Kindergarten issues with Autism

Well my son is adjusting better but has had to be switched to a different schedule then another child due to personality issues. He is having good success in this split school model where he spends first half of the day in Sped and second half in half day kindergarten. He loves math and art along with his teachers. We still can not get him to potty train but have not had a stinky accident in 4 weeks yeah!!! His faithful sister goes every day to take him to the bathroom and make him change his pants if he is to wet bless her caring soul.

The challenges of starting kindergarten with Autism

Well big surprise school started off crazy. My son was registered for all day kindergarten as I decided I did not want to have to travel to and from the school so much. I also did not want him to be half day and try to squeeze all his ot, social, and other sped services. He already struggles to learn how will he keep up if he misses half the stuff. Well big surprise he did not do so well going all day in the regular classroom so we decided to try him half day kindergarten and half day self contained where he can get all his sped services. This seems to be working for him as he melts down by lunch other then he bit a kid the other day not a real bite just a nibble really lol. When I asked him why he said he was looking at me and blocking the slide. Sigh! do kids just have this homing beacon for kids that are different and pick on them? I volunteered to drive for the senses field trip for my sons class. It was fun the teacher only assigned me my son and another sped boy he is a lot like my son she was worried to do so but I told her I was used to them so it would work fine.

LOL I always wished my son had a twin as then he would have a friend I am not so sure now they were fun to watch and played well till they did not want to do the same thing. Then you have a problem as one goes one way and one goes the other they do not listen well so if one wanders off you cant leave the other as they are not like other kids you never know what they are going to do. So you have to get the one and chase the other and quickly!

It reminded me of when my third daughter was 3 and my second was 5 she would just wander away with whatever had her attention. so I would have to uproot the 3 year old to chase the 5 year old and try to carry the baby. It was quite the challenge many mothers do not understand why I do not take my kids places much well there are several reasons: I have back issues, they tend to melt down, they don't listen well so it makes it difficult to divide yourself to get in each child's face to make sure they understood you.

Well back to kindergarten, my son is really good at math big surprise. However you have to read everything to him. He struggles to stay on the same task for very long. He works better if he has a fidget and a reward that is tangible he does not seem to get implied rewards. He can not handle the noise of the lunchroom. For fidgets he likes those party size playdough and those little balls with spaghetti strips coming off in center like these http://www.orientaltrading.com/halloween-porcupine-balls-a2-25_3355.fltr?prodCatId=551312 my oldest likes a good old stress ball or a worm like this http://www.orientaltrading.com/magic-worms-a2-16_1212.fltr I like these cause none of them are to expensive to replace if lost or ruined :)

A Day in the Atypical boys life

Well I thought I would share a typical day in my 5 year old sons life:

Well my son stays up late like most boys on the spectrum he does not sleep well this has been hard on the hubby and I but mostly me as my husband could sleep through a tornado!

So this said he is generally up by 10-11am, now I know I should wake him earlier we have tried that for a couple weeks straight but all that happens is I get even less sleep as he still stays up late.

He generally does not like to eat first thing but he does like to turn on the tv and watch rescue bots on netflix. I usually just bring him a bowl of dry cereal and he will eat on it then if he is in the mood he will come get milk. After one episode I have him go change his pull up and get dressed. He then finishes eating rarely will he just sit and eat he is constantly getting up. Then he watches another episode well he really does not watch it all he by now is awake enough to play with his cars with the movie running in the background.

If I do not keep my eye on him and have to do something I will walk in to find a box of cereal or crackers scattered on the floor and him mashing it with his cars his favorite activity since he was 18 months. I have tried everything short of buying locking cupboards to keep him out of the cereal it just was not worth it when I found him climbing over the counter and stretching to reach the top of the fridge just to get the cereal down. I have decided now that I am more familiar with autistic behaviors this is probably one of his stims he finds comfort in it. So now I deliberately leave a smaller portion of cereal around so maybe he wont use a whole box.

I have learned if nothing else from being the mom to children on the spectrum you have to pick your battles when possible. If I spend all the time trying to get them to conform to the same expectations for neuro typical children I would have a whole day and night of meltdowns and I am sorry but my sanity is important too. So I do expect certain things from my children mainly the really yucky things are unacceptable and sure to set me off lol like playing with your poop YUCK! Luckily I have not had much problem in this department till I got the youngest girl she does not like poopy diapers so she will play in them if you dont change them right away UGH!

Well back to the boy he as been pretty good in this department and thank goodness finally got trained to at least poop in the toilet. It has been two months since I had to change his poopy pants YEAH!!! He is still working on the urinating in toilet I really feel he just can not tell when he as to pee.

So after he plays with cars he generally wants to play in the sand box with cars even more so out he goes, usually with baby sister in tow, it kinda sucks in winter as I have no place to let him go play while I do some cleaning. I go check on him tons as it does not take him long to get into something I usually will go fold some laundry outside or sit on the deck and read. Usually after an hour or so he wants a drink or something and gets distracted with something inside. I usually have him do ABC Mouse while I make him some lunch and less he wants to help me cook it.

Then he usually turns on another movie like bob the builder and plays with cars again I try to get him to do a puzzle or something new sometimes he will sometimes he wont depends on his mood. We usually end up back outside I try to get him to notice something new in nature daily trying to get him interested in his surroundings not just those cars.

I usually go get the girls about this time and then my life gets to crazy to do much with him and he will usually watch a movie while I try to get the girls to do their chores and homework while I start dinner.

The kids usually play a game together including the boy or watch a movie then they get ready for bed have a story and go to bed except for the boy. He generally is up playing the only way we can get him to go to sleep is to hold him while we watch a movie and it has to be something boring. You can read to him and put him to bed and guarantee he is up playing with cars or doing whatever. I have put him to bed thought he was out go to bed myself only to be awakened by him getting into the fridge. Generally he is up till around 2am when you can finally bore him to death with music to get him to sleep.

Aspergirls

Well shortly after my sons testing the special ed teacher for my second daughter approached me she is 12 and asked if I had her behavior tested. I said for what exactly as she had been tested and they told me the same thing they have told me since she was 5 years old SHE IS FINE! Your just worried because she is normal and your oldest is gifted. Sign! I should have been more forceful I knew from a young age she had some problems but hey live and learn.

Well the special ed lady says well she does not make eye contact I said so she has always been that way that is just her. She gave me this look like I should know better which really I should as I do work with special needs kids but they are really profound so a mild case like my daughter is harder to spot. Then she says well when I try to get her to discuss what problems she is having with math she seems to ignore me for a couple minutes then she might respond or she might not. I said well yeah she has always done that she just takes a bit to gather her thoughts. She asked if I would be ok if they tested her for behavior issues I said fine. So she sends me to go get the screenings she wants to try and WOW big surprise she has me pick up ASQ and GARS and a couple others. I had never filled either of these questionnaires out before. As I am filling them out I realize they are for Autism or Atypical behaviors and OMG!

My second daughter had not smiled before like age 5 much and even then usually her expressions do not match the situation. If I could have used one word to describe my daughter 2 it would be grumpy even from a super young age. She had and still does have weird OCD things she at the age of 2 had played with her belly button so much she could pull it off her stomach. She then moved to biting she was always biting her sister and nothing seemed to help stop her. She sucked her clothes till they were misshapen and sucked her hair. She at the age of about 6 became obsessed with hugs she constantly wanted to hug which she never had really wanted before and frequently shoved people away when they wanted one. It reached the point where I had to limit her to 2 hugs per person per day and only if she asked for one, if someone else instigated it that did not count. Then she moved to chewing her fingernails which was ok till about 11 years old when she chewed the whole nail off down to the cuticle it was bad surprised it did not bleed.

I realized as I filled these out that there was a high probability that I now had another child on the spectrum. I also realized my oldest daughter fit alot of the asperger signs I was shocked she is 15 how could I have missed that I guess I always assumed erroneously that they were like rainman. I approached the special ed department and asked to have my oldest tested as well. Well the Psychologist on retainer for the school observed my daughters and went over the questionnaires she then had me read a couple books before our meeting she said they might help me decide if I think these really describe my daughters. I was amazed at how two girls who seemed very different could really have the same condition.

After reading the books I was convinced that after years of searching we might have discovered why my oldest with an almost genius IQ struggled to pass english mostly due to reading, she does not picture what she reads. My second I finally knew what she needed and why she seems fine one minute and looses it the next. They were probably both aspergirls I was in shock. Well we met with the psychologist and she agreed that they most likely are aspies in the 90% probability range. Why does it take 15 and 12 years to get a diagnoses or even be pointed in the right direction? I had my daughters tested multiple times and yet no one ever mentioned they might have a condition. I guess it happens but I had hoped we had come farther in the last 30 years.

A boy with Atypical behaviors

Earlier this year while talking with my sons preschool teacher asking her how he was doing she said "he seems to not hear us have you had that problem she asked"? I told her I have had his hearing checked multiple times and he always came back normal. She then asked if I had noticed he was obsessed with red I said sure he has liked it for at least 3 years since he discovered Cars. She then asked if I had any other concerns so I told her about his lack of interest in potty training (he is almost 5) and that he did not seem to really interact with others just played by them. She then asked if he had been tested for any learning disabilities I told her he had been in an early intervention program but had tested out of it fine almost 2 years earlier at age 3 he had been tested at the school district. I asked her if I should worry she said if she was me she would seriously consider having him tested again at the school district. I said ok I will set the appointment and I did. He was tested at the school district and as we are sitting there he did his typical behaviors ie talking loudly, hanging all over the tester getting in her space, struggling to say his letters and numbers in order and generally being hyper.
The psychologist was observing all this interaction toward the end he brought in the results. There was some question as his atypical behaviors were just borderline according to the tests done so far plus he had regressed in his learning things he had passed at age 3 he had lost at almost age 5. The psychologist asked if I had time for some more in depth questioning I said yes.  After this questioning was done he excused himself for a few and came back with those results my son was even higher in the atypical range I had no idea what this meant. They brought me an paper on autism and told me I should look into having him screened further by a pediatrician. I walked out of there in a daze I had wondered about the autism for my son but after his first screening at age 3 I had dismissed it since they told me he was normal functioning. I asked my pediatrician about it he said well if he tested atypical at school district and after looking over the results and watching him he said he is probably autistic. WOW what do you do? Well they admitted him to special ed preschool to work with him and he got an IEP.  He made good progress in the special ed preschool and in his transition meeting it was determined he could just be in regular kindergarten with pull out services. I hope this works out for him and he continues to progress.

The challenges of Speech problems

Well I meant to write this a while ago but alas I have been rather busy. My 5th child had ear infections for almost a year straight he was constantly sick. Now I know I have 5 children and possibly should have figured out that I needed to insist they do something more for him but as none of my other children had ear infections I found myself very ill prepared. Well after the year he got tubes put in but alas his speech has been drastically affected and he gets frustrated fast because we cannot understand what he wants.

What I learned from this is never let doctors put you off if your kid has ear infections regularly get an expert involved like an ear, nose and throat doctor. By regularly I mean you give them an antibiotic they finish it and a week later have another ear infection or your child has 4 or more in 7 months or so. Signs of an ear infection can be found here http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/ear-infection/ear-infections-symptoms remember your child may not have all the symptoms or may not tug at ear some kids just seem to always be sick so just use your best judgement. After all hearing and speech are very important to a child so they can communicate with you and others.

We got a local program to help its like an early intervention program they come out to the house and work with you and your child to pick up sounds first then other skills. They help you learn how to step by step guide your child to where they need to be. Ours is Kids on the move and can be found here http://www.kotm.org/ it is better not to wait till they are in school to get them the help they need to be where they already should have been if they could hear. If you are unable to find a program your pediatric doctor should know who to put you in touch with.

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