any other mom's of autistic kids? i've known for a long time that my son is a bit different than other kids, but today we finally got a formal diagnosis. it's nice to finally have someone (er rather, a team of someone's) with a lot of training and experience with kids back up what we've known for a while.
My brother has something that is not exactly aspergers, but quite similiar. So can kind of relate. Good to know your son has been diagnoised. Hopefully that will make things easier and you can get the help needed. Good luck
yeah, it's definitely going to make things easier. i was so nervous about the assessment--he's really 'high functioning', but early intervention is going to make a world of difference for him. does your brother have pdd-nos?
pansy, that's so aweful. we quit vaxing my kiddo when he was still a baby. i just feel sick when i think about what could have happened to him if he'd been vaxed on schedule. i get so angry that the pharmaceutical companies are still allowed to put heavy metals into their vaccines, and incredibly pissed off that they're not held accountable for all of the kids they've damaged. have you looked into chelation, and the dan! protocol and all of that?
One of the guys that hangs out with my room-mate has Aspergers and in his late 20s. You can't tell. He's amazingly well-adjusted. Although, sometimes he will get into very intense conversations with someone, kinda trapping them, but he has a very close friend that will step in and calm him down. He's absolutely the sweetest guy. I'm sure your son will be just as sweet
pansy, people can be so judgemental sometimes. i hear ya about wanting to live your life and get on with things. sometimes it seems like if i read another research article i'm going to scream. if you dont mind my asking, what are the things that seem to help the most in your home? HippyFreek2004~i knew a guy like that. he was really into electronics, and would "electrify" pple (ie talk their ear off about anything to do with electronics). he was a really nice guy, made a decent living and i heard that he recently got married to a sweetheart of a woman who was able to look past the quirks
Our youngest son has high functioning autism. He is eight now, and we got the diagnosis when he was five, I delayed sending him to school until he had a diagnosis as in the UK that's what you need inorder to get most forms of assistance. He also had a vaccine reaction, we researched treatments and settled on a wheat free / dairy free diet as this really seems to help him and now like Pansy says are just getting on with our lives, you can drive yourself crazy trying to eliminate every last little contaminant out of your life, somewhere you have to settle for a balance. I like this poem about living with a child who has a disability: I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this...... When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland." "Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss. But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
Yeah, we do dietary interventions too: gluten free, casein free, soy free, no dyes, no artificial flavours, no bha, bht, tbhq, low salicylates, low sugar, whole foods, adequate protein, bla blah blah. We went off the diet for a week and kazaam! everything intensified to the nth degree. It's amazing how much of a difference diet can make. The other day i was thinking about this diet, and how much it makes our son different than other kids, and was weighing the benefits vs the workload. I finally came to the conclusion that he's going to be different no matter what we do. He's happier on the diet, so it's totally worth it. i've seen the holland thing before, and i've seen various rebuttals online too. I do appreciate the sentiment. i think i did most of my grieving during the long wait time before the assessment. we had to wait for 8 months from the time i first approached our family doc until we finally got the diagnosis. We were in limbo for a long time.
Funny enough the Holland thing was sent to me by another mother of an autistic child...........reading the rebuttals I can see that it could be an annoying Polyannaish article to receive, I for example wouldn't send it to someone with a very premature baby, it simply wouldn't be appropriate. For people with children on the high end of the autistic spectrum, I think the analogy of another country does have something going for it... Nimh we do almost exactly the same on the diet front, simply because it does make a difference. It isn't ever going to cure our son ( I know that some of the books do say their children have been cured by dietary intervention ) but it seems to be allowing him to have a chance in a very normal world.
My son has Asperger's...he'll be 7 next week. It's very mild, you would not know it if you met him. He just seems very bright, uses big words, and LOVES computers.. He does lose control of his emotions from time to time, and I have had to go pick him up from school where he is screaming and kicking everyone and it is very hard for me to see him like that.... He gets extra help at school, and he loves being there even if he doesn't always understand the other kids, and the social aspect of it all. We are told that he will find his own way as he matures, and things will settle down.
Can relate to that, my brother's pretty much always been a good kid at school but when he inevitably can't make a point properly will default to yelling. The hardest thing is has to be in the classes for lower ability kids, and those are the ones with the behaviour problems. Richard is probably the hardest working most beautifully behaved boy I have ever know yet he gets stuck with these other kids and it drags him down. Also so frustrating that he tries so hard but never gets anywhere much. I never really bother to consider my brother's 'condition' in the abstract because to me he's just Richard. I know no diffrent; was three when he was born, and have no other siblings. Know that my parents had trouble though, to come to terms with it and get the help and acceptance. You'd be suprised how stupid people can be, and how many times you have to drum the same thing into them over and over about his quirks (don't overload him with instructions, oversee his work or he'll get distracted, blah blah). Still in the end you kinda figure it out and cope. See the upsides in it. My brother is really caring and is great working with the elderly, a great sense of humor (all the better knowing how hard that came). The simple things become so satisfying. That poem of Moominpappa's is wonderful, can relate to that. Using that for an analogy my parents are doing the Italy thing with me, and Holland thing with my brother. Makes like quite interesting and a little confusing at times. The contrast must be there, I'm in university where as it's debatable whether Rich has the skills/qualifications to get a decent paying job. On a personal level we are both just a bundle of traits with all the trials and tribulations.
