does she have autism? - need your help.

[mylittleone]

hi,

My niece will be 3 yrs old in mid august 2005.
she does not talk. 1 month ago she started showing signs of repetitive behavior and 20 July 2005 is when we realized it is more than speech delay.

she does not make eye contact. when we try to make eye contact she either slaps us or looks away or runs away.

She does initiate certain things like bringing the remote for the tv for her 1 or 2 favorite videos, bring over the box filled with goodies, bring me the bubble box to make bubbles, play catching ball.

She used to say 1 words, like mama, papa, dada, apple and 15 more words when she was about 18 months old. now she looks away and babbles in her own language whenever she feels like it.

we have an appointment with the neurologist at begining of august.

this has been devastating for me as well as other members of our closely bonded family. I have been trying to do lots of things with her every minute that I have got. will she be ok? I wonder and cry.

for past 3 days, I have been teaching her to wave bye bye, give flying kisses etc etc. making eye contact whenever possible. it has been exhausting.

if you have gone thru similar things, please write back. I would like to know whats coming and get prepared for it emotionally, and in terms of time and money.

Questions I have:
what happens if she is diagnosed with autism?
what would the neurologist evaluate and what questions should we ask the doctor?
How effective would an expert therapy would be?
What would the expert do?
how can I help?
will I ever get my baby back?


please let me know.
thank you for your time.
I really appreciate it and grateful for any responses.

[StrictNon-Confo]

hi,

My niece will be 3 yrs old in mid august 2005.
she does not talk. 1 month ago she started showing signs of repetitive behavior and 20 July 2005 is when we realized it is more than speech delay.

she does not make eye contact. when we try to make eye contact she either slaps us or looks away or runs away.


Look up the terms "Sensory Overload" and what that entails, and also (referenced later) consider the way direct eye contact is processed in many other animals as a hostile act. Sensory overload can invoke the "fight or flight" response at an instinctual level, as it seems she has demonstrated in practice.

She does initiate certain things like bringing the remote for the tv for her 1 or 2 favorite videos, bring over the box filled with goodies, bring me the bubble box to make bubbles, play catching ball.

She used to say 1 words, like mama, papa, dada, apple and 15 more words when she was about 18 months old. now she looks away and babbles in her own language whenever she feels like it.

we have an appointment with the neurologist at begining of august.

this has been devastating for me as well as other members of our closely bonded family. I have been trying to do lots of things with her every minute that I have got. will she be ok? I wonder and cry.

for past 3 days, I have been teaching her to wave bye bye, give flying kisses etc etc. making eye contact whenever possible. it has been exhausting.

if you have gone thru similar things, please write back. I would like to know whats coming and get prepared for it emotionally, and in terms of time and money.

Questions I have:
what happens if she is diagnosed with autism?
It doesn't change reality: she's still your little girl. All it might change is your perception, but it doesn't change her or her perception one bit. She would still be just as autistic as she was before.


what would the neurologist evaluate and what questions should we ask the doctor?
Not certain about everything a neurologist would evaluate, other than to verify that there's no detectible medical problem otherwise that can explain things, such as lead poisoning. You should ask what other things might cause the apparent behavior you have noticed, and what are age-appropriate developmental milestones. Other things may deal with sensory issues, a common thing: how sensitive is she to various stimuli? Sensory Integration Disorder is a common thing. Also, perhaps she may have auditory processing disorder as well, or hearing problems. Learning speech is very much related to what you can sense from the outside world: I've heard a statement (don't know if it is true, haven't investigated) that someone that's partially deaf will likely have speech within their range of hearing, at least (this is my qualification, due to reasonable guessing) within the capacity of them to reproduce it physically. After all, it'd be a rare base profundo little girl, or anyone, for that matter, at such an age :p

How effective would an expert therapy would be?

Depends on what you expect to get out of the therapy. Achieving bilateral communication is a great goal that will help, regardless. A lot of the behavioral "therapy" is basically an unwise attempt to do the equivalent of putting a monkey in a man's business suit: they might look the part on the outside if you don't look too closely, but the natural behavior (which isn't wrong for them, by the way, just different from your expectations of "normal" because you don't share the same neurology, and neurology definitely affects what a proper "normal" is: that's why cats act like cats on average, and not like dogs: a cat acting like a dog would be (for most cats) a very unnatural thing, but it doesn't mean that a cat amongst a bunch of dogs can or should act like just another one of the dogs, albeit a "bad" dog by being different quite often) is the least stressful for a person, and likely to get the most happiness on both ends, if you don't have this bizarre notion that acting differently is wrong. That is to say, trying to force something too unnatural on someone is ill-advised, and won't work when push comes to shove. If the behavior doesn't cause real harm to the person who behaves that way or those around them, only fools try to mess with what works and force the issue.

Also note that because those of us on the spectrum develop at individual rates and often in unexpected leaps and bounds, it is quite likely that the "success" attributed to many "therapies" (speech therapy and sensory integration therapy are useful for everyone; the behavioral therapies and some other things are quite often of dubious real value to the victim...err, patient...) may actually have come to pass with the passage of time and the growth of the person; it's just darned convenient to explain "success" as being the result of some process that can't guarantee anything, as we are all different, and thus, given the same input, there's no way to test the implementation against a theory and collect meaningful data. Who knows? Before the age of 10, your daughter may be doing advanced math in her head, but be completely clueless about such things as "girl talk" that everyone else is doing. Oh well.

What would the expert do?

Some of the attempts at changing behavior are often cruel, and result in taking a docile child in and spitting one out with lots of horrible fears and worse habits. The state of Michigan forced my parents to put my older sister in a "treatment" center, and the results were anything but useful, and if I could be in a room with those responsible for the damage they caused her, while I hate violence by nature, I'd have no qualms of instructing them of what they've done or allowed to happen.

But once again, working on figuring out what sensitivities exist and how to have her manage them so it doesn't cause her undue stress, along with figuring out some manner to help both sides communicate (note that I said "both sides" as it seems there's this funny attempt to make everyone comply with something that simply cannot work for them: for example, forcing eye contact while speaking. You see it as important that it happens, due to purely cultural and learned responses, but the instinctive nature makes it very unpleasant for her, as that's something that's a threatening thing in a lot of the natural world, besides the issue of possibly not being able to integrate everything together at once, as you can think of processing visual input and all that much like sucking a digital dictionary through a phone dialup connection: too much input too fast)

how can I help?

Treat her like the daughter you love, and try to teach her what she needs to know to be successful in life as she is, not as you'd expect out of a fairytale where your daughter grows up to be the doctor you planned, for example.

will I ever get my baby back?

If you've "lost" her, it is purely a perception in your mind: she has never "left" in any sense of the word. What she was in the past is the same as who she is now, and who she will always be in the future: your daughter, though perhaps not as you expected and hoped for. A lot of people grieve over the thought that they lost their child to autism, which is a wrong perception. Consider this: what if you had a very "normal" child while in their growing years, and they grew up to be a mass murderer? That would be a true loss of a horrible sense, and a deceptive time bomb.

please let me know.
thank you for your time.
I really appreciate it and grateful for any responses.

(silly posting software doesn't like less than 10 characters outside the quote tags, so I'm adding this: I formatted the text as above to make it clear what was addressed most directly, and I felt to lazy to copy/paste or type all the quote tags needed)

[Deester]

FIrst of all relax. No sense getting worked up over something that you have no say in.

If there is a diagnosis do as much learning on the topic as possible. Read and research questions just as you are doing now.

My girl was diagnosised at 25 months. She's doing great now at age 6.

As far as getting your girl back. You never really lost her. She is still there to enjoy she just would process things differently therefore you and your family would just have to learn a new way of enjoying her.

My daughter didn't make any eyecontact early on. She will now. Just remember that because they process things differently doesn't mean they don't care because they don't give you the typical responses.

Whe we have a serious conversation with my daughter she will look away as looking and listening are too difficult for her to do at the same time. So know we know she is really listening when she does look away.

Feel free to PM me if you want to talk or here on the board I'm always happy to talk.

Denise