an unfortunate habit of raising their voices when tensions become high. I find this horrible, and it makes me feel worse, the best thing I think that was invented for this is earphones. I just plug them in turn my music up and it cuts it off. That has been my strategy for tackling this problem.

Something has also perplexed me about my SPD. I am not sure if this is because of my SPD or AS but I have noticed that I can sense my family’s moods. Personally, whenever I sense someone is feeling bad I can tell, it is either that I sense the awkwardness of the situation, can sense their tone of voice, see their reaction, like sinking into a chair and covering their face. I immediately feel extremely uncomfortable; conflict is something that makes me feel really awkward about. I tend to feel bad if they feel bad, I guess it is like a mirror image.

I have noticed something very strange that only happened once a while back. I got up one morning walked to the window then I suddenly got this picture in my head of a cat with an exaggerated scared expression. A few seconds later I heard a dog bark from far away and then a couple of seconds later I noticed a cat cry. I found that weird, I have never experienced that before. It shocked me and I didn’t know what to think. I am not sure what it is. Is it my SPD, AS or what?

So the questions I ask are: Where does my SPD affect me and where does OCD? Also, has anyone found any strategies to tackle some of these SPD or OCD traits? And what happened when I got that pre-emotional reaction from the cat before it occurred?

when i was assessed by CAMHS a clinical pyschologist she put in my diagnosis report that my processing speed score at aged 14 when assessed came out at 62 in extremely low range so did my perceptual reasoning score was 53 which also was extremely low range my working memory was again extremely low at 65 but i put this down to fact of dyspraxia due to retraining /keeping information in my head due to short-term memory loss the only thing came out different level/score was my verbal comprehension which turned out to be low average of 13 which i assume for A.S being quite talkative verbally expressive /communicative is where that comes in and fits in there?

the recommendations of this diagnosisreport was to be referred to paediatrician of further investigation of my perceptual skills what does mean as this never came to anything/ never happened materialised at all/ could this be connected to SPD? and what i'm struggling difficulties now in situations? how would my perceptual skills affect me?

also when reading a book at work to the kids i 'trip' over words and struggle with reading 'full' sentences they get broken split up jumbled get confused stumble over words/sentences get wrong is this just dyspraxia ?

XKLX

I am a masters student currently conducting a study investigating depression and anxiety in ASD.

We are looking for volunteers (aged 18-40yrs) with high-functioning autism or Aspergers to participate.

Participation involves completing an online questionnaire that involves short questions about depression, anxiety, childhood experiences of bullying, temperament, social problem solving, social competence and social support. The questionnaire will take about 30-60 minutes to complete and can be done in your own time.

For more information follow the link to the participant information and survey:

https://www.psychdata.com/s.asp?SID=142243

or email Hayley Kennedy at: harhoo001@myacu.edu.au

The consultants report said Anxiety and SPD as his initial thoughts and the speech and language lady wants to do a school visit and will then write her report. She wants to delve deeper into the answers my son gave on his test the other day. He did a simple repeat sentence test and I was astonished at how little he can remember - I think he got up to about an 8 word sentence and then really struggled. I always thought it was not being able to tell us back in his own words (i.e. what have you just read about in your book) but it seems he literally cannot remember what he's just been told word for word either. Suddenly the penny has dropped with this to be honest as we are constantly asking him what people said (us, teacher, swim instructor, football coach) and he really really struggles even if its a minute after the discussion we've just had with him - most of the time he guesses if the conversation is about a similar thing.

He is very good with reading, writing, spelling and maths but these are all visual (and we have known for a long time that he is very visual - even teachers have mentioned this). The main problem we are getting is crying in all sorts of situations and most of the time, completely out of the blue.

I have looked into memory problems of children and it came up with CAPD (which I had heard of but knew nothing about). Having looked through a few pages on google, I can quickly see that most symptoms relate to him (although they appear to be very similar to ASD too - is that correct?).

Does anyone on here have a child who has been diagnosed with this rather than ASD please? The consultant/speach and language lady haven't mentioned this to me but I want to make sure I understand everything about it in order that they test him for it at some point because as a mother I know there is soemthing not quite right in the way his brain works but it is just a case of knowing what and then we can give him (and us!) the tools to deal with it and lead as 'normal' life as possible.

Any information/guidance would be great. I have looked for forums on this and there doesn't appear to be any. Thanks very much

i am very pleased, it is soo nice to have her back again

but then brings the other issue of endo into play, which i am finding hard to get my head around

i do have a mate who wonders just how good my previous life was, sseing as this one is soo eventful

i have finally got my pain ( hip bursitis) under control again

so it may be happier on planet nox this weekend

x

Curra