by Tim on February 22, 2009
This is Part 2 of our series “What’s Your Autistic Toddler Like Now?”, a journey through what’s happening these days in the life of our autistic 3 1/2-year-old son and sequel to our very popular original article, “What’s Your Autistic Toddler Like?”.
Note: Wherever you see “DSM-IV” below, this means that attribute is part of the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – Fourth Edition or DSM-IV. In medical terms, a specific combination of those DSM-IV criteria is what brings about a diagnosis of autism.
Same obvious disclaimer as before: We are not advising you on how to evaluate your child. Go get them evaluated by professionals with extensive experience with autism. Don’t just rely on some random people on the Internet – namely, people like us.
If you haven’t already, go back and read Part 1. If you have, let’s continue on!
Characteristics That Are Significantly Present (continued)
Difficulty with social awareness (a bit better but a lot to work on) – I don’t know whether this has an official meaning, but I think of social awareness in a very broad sense as being aware that there are people around you and that they can be engaged with at some interpersonal level. For some time, we referred to other kids in the room as ‘part of the furniture’ as our son didn’t interact with them much differently than any other object in the room.
School has helped him in this regard in that he has regular time every school day with the same children and is involved in activities with them on an ongoing basis. You still get the sense that he’d usually be content without them, but often the emotions of an autistic toddler are inscrutable.
He does enjoy watching other kids do funny things, but watching rather than playing with children is one of those possible signs of autism, and this is a fairly accurate description of where he is right now.
That said, it is nice to see that he’s aware that other people have names, and he can use a name to refer to a person, though usually now that’s only with some prompting.
Continue on with Part 3! [click to continue…]
by Tim on February 20, 2009
Many times over, our “What’s Your Autistic Toddler Like?” post is the most read article on this site. It’s also the post people most often cite as the reason why they write us and become regular readers of our blog. We are gratified by your response to our story about our son and hope all this has been helpful to you and your family.
In celebration of the 1st Anniversary of our blog, I decided to write a multi-part series, revisit that popular post, and update it for what the J-Man is doing now almost 9 months later. The original “What’s Your Autistic Toddler Like?” gave you a snapshot of what an autistic toddler might be like – or at least what ours was like – about three months before his 3rd birthday.
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by Tim on September 27, 2008
[The original post is here. If you haven't read it, go read it first. You definitely won't want to miss The Rest of the Story.]
This was so utterly bizarre that it deserves its own post.
So after the Great Sleeper Escape the other day, we just pitched the sleeper into the laundry not knowing – or wanting to know – what foulness lived in its fabric. When it came time to fold the laundry, we noticed something absolutely astounding. The Great Sleeper Escape turned out to be a complete understatement. You have to see this to believe it.
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by Tim on September 25, 2008
[Bewildering update to this post available here.]
This has been the roller-coaster week from Helena, and this morning got off to a rip-roaring start, as if we needed that.
You may remember from the Houdini post that J-Man is the David Blaine of sleep clothes. One minute he’s clothed and then you blink and everything he’s wearing is piled on the floor and he’s jumping up and down in the bed butt nekkid. Thankfully, David Blaine hasn’t tried that on prime time TV yet.
So we had given up on two-piece pajamas for a while and have been cramming him back into sleepers again. The stress of having to run into his room the second he woke up in the morning to prevent endless sheet washing just got old. His sleepers are zippered and snapped and fit him so snugly that it’s hard for him even to completely straighten out. He’s chewed on the neck area of them a lot, but they’ve stayed on and always zippered up, which has thankfully thwarted any more ecstatic fits of aerobic urination in the bed.
Well, at least until this morning.
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by Tim on August 14, 2008
Some days start horribly and show no sign of improving. The day easily could prove to be a total write-off. Being one beat off the normal daily rhythm can send your kid into meltdown. Some days, your only real goal is to make sure everyone is alive when the day ends and that any damage to property isn’t permanent. The only way to salvage anything positive might be to find even the dumbest thing in your day that didn’t go wrong.
Here are five things you can do to ensure that your day has at least something like that in it. The sad thing is that each of these has actually happened to us. Like they say, rules exist because someone broke them – like the fact that you can’t mail yourself through the US Postal Service.
- Look down and make sure you are wearing something more over your behind than just underwear before you walk out to your mailbox. This is particularly positive if your mailbox is at the end of a driveway and you have a lot of neighbors.
- Speaking of underwear, when you pick up your clean undies from the laundry basket of clothes you didn’t put away, before you try putting a pair on, make sure the cat (or other animal in your house) hasn’t peed on them.
- Find some way to covertly figure out whether your child is still clothed before the laughing in your child’s room in the morning that may indicate that he stripped down and decided to stand up butt naked and pee all over the wall begins. Bonus points – If you install said device (say a video monitor), try not to aim the camera such that you might see something you’d really rather not, particularly at 6:30AM when you aren’t sure whether you woke up in the right house.
- Assuming your kid stayed clothed, if you go to pick them up in the morning or after a nap and they are wet, verify the nature of the wetness before proceeding. Remember, it is difficult to see colors in low light, and this is very valuable data to have.
- Don’t put the diaper cream you keep in the bathroom on your toothbrush. As a safety fallback, verify the nature of the substance on your toothbrush before putting it in your mouth.
Yeah, it’s a reach. But some days setting the bar incredibly low can help you feel like you accomplished something.
And you gotta admit that diaper cream doesn’t foam well on a toothbrush and putting on clean, dry underwear is better than the alternative.
Well, gotta go. My kid is laughing in his bedroom…
by Mary on August 12, 2008
Because the J-man has recently gone to wearing 2-piece pajamas (I’m telling you, we tried to keep him in sleepers for as long as possible!), we have had some issues.
Some of it is good: the J-man is learning more about self-care. He is very good at putting his arms through shirt sleeves, and working hard at stepping into shorts. He definitely knows that his socks go on his feet, but will just lay them over a foot because he can’t figure out how to open the top.
Also good: J-man is learning to help take his shorts off. He can already rip his socks off – mostly through effort because he likes to be barefoot whenever possible. He doesn’t like taking his shirt off though, and will fight that.
However… Saturday morning when Tim got up with J-man, Tim walked into the nursery, and the J-man was there with a shirt on. No pants. No overnight pull-up. Lots of pee (crib, sheets, remaining part of the bumper pad). Saturday night, when I put the J-man down, he stayed awake for a while. I joked to Tim that I should check on J-man to make sure he was still wearing clothes. I JOKED! And then I walked in. Little man lying there sound asleep… wearing a soaked shirt, with soaked sheets, and the pants and pull-up on the floor. Bare ass shining brightly. Picking up a wet, sound asleep toddler, trying to get him clean and into new pajamas, stripping the bed and putting on clean sheets, all while trying not to wake him? Awesome.
