coolblue

I think in this case, we have a fairly good idea of what's happening. The parietal lobes are heavily involved in the processing of spatial information, and spatial information appears to underpin numeracy. Neurons transmit information via tiny electrical currents, so stimulating them is quite likely to enhance or diminish performance. This technique might be useful, not so much in improving the mathematical skill of people who aren't good at maths, but stimulating activity in neurons damaged by a stroke, for example. It's important not to confuse the research with whacky reports about it in the media. cb

I see the distinction you are trying to make, Tally, and you might be right, that Shona's daughter might not be being 'bullied'. But surely we don't have an education system that thinks it's OK for people to be called names, tripped up and hit on the head as long as it's nothing personal - do we? cb

I don't think anyone mentioned getting 16 hours a week... What most LAs appear to offer is a couple of hours a week with a tutor plus homework. cb

Yeah, right, whenever I go to the supermarket, I get called names, tripped up and hit on the head. Quite normal. Don't know what the problem is. When I was at school there was hardly ever a time when we weren't supervised. At primary school it by was teachers and at secondary school it was by prefects until we were 16 and then we became prefects ourselves. There was no vandalism, no smoking in the toilets and no bullying. Wonder why. I've lost count of the number of times I've been told school is to prepare my children for 'real life'. I'm still at a loss to work out where schools expect children to end up. At the risk of making a sweeping generalisation, I suspect that for many teachers school, however it manifests itself is 'real life'. In a large group of kids, you are going to get the odd incident, but any more than that and it looks to me that the school has some expectations of normal behaviour that I suspect they would find difficult to justify in an adult workplace. cb

Why? (Not trying to lure you into being modded, just curious.) cb

We're only three weeks into the first phase. I wrote a detailed summary (with bullet points, thank you bid) and included the latest copies of all reports. Ds now has a home tutor, so they should get a teacher assessment from her. The SEN code of practice has a timetable on p.120 of the length of time the statementing process should take. In your case, Gattsby, I don't understand why a deeper analysis of your son's 'condition' should be necessary. It's his educational needs that need to be supported and a Nobel prize in psychiatry shouldn't be required to figure those out. When my son was at school he had two assessments from Learning Support Advisory teachers that were far more thorough than the Ed Psych assessment. They took a couple of hours. Those, together with the OT's report, would have told you all you might need to know about his learning difficulties. cb

Hi Hayley It's important to keep in mind that 'autism' is a set of symptoms. Like any other set of symptoms with a physical cause, the symptoms can vary within the same person depending on all kinds of factors. If you have flu, for example, one minute you feel as if you're dying and fifteen minutes after taking a pain-killer you feel much better. It doesn't mean that fifteen minutes ago you had flu and now you don't. Around 50% of people's behaviour is caused by genetic factors, so it's quite difficult to determine whether a child behaves in a certain way because of some genetic cause, or whether they have picked up the 'ways' of a parent. People with autism often have unusual sensory responses. It's quite possible that the smell of another house, or the food eaten in it, or even someone else's voice, might trigger autistic behaviour in your daughter. My son, for example, who has auditory processing problems, tends to respond better to women's voices than to men's voices, but can't bear the voices of young children. He becomes very autistic when young children are around. It could be something to do with preferring women to men and not liking young children, but I suspect it's because he can hear higher pitched tones better, but very high-pitched voices hurt his ears. Your daughter is still very young and if her behaviour is so variable it's likely that any professional will be reluctant to diagnose her, unless a diagnosis will give access to any additional support - which tends to be a bit luck of the draw - so I'd be tempted to just keep an open mind and keep an eye on her. cb

You're welcome. It could be about a month before it makes a difference, so stick with it if you can. But you're used to that! Good luck. cb

Depends what medications they are. The immune system needs a certain amount of vitamin D in order to work properly. Vitamin D also helps us metabolise calcium which is really important for muscles and nerves to work properly. We normally make vitamin D in our skin when we are exposed to sunlight. I know you've said that Glenn took a long time to get better from infections last winter. Because he wants to stay indoors with the curtains drawn, I'm guessing he doesn't get a lot of sunlight, so he might be low on Vitamin D. You can buy vitamin D3 on its own in the form of tiny tablets from health food shops. It's also in cod liver oil, but you need to stick to the recommended dose for that because it also contains vitamin A and too much vitamin A can be harmful. Hope this helps. cb

I know I've mentioned this before Jeanne, but I'd try vitamin D3 if you aren't already doing so. Taking a long time to recover from colds and infections is often an indicator of vitamin D deficiency. I hope things get better for you both. cb

It suggests that your son does have a visual impairment, though, Sally - relating to the question in your other thread... cb

He'd had two standard sight tests that had identified slight astigmatism - he didn't even have to wear glasses after his second test. But he kept reversing and transposing letters and numbers and clearly had problems tracking lines of text. His eyes also wobbled when he looked up from eating or reading. So we took him for another sight test and the optometrist couldn't complete her tests because his eyes were streaming so much after she shone her torch in them. He wasn't crying - he just couldn't see. She was quite unpleasant about it, so we decided to leave the test there and she said she'd recall him. I mentioned this incident on an internet forum and several parents recommended seeing Ian Jordan, which we did. He identified the eye movement issues but ds was so exhausted by the end of the tests we couldn't get the precise colour of tinted lenses. It was difficult for us to get back to Ian's practice so we tried nearer home. We've since been referred to a hospital orthopist who was awful, via the GP - but that's another story. We've also seen another optometrist Ian recommended. She couldn't complete her tests either, because ds was so stressed out by the journey. So he has ordinary specs for his myopia, from a local optometrist (not the nasty one) but we have never managed to get the eye movement issue treated. Since he also has balance problems, we're currently looking into a referral to a balance clinic, because balance can affect eye movements. cb

Just wanted to point out that dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia and all the other 'dys'-es are shorthand descriptive terms for difficulties with reading, arithmetic, actions etc, not 'conditions' in themselves. There might be some underlying physical abnormality causing them, but the idea that they are distinct conditions and not on a spectrum of difficulty with particular types of task with the rest of the population has led to enormous confusion in research. It has also led to mainstream teachers, especially, rolling their eyes and wondering how they are supposed to teach a child with a string of conditions they've never encountered before. My son is dyslexic, dyscalculic and dyspraxic. He has poor control of his eye movements which means his visuo-spatial ability hasn't developed normally. The eye movement problems alone account for most of his developmental problems. Most of the rest are accounted for by his poor auditory processing. Once we had found out what the visual problems were, we could then take them into account when doing arithmetic. He has poor tracking in his right visual field, so we started setting out maths problems vertically, instead of horizontally. We used number ladders instead of number lines. He reverses, inverts and transposes numerals, so we colour-coded columns of numbers and used large print to help him keep track of place value. We used lots of concrete objects to help him with the concepts, even if he struggled with the numbers. I'm not suggesting that eye movement problems are the cause of all dyscalculia, but they are the biggest problem with arithmetic in my son's case. cb

No it isn't unreasonable, but bear in mind that social workers have a lot of clients and SS departments have been overstretched for years. And I mean overstretched. Ours has had to advertise three times for one senior post and it's still unfilled. Not defending poor practice, but I can see how it could come about. Hope the meeting goes well. cb

A lot of 'behavioural disorders' appear to be due to levels of serotonin and/or dopamine being too high or too low. The role of both in brain function is complex and it's not easy to tell whether symptoms arise from too much or too little. This is presumably why clinicians start with a low dose of something that either raises or lowers serotonin and/or dopamine and see what response they get. Must have been nasty for you Trekster. cb

Every child matters is a policy, rather than a piece of legislation or set out in a specific document - so there are loads of documents that refer to it. I don't think any of them are definitive. As Cat points out, there's not much point referring to anything produced by the previous government as it's all up in the air at the moment. cb

Risperidone controls levels of two important neurotransmitters, serotonin and dopamine. It's used for schizophrenia, bipolar, irritabilty in autism - and persistent hiccups. So although it's used for schizophrenia, that doesn't mean anyone thinks your son has schizophrenia, in case you were wondering. I hope it helps. It sounds as if finally someone has listened to you. cb

When Richard Layard recently recommended CBT to the government as the treatment of choice for depression in the NHS, a lot of psychologists went "What???" CBT has a good reputation, but its suitability as a technique depends on the cause of the patient's problem and there aren't enough trained practitioners to support NHS referrals. cb

I understand what you're saying. Just that there isn't an 'everything', nor is there a 'quite normal' for people with AS. That's why a diagnosis requires an exercise of judgement. cb

Hi AMs Here is a link to a site listing the symptoms of Asperger Syndrome. http://www.autreat.com/dsm4-aspergers.html Just wanted to mention that we don't know whether Asperger syndrome is an 'underlying condition' or not. Like most autism spectrum disorders AS is defined only by its symptoms; the symptoms are what the 'syndrome' is. It might be the case that all people diagnosed with AS do have the same underlying disorder, but we don't know that. It's a bit like people having a temperature and a headache and a sore throat. A lot of diseases can cause those three symptoms - it doesn't mean people with those symptoms all have the same illness. Whether you would get a diagnosis of AS or not would depend on the clinical judgement of the person making the diagnosis. They would compare your behavioural characteristics with those of other people with a diagnosis and possibly do a diagnostic test. If it was a close enough match, you'd get a diagnosis. Hope this helps. cb

I wouldn't give anyone 'a chance' with a vulnerable child. Let alone someone you were already not sure about. There are a lot of misconceptions about ASDs and people with those misconceptions have a tendency not to make the right reasonable adjustments. CBT could be ideal for your daughter since she has specific issues that she needs help with and in good hands she could find it really useful. In your shoes, I would pursue the therapist endorsed by the NAS. If your GP objects because of cost, point out the lack of qualification of the psychiatric nurse, the problems you've already encountered and your daughter's fragile state. cb

If the psychotherapist is a chartered psychologist or a member of the British Psychological Society they have their own complaints procedure. http://www.bps.org.uk/additional-pages/contact/contact-us$.cfm cb

Just wanted to add to Karen's comments. She's quite right that a psychotherapist might know very little about ASD. Psychiatrists should know about it, and are qualified to diagnose it, because they are qualified doctors. A clinical psychologist should know about it, and should be able to diagnose it as it ought to be part of their training. Other kinds of psychologists might or might not know about it. A psychotherapist is not necessarily a qualified psychologist and might not have any formal training at all. cb

If there's any lack of clarity about who's supposed to be doing what, asking for information about procedures, especially in writing, can focus minds wonderfully. "Do you have a leaflet on...?" is a useful question. Similarly, if allegations are being bandied about, asking for evidence can make the allegations evaporate. Getting people to write it down makes them think about what they are saying/implying and often they realise they are simply making it up, or actually don't have any evidence on which they have based their conclusions. Or they know nothing about the issues on which they are venturing an opinion. Thirdly, another useful question is "What would do if you were in my position?" I've lost count of the number of times this has resulted in a very confident person going "Well, erm, that's a good question, I see what you mean, it's a bit difficult isn't it?" Good luck. cb

Don't like disagreeing with anyone. Depends what you mean by Autism. There are a number of known chromosomal/genetic disorders that have autism as one of their outcomes. There are probably unknown chromosomal/genetic disorders that also have autism as one of their outcomes. In all of these cases autism is probably lifelong. It is quite possible that autism could also be caused by physiological abnormalities that can rectify themselves. We tend to hear of cases where a child has had a diagnosis later and the parents say "If only we'd known earlier: it's so obvious, looking back." We tend not to hear about cases where the child has gone through an autistic phase and grown out of it, because the parent and the doctor, if involved, have seen it as a developmental phase and not autism. cb