Hi this is my first post.  I have lots of questions, but I'll just ask a few for now.

Is there any way to tell if a child with moderate autism will develop into an adult with HFA/AS?

What should I do to help my child reach her potential - whatever it may be?

My child was diagnosed with mental retardation in addition to her autism but there is NO WAY I believe she is retarded.  (And that's not just because I am her mom.)

She is almost 6 years old.  She has a really great memory and is good with mechanical things.  She doesn't have any savant skills.  She loves music.  Has about 500 single words but uses only a fraction of them.  She is really mean to my poor old dog (who just takes it without so much as a whimper).

Thanks for your time!

I agree with Amy. And don't try to discourage stims, because autistic people need them to function. Just sometimes it's appropriate to try to exchange a distracting stim for something less obvious in public.

I also think that speech therapy might be a good idea. Once she expands on her vocabulary and uses it regularly, she will do better on IQ tests. Play with her, read to her a lot, try to have a conversation with her. Build things with her (Lego, Brio train, building sets are great things for autistic people to play with). Teach her to use the computer. She might just love it. The computer is also a great teaching tool for teaching all kinds of things, including language. It's easier to communicate with the computer than with people for most autistics.

Obviously an IQ test is completely meaningless when used on a child who doesn't use a lot of speech, and who can't read and write yet. I believe you when you say that your daughter is not retarded, a mother knows. Those 'experts' don't know your child the way you do.

As Amy says, it's not possible to know if your daughter will end up HFA/AS or not. But many autistics will develop to be high functioning, never give up hope, you are the best judge of how smart she is.

I agree with Amy and Uschi.

Stims should be allowed if they are not offensive in any way.

There is a german Author who was diagnosed either AS or autistic when he was a child. He got language therapy, as much as I can remember and he went to a regular school, although he always had problems with language. At the age of about 35 (I'm not too sure about the exact age) he decided for himself to change to "the other world" and he wrote a price winning book.

I saw him about two years ago on an authors-reading (?don't know the correct term) and for me he seemed to be completely NT. He put an obsession on acting normal, he learned it like an actor, only for himself, I think. (and that's the way I learned to make my face and body show/act like NT - once I decided that I would like it better, having facial expressions like people on tv, I sat down in front of a mirror and trained)

I am not sure about his relatives, if there were autistic people, but I never heard of.

So there is always hope. Try to find  a thing your daughter loves and might love to communicate about, so she might find communication desirable.

Sibylle

No one in my family has ever been "officially" diagnosed with AS.  No one I can think of that is "eccentric" (I hope that is not offensive!! Please forgive) or a late talker.  My side of the family has genius level IQ's and precocious development but my husband's side is average.  I am kinda geeky and hate small talk (boring waste of time) unless it is something I am interested in but I can "play" social butterfly very well.   I have no problem reading faces or social cues.  I've worked with the public for many years & was a top sales person and I am an excellent con-woman (bad trait I am only semi-proud of), so I don't think I qualify as AS; except for being super smart!

They did use a standard IQ test (she was 2) and it was ridiculous.  They said her IQ was 70.  I was in "denial" for 2 years.  They told me the only way she could get services was if she had an MR diagnosis - but then it's supposed to be accurate!!?!?!  These people really scared the crap out of me and told me if I didn't get therapy for her that I was being neglectful.

She has such a strong will and she knows what she wants.  She has her own way of communicating.  She just pinched me because her french fries aren't done cooking yet.  Little stinker.  She's never been a kid who didn't like contact. She loves to kiss & hug and craves my attention.  If she wants her brother to go outside with her she will get his shoes and sweetly, coyly smile at him and hand them to him.  How can he resist?  She certainly has charm.  

She does have ABA - she doesn't mind it, but I hate it.  I am always arguing with the therapists.  They pretty much have to do things my way.  I threw them out of my house once so they walk on eggshells with me.

What do they do in the ABA sessions?
Why do you hate it?
Why is she having it?

Her ABA people & I fight about this all the time.  I think they should let her stim too!  I even made her ABA therapist stim with her the other day.  The therapist couldn't "do it" either. (My daughter was 'lassoing" beads with a turn of her wrist & the therapist couldn't do it!!)

She's already loves the computer and other mechanical/electronic things.

Thanks you for this (above).  I think she is awesome no matter what.   :grin:

At first it was "come sit" and I about freaked every day.  My daughter hated it.  It was AWFUL.   Now she looks forward to her therapist coming because the therapist lets her play with gooey slime, buys her candy, sings her goofy songs and plays tag with her.

The therapist really does love her.  I tell the therapist when I think she's overworked a drill and it is getting tiring I make her (therpist) quit.  I make them go outside and swing on the swings or something.  They know I want it to be fun for my daughter and I don't want them to take away her childhood with drills.

Drill?? The fact that you have to tell them when to stop, and intervene, and they do not recognise when she is getting tired, is worrying to me.

Have you heard of all the controversy and concern over ABA?

Remember that you are in control, and you don't have to use them. There is no proper regulating body for therapists across the country, unlike for speech therapy.

Often parents are not there when the therapy is done, and cannot intervene when a child is tired, and if you had not had the strength to keep arguing with them, I doubt if they would have taken a better approach. They work to get results and the whole basis of ABA is highly suspect. It was originally designed as a type of brainwashing to make homosexual men straight.

The only info I have is pro-ABA.
Can you give me any links about ABA not being beneficial?

I would be very interested in reading about this.
  
Shocked   :shock:
and confused   :?

http://users.1st.net/cibra/

http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_aba.html

There are many other personal stories posted on various sites.

Thank you for posting these articles.   From the Misbehaviour of Behaviourists.

So this is what ABA is:

"In 1991, researchers from Rutgers, including the well-known behaviourists Sandra Harris and Jan Handleman, published a study about the consequences of aversives in autism programs. The study was called "Does punishment hurt? The impact of aversives on the clinician." They compared the morale and job satisfaction of more than 100 staff, divided into those who could use only mild aversives, and those who could use severe aversives on their autistic clients. Severe aversives included (and one assumes were not limited to) "slap, pinch, electric shock, noxious odor, noxious liquid, and hair pull."  

Children are slapped, pinched, shocked, exposed to noxious odours or liquids or their hair pulled when they fail to "learn" an "appropriate" behaviour or stop an "inappropriate" one.

"Restraints were removed from the scope of this study when no one involved could decide whether their use on autistics constituted a "mild" or "severe" aversive. Clearly, they did not ask an autistic. Nor did anyone notice that autistics had been injured and killed in restraints, which might argue for a classification of "severe".  "

Restraints are used to stop natural behaviour of running away from the abuser.  So can't these people see the Stockholm syndrome happening?  Children often love their abuser parents too.

"These ethical and human rights aspects of autism-ABA haven't been addressed, and autistics have been excluded from all committees, panels, boards, etc., charged with developing, directing, and assessing ABA research and treatment programs. Behaviourists are free to act unimpeded on their assumption that autistic behaviours--for example, the way we move and play--because they fail to be like non-autistic behaviours, are useless and worthless. ASAT's information library approvingly reports elaborate behaviour interventions designed to remove autistic behaviours. For instance, the whole ABA repertoire is deployed to prevent an autistic from flapping his hands while he is alone. This article admits that autistic behaviours stubbornly persist even when the autistic is unsupervised. When I told Dr Sallows that I flapped my hands I immediately had to reassure him that I did not do this in public. Then I pointed out that different kinds of people, so long as they're not autistic, are allowed to behave according to their differences in public. But you're not allowed to run down the street with a gun, Dr Sallows said. You are when you're the police, I said, and added that blind people, for example, can wave white canes around or take dogs into restaurants. Dr Sallows replied, but they're blind. "

That says it all doesn't it?   Autistics can learn to mimic behaviours considered acceptable in public.  But they will still do them when they are alone.  So all that suffering for something they could do themselves if they wanted to.  Most kids do realize at some point that tantrums, and hand flapping might not be rewarding behaviours.  I don't think that has to be achieved by slapping them or worse.  A complete waste of money for ABA.

This post was last modified: 06-23-2005 06:59 PM by M.

You can read some of the threads on this site about the Judge Rotenberg Center to see the use of aversives at its worst.

Holy [bleep]!
No adversives have ever been used in my daughter's therapy.  Good God, I would have to kill someone.  I get mad when they say "no" too harshly.

Amy, I haven't tried those links yet - but I will tonight when my kids go to sleep.

Thanks!   :smile:

Oh my gosh - you guys - I read the stuff in the links Amy gave me and I can assure you that my daughter has never been treated like that.

I would never ever ever never ever allow that!  A person would have to be insane to let someone do that stuff to their kid.  The agency that provides my daughters ABA wants her to be motivated to do her work, not force her to do it.  They go to extreme lengths to make it fun for her and make her want to do her drills.  Sometimes the therapist will tell her to take a break and she will say "NO!! Come sit?"  And the therapist has to turn the chair upside down so she will take a break.  

It's not always like that though,  sometimes no matter how motivating the reinforcers are - my daughter might be having an off day or just feel like chillin' out and I end the session.  

Anyone who restains a child or abuses them should be executed.
I'm serious about that!   :mad:

Ok - here is my next question:

My daughter is very afraid to go to unfamiliar places.  The other day I had to pick up my son's glasses at the optician's and I took her inside with me.  It was only 2 minutes.  She was petrified and screamed and cried.  Everyone was looking at me like I was beating her or something (I wasn't, of course).

I don't want to make her stay at home all the time.
So what can I do to get her more comfortable going to different places?