General help with AS/Speech problems please..

[EmmaB]

I have just found this board and am hoing you can give me advice/help really. Im probably going to ramble abit to try and get everything out, so I apologise in advance!

 

Our 3.5 yr old daughter has some speech problems and last year at a review appt the SALT referred her for a developmental assessment as she was concerned about lack of eye contact. We have just finished this 4 week assessment program and they have said she does has some Autistic tendencies and probably comes on the Autistic Spectrum somewhere (but doesn?t 75% of the population?). None of this surprised me as I told them this a year ago!! But at the moment they do not know if she has social problems too and want to wait to see if her social behaviour improves as the communication does and so we have a review in 6 months.

 

Now my daughter is a happy, confident, social child, who does play with her peers, although does not instigate play (which the specialists seem to concentrate on), but I put this down to them not being able to understand her properly. But she is a popular child at nursery and the other children seem to look after her. She has no problems with non-verbal communication, she recognises and responses to facial expressions and tone of voice etc, so I have to presume the AS is linked purely to her obsessive nature (she lines things up!), repetitive play patterns and delayed speech ? she uses a lot of jargon. She also lives life to her own agenda and you can struggle to get her to do what you want her to do, its all on her terms (which of course specialists always pick up on cos she does not conform to the norm!), but is this enough to justify AS ?? Im not so sure?..

 

They have said she has Word finding problems, she cannot describe pictures ? as in someone brushing their hair, she just says head! It seems to be mainly verbs, action words she struggles with. As I said she still jargons a lot?. She also has other problems, she is tactile defensive, has problems with textures, both touch and taste (cant cope with certain combinations of food), gets over stimulated and stressed out in certain environments, cant blow bubbles and a whole host of other little things which make her stand out from others. I stumbled across Verbal Dyspraxia the other day and it seems to fit my dd perfectly (it was like reading her from a baby), now I realise this isn?t a Dyspraxia board, but Im trying to work out if AS and Dyspraxia are linked at all and whether I should pursue this? We are back at the original SALT for a review appt on Thursday and Im wondering whether to ask her about the Verbal Dyspraxia?

 

Im also looking for any other guidance really, Im finding things very confusing at the moment and I don?t know what to do for best?

 

I think I have probably just rambled on abit, for which I apologise....again!

[Suze]

,Hi Emma welcome to the forum.Its good your daughter is having this intervention now, getting services later can be very hard .My son looking back was quirky at nursery had tantrums etc , but all kids did this.....now he,s 10 and it is much more obvious . Primary school can be the start of alot of problems for ASD kids, this was the case with my son.Keep all these experts who help you now close ........it may happen that you need their in-put greatly as your daughter gets older. You mentioned 75% of the population is on the spectrum. and there may be some truth in this , but the reality is only a very small % are referred for intervention.This forum is a brilliant place have a good scout around there are some good threads regarding pre-schoolers which you might find helpful.I,m sure Nellie will be along with some more helpful advice and some links, take care suze xx.

[Suze]

Oh forget to add dyspraxia is a co-morbid often associated with ASD,......... as are dyslexia, add adhd, ocd , tourettes and a whole host of others.My son is DX, asd/as, dyspraxic and dyslexic. Also I found when ASD was first mentioned to me reading books on the subject helped.I remember feeling confused and sad and gaining a bit more insight helped me.But finding this forum helped the most, the peeps here are luvverly

[elainem]

Hi,

 

there does seem to be a lot of overlap with ASD and dyspraxia. My ds 4.5 was dx ASD about 4 months ago and also has dyspraxia.

 

Elaine

[Lesley]

Our son (4) was dx in May with AS and has some sort of speech & language disorder which they haven't got to the bottom of yet.

I spoke to AFASIC who are a parental support group for children with speech & language difficulties & they suggested I start with the Nuffield Hearing & Speech Centre, based in the Throat, Nose & Ear Hospital in London. They specialise in verbal dyspraxia.

Cutting out the long story about our c**p LEA blocking our referral, we finally got to our appointment on 4 Aug.

They did loads of tests based on his speech sound system (which we have had paid for independent intense therapy for over the last year) and they concluded that this had definitely paid of.

Basically James can now make all the individual sounds required to speak so this ruled out verbal dyspraxia, although it was noted that he still has weak lip muscles & a tendency to dribble.

They then went on to say that the problem facing James is putting these individual sounds together in a sequence to make words and phrases (the more sounds needed in a sequence, the more jumbled it sounds). This is a LANGUAGE disorder rather than a speech disorder.

Our next step is to ask our SALT for an in-depth language assessment which we are apparently entitled to and cant refuse. (We have been asking for 2 years for one).

 

Hope this helps

 

Afasic are good for advice

 

L

xxx