Hi I'm new--my son has Asperger's

Post Reply New Topic

Hi all, just a brief introduction. My 8-year old son has Asperger's, he was diagnosed through the public school at the age of 6. We've since received an alternate diagnosis of PDD-NOS through the pediatrician, due to his need for speech therapy when he was 4-5 years old. He's a great kid, but I'm sometimes overwhelmed by the challenges involved in working with the schools, therapist, homework load, weak attempts to achieve balance in my own life, etc. He also has a 5-year old "NT" sister, and I'm beginning to realize a whole new challenge--how to celebrate her achievements at school while simultaneously trying to handle my son's difficulties in a positive light. So, with that weighty introduction, I'll finish by saying that I truly am looking forward to meeting people on this forum, I am sure I will learn a lot here and I hope I can contribute as well.

Hi kotka

Im a mother of a 6 yr old boy not yet diagnosed but clearly has an ASD we are awaiting appointment to go to a specialised centre out of our area. I could not cope wiht how school was destroying my son called T, now i am home educating i have tried all i can but they fail to address his needs ( he has been special needs registered with a school action plus IEP since age 3 ) he was being bullied both verbally and physically so i had to take control for his mental health and wellbeing.

Looking forward to chatting with you

Alexia x

Hello kotka, and welcome to Wrong Planet. There will be other users in the next day or two who will repeat this welcome, but I like being the first. I'm 16 and have AS, and I've had my own ups and downs. Downs being that I threw large tantrums when things didn't go according to plan (I broke several games CDs as a result), and ups because of my great perspective (for instance, I came up with the idea that the Universe could in fact be shaped like a pine tree!).

I hope you enjoy your stay, and I look forward to reading your contributions some day.

Random fact: You are Member No. 7080. Proceed to the check-gate and get your number stamed on your palm.

Welcome to WP, Kotka!

Hello!

I'm a newbie parent too... My son is almost 6 and was diagnosed with Asperger's at 4 1/2. He started kindergarden in an integrated class (it's still mostly nt's though) this year, and things are going very well so far. He has a classroom teacher who admits she's never encountered anyone on the spectrum before, but she's gone out of her way to accomodate all of his therapists and his individual needs in her classroom. As far as therapy, my son gets OT and speech (social skills and some receptive/expressive processing issues), and also works with a general ed specialist who helps keep him on track academically since he misses class time for therapy. He is very smart and even somewhat social seeking when it comes to adults and children younger than he, but the one major issue we're having is his need for prompting... he is very permission seeking, and requires promping when a task involves more than one step. This is an issue both at home and in the classroom because he waits to be told what to do next even in situations where he's very familiar with the routine. It also causes people to have to drag information out of him sometimes - he can do anything in the classroom, it just sometimes requires a lot of one-on-one to get it out of him. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I find my son absolutely delightful, but sometimes I have NO IDEA what to do to because I'm not thinking about things the same way he is, and he isn't old enough yet to self-analyze and help me understand. I don't want to change who he is, I only want to give him the tools he needs to get along in a world full of nt's...

Welcome, kotka! I'm a newbie parent as well. My eight year old son was just diagnosed with Asperger's too. There is a lot of wonderful information here.

Thanks everybody for the nice welcome!

Welcome to the forum Kotka.

Good luck on that whole balancing act.

Welcome, kotka! I truly admire parents with Aspie children because I know what my mother had to go through with me. You are fortunate to have given birth to an Aspie in this day and age when Asperger's is actually known about. My mother, on the other hand, went 18 1/2 years of raising me before I was diagnosed this spring. Add to the equation that my biological father emotionally/verbally abused my mother and I and she had no help, and I think she deserves a medal. I wish you the best of luck!
-OddDuckNash99-

Hi!

I understand that a lot of people, yourself included, have difficulties with balancing NT achievements with AS achievements.

All in all, we're all the same.

I commend you for your support!

I hope you enjoy posting!

Boy am I embarassed--I skipped right over Hexel's asking for more info about the prompting because it seems so "normal" to me. Yes, E. requires tons of prompting. During 1st and 2nd grade, teachers were very talented about passing behind him while talking with the whole class, gently pressing on his shoulder, and prompting him. Even for things he did every single morning, like putting his bookbag away, putting his folder in the teacher's in-box, doing the morning problem from the board (every single morning since the first day of Kindergarten, sigh). We made him the velcro task list for daily routines, but then he needed prompting to look at the list. Positive reinforcement worked only a bit here and there. It was sort of as though he'd drift off, wondering about things. Wondering whether the kid sitting next to him was a girl or a boy (girl with short hair). Wondering who this new person was in the classroom (finding out months later it was his teacher with a new hair cut.....literally spent months wondering who she was!). Wondering about the weather being different today. He just seems to have so many things to think about, many of which I'd only find out about months later when he'd suddenly announce a surprising conclusion he'd finally made regarding something strange.

The good news? This year, in 3rd grade, he's finally starting to cut to the chase. Yes, he still requires more prompting than other kids, and still drifts off into his head. But suddenly he is coming home with his agenda book completely filled out every day (not always all of the required materials to DO the work, but we'll take what we can get). He knows what homework is due (a miracle!). He realizes that he just spent 15 minutes fantasizing about lego creations holding a sock in his hand, and we'll hear a sudden frantic scramble of activity in his room in the morning. It's like he still has the tendencies, but is becoming more aware that he does, and he's a little more invested in trying to follow along. It's so great to know that progress has happened, finally (he's even beginning to initiate appropriate social interaction--I could write forever about the benefits of the summer camp he attended last year that specializes in kids with developmental delays--a lot of his progress stemmed from that time).

There are methods out there that I've tried that have worked, such as ABA (I had the two most incredibly motivated and cheerful kids there for a few months while I used it to get them to quit fighting and start cooperating with each other already). You can also take a "training" approach to reducing prompting to a certain task, such as putting their coat away (using a series of increasingly specific prompts as in the following: "E, please put your coat away." pause for a few seconds. Walk over to the coat and point to it, and in the same gentle tone of voice "E, please put your coat away." Pause. Pick up the coat, walk over to E. Gently, again. Touch E. on the shoulder. "E, please put your coat away." Gently establish eye contact, touch on shoulder, repeat. You get the idea, just keep increasing the prompt cues until they comply, then give a smile, hug, or whatever lets them know clearly that they did it right (but avoid the lectures for not doing it the first time--nothing negative at this point, all positive!). The next time, start again at the beginning. E. typically will respond a few prompts sooner. The next day, sooner, and pretty quickly (as long as you keep your cool!) they're putting the coat away at least on the first prompt. We have a lot of luck with this one, and as a side benefit it reminds you to keep the impatient tone out of your voice the sixth time you prompt them the same week to pick up the danged coat. Only problem is, E never learned to generalize to other tasks (get out your homework, get ready for school). We need to do the whole process for each task, so we've only used it for the tasks that are specific and super-annoying on a regular basis (like the trail of coats, shoes, and backpacks leading from the front door to the refrigerator). works great on the NT kids, too. And horses.

One thing I had to learn about E was that he truly didn't understand during the first several years of school that there are things that happen the same way every day. Think about it--even though he's supposed to do the same routine every morning, how can he count on it if everybody's wearing different clothes every day, the girl next to him has a ponytail one day and her hair down straight the next day. Sometimes the morning announcement is before the pledge of allegiance, and sometimes after. The boy on his left side isn't there that day. All of those things are changing all the time, how does he know the difference between the morning routine and the morning changes?

Anyway. Sorry I wrote so much!