AS and hypotonia (low muscle tone and motor clumsiness)

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1000Knives
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23 Jul 2012, 7:54 pm

angelbear wrote:
My son is 7 yrs old, and has AS. Hypotonia was the first indication to us that anything was going on with him. He was not attempting to sit up at 6 mos of age. He didn't crawl until he was 13 mos old, and he did not walk until he was 22 mos. old. We started bringing him to physical therapy at 1 yr of age after our doctor recommended it. He has struggled with this ever since. During the course of his physcial therapy, the therapist started noticing other things that indicated autism, so we kept our eye on him and had him evaluated and he was diagnosed as PDD-NOS at 2.5 yrs of age. The older he gets, he definitely has AS. He has repetitive language issues, he has no friends, he obsesses on his special interest (car makes and models). He also flaps his hands.

He has gotten a lot better, but he still struggles with hypotonia and being uncoordinated. I truly believe this adds to his problem of not wanting to interact with his peers to some degree as he perceives most boys to be rough, so he pretty much avoids getting into their play and games. He is also clumsy and runs with his hands flapping. He can run fairly normal when we remind him to keep his arms down, and he is getting better about climbing on playground equipment.

What is interesting to me is that it doesn't seem that all Aspies struggle with this, so I wonder what part of the brain it is that causes this to occur. I do feel that the more we can work on this with my son, it may increase his confidence. I suppose this will be an ongoing thing for him.

Hope this helps.


Right brain hemisphere abnormalities. For me it translates into NVLD, nonverbal learning disorder.

As far as what to help, as many "right brain" activities as possible. Like for me, I could read at like 12th grade level in kindergarten, but math was like 4th grade. But encourage lots of art and physical activity to work around the balance, but make it self paced so he doesn't lose confidence for not doing well compared to peers for the amount of hours put in.



angelbear
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23 Jul 2012, 8:25 pm

Thank you 1000knives---

I think I recall reading a book called "The Disconnected Kid" that addresses this issue. It was written by the person that started the Brain Balance centers. He claims that autism is caused by the right and left brain not connecting properly. I need to get back into that book.

That is interesting because my son is 7, and his reading skills have really taken off, and his spelling and vocabulary are also above average. But when it comes to math, he is able to learn it, but it is not coming very naturally, and he shows some apprehension about it, which is hard to understand because my husband has a degree in math and I have a degree in accounting.

Thank you for reminding me about this, because I think we could do some more work in this area.

Good luck to you!



angelbear
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23 Jul 2012, 8:29 pm

I forgot to mention that I have been taking him to a play center that has the inflatable jumpy things, and he is getting so much better at climbing those. When I look back on how far he has come since he was diagnosed, it is amazing, actually.