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we just found out last year around our sons 3rd birthday that he is autistic...we have been going to see a doc that specializes in autistic children....also even tho we got him in late..there was a program to help with kids who are behind and threw them we found the doctor and got Jake into a pre-k type class...it is great he is around kids his own age...

before this class jake wasnt talking...now he started talking whenhe was a baby...he said the simple words(mama, dada,baba)..but then for some reson he started to regress....but since he has been in this class he has started talking more...

we have a lot of problems still with trying to cut/wash his hair...he just doesnt like it...it is a lot...plus trying to teach him to get along with his younger brother and sister(twins)....

needless to say i have my hands full....

hello and welcome and i feel your pain ..lol we have atleast one other mom with a child who is autistic...isnt it funny all 3 of them hate anyone touching their hair xd i know sometimes i wish i had 4 extra arms and hands cause it seems like theres just never enough of me..lol... any questions or anything feel free to ask...or vent... or whatever all our members are super sweet and awesome ..updates and pics are always loved 3nodding

I know how that is. My 7 year old nephew is autistic. The good news is, Tommy is going into the second grade!

CONGRATS! i hope you and your fam are well 3nodding

hi all!
boy, am i glad to see this thread.

my son has Asperger's, which is a form of autism (answers.com). you'd never know it to meet him, since he's very high-functioning. he's smart as a whip, and has a great sense of humor. his social skills are lacking, and i find it interesting that everyone said something about cutting or combing hair, since he hates that (wow!).

but socially, he's so far behind - he didn't start talking until he was almost 3, and then it was small, mispronounced words, like 'juice' and 'mommy', etc. then one day, he just started spouting sentences! it was the strangest thing to us, since we'd never seen it before.

it's good to know, even though i always knew it, that this is not uncommon, and that some folks understand what the deal is trying to handle it.

thanks, y'all, for this one! 3nodding

I first off want to say my heart and thoughts go out to all of you with special children. My daughter is going to be 17th the 9th of this month and is in a branch of her school for children with special needs. She has had fine motor skills problems since she was a baby and never crawled at all, she only would roll around and even with the therapy and everything we went through back then she still didn't take her first steps until she was over two years old. She still walks with a gimp when she gets tired and her balance gets much worse, though she has never been able to keep up with the other kids she does get around just fine. She also has a pretty bad curvature of the spine that her doctors didn't catch in time, got to love the way you are treated when you are on a fixed income and have to get medical help versus having normal insurance. She was tested back in preschool because she refused to walk down the stairs and slide down on her bottom yet would have a fit if anyone touched her to try and help her. She has always and still does HATE to be touched at all and tends to twitch if she even thinks you will. I'm not talking a minor spasm but a whole body jerk that she can't control.

The result of that testing back then showed her to have a genious level IQ yet they couldn't explain why she was having the problems she was. She has NO organizational skills even now and can still get easily lost with directions if she has to go someplace. Even if she has been there before, its like 'earth to kristine...you in there hon?' though that too has got slightly better as she has got older.

Here it is all these years later and the best they have managed to tell us is she is 'learning disabled with motor skills problems and depression' .... yet she writes the most beautiful stories and poems and draws years beyond her age, even her teachers admit that one, that she has exceptional talents and a heart of gold. Heck she read shakespear and poe complete works by the age of 9 and could recite it back to you. Its just things she doesn't seem to like that she can never seem to grasp without ALOT of effort on her part as well as the rest of us. Heck at 3 she was taking the phone apart to see how it worked much to my displeasure. She always had to see what made things work and had a great love of dinosaurs and oddly enough insects. She still excells far above others her age in science and history but math ... we wont even go into the math thing, lets just say math is a nightmare for her. smile

After reading the post and the link from miyna, I am seriously thinking of talking to her doctor about it. We finally have found a very very good one though it was a long hard search for one that actually seems to care. She has gone almost 17 years without an actual diagnosis other then the simple one I mentioned in the last paragraph. It was this doctor who finally noticed about her back as she even put up a fight with him touching her to see it but by now she is too old to do much about it other then surgury if it gets worse, she can no longer get a brace that will do any good. She also has social skill problems they tried to claim are depression, which in part is true due to as she puts it 'not being understood' and has few friends, mostly other disabled children that can relate to her and she has been in counciling on and off over the years.

I was curious after reading all that if maybe that could be part of her twitching too, its like when you get a chill and shiver a bit but hers is far more extreme to where she actually goes through a whole body jerk and her arm(s) and or leg(s) flail for a second or two and she has no control over it. I gave up fighting with her about her hair in her eyes or trying to move it away from them years ago as she gets almost hostile over it, as well as simply touching her arm , which much to my dismay was how they told me at first to try and get her out of the 'dazes' . Touch her arm lightly and talk gently to her to not startle her ..... yeah, right. That didn't last long, I found it much easier to just keep saying her name until she'd blink a few times and register what I was saying. Once you have her attention you are usually fine. Big groups and too much distraction however are not her friends, she doesn't do well in social groups or even big classes thus us taking her out of her normal school to put her in the one she is in now with small classes and very limited room changes which are all on the same floor. Her grades from that alone are much better and she feels better about herself due to it.

I appologize for such a long post but after reading this thread it felt so good to not feel alone after all these years.

Its sounds like your son is in a group like the one they moved my daughter to but the school system is so large they hold it special at the ymca here.

She actually can talk better with adults then to kids her own age strangely enough and has exceptional vocabulary skills, its the social part that goes with them that causes her trouble. Most kids don't get her 'dry' sense of humor, meaning its a bit sarcastic but she doesn't mean it to hurt, its just the way she is. You'd think by now someone would have figured something out over the years but we have gone from doctor to doctor to clinic, well you get the idea.

This new doctor we got however is wonderful and has done the most for us so far in trying to help us out with out very limited income between being disabled myself and having no insurance it hasn't been easy at all but we keep trying.

I read up more on it after I posted here and really think I will talk to him about referring her to the right people to get her tested again, she will hate me for it but life goes on smile

She hates the testing they put her through almost as much as being touched or tags in her clothes smile

One thing that really hit me was the memory thing, when she went for that test in preschool she explained the function of tetonic plates to them and when asked what was the temperature inside her refridgerator she replied 32 degrees and explained WHY it was that temperature and blew them away. They only wanted 'cold' for an answer, she answered most of the questions strangely like that from shows she had watched on the discovery channel (her obsession back then when we had it).

yeah, a 17 year run around...but I cherish every day because she is there even as much as I want to string up doctors at times twisted