Want to get a parent's experience re autism

[early childhood educator]

Hi, my name is Juliana and I'm doing a course on children with special needs. I have chosen to do an assignment on autism in young children and would appreciate a parent's personal experience about having children with autism.

I hope you can help me with the following questions:

 

1) At what age did you think your child was different and could be having autism?

 

2) At what age was your child diagnosed with autism?

 

3) Did you enrol your child in a mainstream kindergarten and if so, was it easy for your child to integrate with the rest of the children? Was the teacher able to offer any help or did she have any concerns regarding your child.

 

4) I'm also an early childhood educator in a mainstream kindergarten and I have a child with mild autism in my class. While his mum has accepted the fact, his father is still having a problem coping with it. The child is not receiving any special treatment for autism as his parents cannot afford it. Can any parent advise me how I can help cause I feel very much for this child but can't really do much as I'm still learning about autism myself.

 

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions.

[Zemanski]

1) At what age did you think your child was different and could be having autism?

I knew my child was 'unusual' from birth - he was intense, didn't like to be cuddled, wanted to be upright staring out at the world from the day he was born.

but

he was very bright, talked early and met all the milestones and had so few behaviour problems that at his 3 year check I said to the doctor ' I just wish he was naughty sometimes, then I'd know he was normal!'. When his grandad suggested at 3 that he might have autism I laughed it off because he made eye-contact.

 

I picked up pretty early that he didn't interact with other kids, around 18 months, but wasn't worried as he interacted very intensely with adults.

 

it wasn't till Y1 in school that we really saw anything to actually worry about - then it was the physical motor problems that stood out, he was diagnosed with dyspraxia in Y2. He was in Y4 that someone (an S&L therapist friend who was actually the same one who had picked up the dyspraxia) said that he was like her son who had AS.

 

 

2) At what age was your child diagnosed with autism?

Com was almost 9 when he got his diagnosis.

 

3) Did you enrol your child in a mainstream kindergarten and if so, was it easy for your child to integrate with the rest of the children? Was the teacher able to offer any help or did she have any concerns regarding your child.

Com has always been in mainstream and had no problems in the early years setting - he was able to follow his own interests in the nursery he went to and wasn't forced to interact. Also the nursery was very small with few formalities and rules. I put a huge amount of effort into setting up relationships with other children at that time and those are still his only friends. No one was aware at this point that he actually had any problems and as he wasn't causing any disruption and seemed happy no one was aware he needed any support

 

4) I'm also an early childhood educator in a mainstream kindergarten and I have a child with mild autism in my class. While his mum has accepted the fact, his father is still having a problem coping with it. The child is not receiving any special treatment for autism as his parents cannot afford it. Can any parent advise me how I can help cause I feel very much for this child but can't really do much as I'm still learning about autism myself.

 

try this link:

 

http://www.asd-forum.org.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=2619

 

I am assuming that you are probably in the states - references to kindergarten and paying for support - so I'm afraid most of us here won't know about the sort of provision and services available the other side of the atlantic, sorry

 

Zemanski

[call me jaded]

Hi Juliana

 

You ask some interesting questions.

 

1) My son was referred to a paediatrican at 10 days old. We knew he was different. and he had very low muscle tone. It took a long time to peel back all the layers, and we are still doing this (he is 11 years old).

 

2) He was formally diagnosed at 10 years old, although we knew from about 4 years old. We only sought formal diagnosis to obtain the right educational setting for him in year 7.

 

3) He had one day at a Montessori school and they let him cry (or failed to comfort him) for the entire day. I have never seen his eyes so puffed either before or since. He also attended a local authority nursery and certainly didn't cry there.

 

4) You could ask your employer for more autism-specific Special Educational Needs training on the basis that 1 child in 100 in education in the UK is diagnosed with autism. These are DFES statistics.

 

 

Good luck.

[Canopus]

This applies to me and I am in my 20s but you might the info useful.

 

1) Difficult to say. There were a few suspicions that something could be different at around 2 years old. I had an obsession with lights and anything that lit up such as neon signs and illuminated models. I took great pleasure at operating light switches whenever I could. Commercial buildings with big panels of switches were the most fun as I enjoyed indentifying which switch operated which light. It could be a bit embarrassing for my parents at times in places like hospitals or leisure centres. Other than that, my parents saw me as very bright, could talk early, and could read and write by the age of 3.

 

2) I became statemented at 8 but nothing was ever diagnosed. Repeated appointments with doctors and psychologists claimed that nothing was wrong with me. Autism was ruled out on the grounds I had high intelligence and could talk well, although I had poor social skills with people of my age group and could come out with shocking and offensive statements every now and then. My clumsiness was never adequately explained.

 

3) I attended a state nursery school. It was free play and there were no structured lessons. The staff commented that I hardly ever interacted with any other children and preferred to play with toys alone. My parents didn't make much of an effort in setting up relationships with other children and hardly ever talked to any of the other parents. They just assumed interaction would come naturally but it didn't.

[early childhood educator]

Hi Zemanski, Call me jaded and Canopus,

 

Thank you for taking the time to reply to me. I really appreciate all the things you have shared with me, the link (thanks Zemanski), your personal experience with your son ( thanks call me jaded ) and your own experiences ( thanks Canopus ).

 

Actually I'm not from across the Atlantic or in UK. I'm from Singapore and its only been in the last 10years or so that we have special preschools for children with special needs, that have the integration or inclusion programmes. Previously, the children would have to attend special needs school and not the mainstream ones. Lately there has been a lot of awareness regarding this matter about including children who are diagnosed with milder forms of autism to attend the mainstream schools and of course, these things take time for teachers to be trained well enough to recognise and handle these children. As the number of preschools offering these programmes are limited, we have quite a lot of children with special needs attending schools such as mine (Catholic Kindergarten), that are not equipped with such programmes as yet.

 

The child I'm referring to has been diagnosed with mild autism. He is able to follow the class and is very adorable, alway giving me hugs and big big smiles. The only disorder he shows is his speech...he is not speaking as yet but he does try very hard to say certain words like, hello, here, bye bye. He enjoys coming to the front of the class during share and tell, unfortunately, I know he tries, but is unable to voice his thoughts.

 

Thanks once again.

[call me jaded]

My child learns visually. This is one of my favourite sites for PECS - it shows you exactly how to do it:

 

http://trainland.tripod.com/pecs.htm

[LizK]

1) Notice some problems from about the age of 3mths when he started lagging behind with milestones. My content placid newborn also becamse irritable and a poor sleeper. The thought of ASD passed through my mind especially as his speech was delayed. Became particulalrly concerned about ASD during hte second year olf his life as wasn't babbling my first birthday, didn't say first word until 22mths and speech devlopment was disordered as well as delayed

 

2) Not yet got a formal diagnosis though told he is likely to be on the milder end of the autistic spectrum, have a mixed piacture of ASD and DAMP or fall in that 'grey' area between NT and ASD. Paediatrician has seen children like my son 'mature' out of their traits so only time will tell. Personally I think he'll end up somewhere on the autistic spectrum

 

3) He goes to a private mainstream day nursery since the age of 7mths when I returned back to work 2 days a week. Nursery have been great at accomodating his extra needs. They keep him as integrated with the other children as much as possible (something very important for me) whilst being aware of additional help or supervision he might need in specific circumstances. He has found it difficult socially, until recently has had few friends and is often on the peripheries of group activities often not understanding exactly what is going on fully or the social machinations in the group.

 

4) Things that helped my son at nursery

- familiarity of staff (he has the same keyworker for the last 2 yrs) and familiarity and structure to the day

- visual timetable so he knows what his dayw ill entail and again gives structure

- nursery staff spending 5-10mins a day doing lanuguage exercises with him, mainly commenting on his play when younger and now via variosu games

- encouraging social interaction with other children, encouraging one ro two children to engage on turn taking games for 2 or 3 minutes several times a day giving both children praise at the end

- recognising that his understanding of language is literal so keeping language simple like 'Adam shoes' is they want him to put his shoes on, realising that tihings like saying 'put your fingers on your lips' when want the children to be quiet will be meaningless to him. Also slowing things down as he takes longer to process things he's told. Nursery lend us books to read at home to familiarise himself with and they do certain action songs that we've done previosuly a lot at home so he can join in with the other childre. Usually he is about 4 actions behind!

 

HTH

 

Liz

[early childhood educator]

Hi everyone,

 

I like to thank all of you for taking the time to answer my questions and providing me with useful advice. I can feel that all your answers and suggestions come from the heart and that is why its especially special. I find the links very useful too. Prior to this I was at a loss as to where to find a PECS website. Thank you once again. Regards Juliana