Sunday, November 10, 2013

Abnormal Approach-When Your ASD Child “Appears” Social

I want to introduce you to someone whom I know that will capture your attention as she tells a story that many of us can identify with. I found my eyes moist with tears, a catch in my throat and wanting to read more! Without further ado, please welcome Jeannie Davide-Rivera as she shares...

The Child Who Gets “Missed”

By Jeannie Davide-Rivera, author of the book Twirling Naked in the Streets and No One Noticed; Growing Up With Undiagnosed Autism, autism expert category writer for autism.answers.com, and autism and Asperger’s blogger at www.aspiewriter.com

Autism is so often characterized as a social communication disorder—something that drives me bonkers because it is so much more multi-faceted than that. 

New Guidelines: New Problems


According to the DSM-V’s diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders, a person MUST meet/show “deficits in social-emotional reciprocity; ranging from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back and forth conversation through reduced sharing of interests, emotions, and affect and response to total lack of initiation of social interaction.” This is non-negotiable as far as the DSM-V is concerned and I think it is causing some children who appear more social than most children with ASD to get “missed.”

I have one ASD child, a 14 year-old, that I cannot get out of the house. He is not social, does not have any desire to make friends, and is relatively content to keep his social interactions limited to online game playing. I have another child, a 9 year old, who I cannot keep IN the house. He is the social butterfly. He wants to be out all the time playing with his friends, wants to go to parties, and have guests over 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. It is this child that I want to discuss because if one more person tells me that he cannot/or they do not “believe” he has an autism spectrum disorder because he is social, I am going to scream! And the two words I am going to be screaming are ABNORMAL APPROACH!

DSM-V, “Abnormal Approach”—This Describes My 9 Year Old 


Yes, he wants friends, he wants to be social, but he fails to accomplish it— he fails to maintain age-appropriate peer friendships. This appearance of socialization has precluded him from having his ASD recognized properly, and from receiving help in school because he does not “appear” to have autism. The little man more accurately fit into the old, DSM-IV criteria for Asperger’s Syndrome, than these new criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorders. I believe part of the problem is that “abnormal approach” is not easily definable.

The Neighborhood Stalker


So let’s take a look at my extremely social kid! He is bossy, overbearing, has difficulty taking turns, has little notion of personal space and is rigid in his play and thinking. All of this causes his social interaction to become stressed, and when he gets stressed, he gets angry. If my son goes to a friend’s house to see if they can come outside to play, and their parents tell them they will be home at five o’clock, my son will be on their doorstep at ten minutes till five waiting. If you are not there at five, you are a liar. You are not simply late, or running behind—you lied to him! You told him five o’clock, you said it, he believed it, and you lied. Some of those parents do not allow my son to play with their children any longer.

But—he does have friends. He is friends with a few children here on our block. The little man makes friends easily, but then turns into the neighbor stalker. He sits at the window in my bedroom which looks in to the parking lot for our townhouse community waiting for the neighbor’s car to pull in so he can pounce. He will be out there before the poor family is even out of their car. Explaining that we cannot take these other kids with us everywhere we go—family vacations, trips out of town, weddings, funerals—does not seem to work. He simply doesn’t “get” it.

Giving Strange Men My Cell Phone Number 


Let’s talk about this “making of friends.” While sitting at the park watching the boys play, I hear the little man giving someone my cellphone number—a stranger! He is standing in front of some strange man who is at the park with his son, and insisting the man get a pen to write the number down.

“Call my Mom so your son can come to our house!” 


The dad is uncomfortable, I am mortified, and the little man oblivious. He cannot understand why he can’t give my number to strangers. Then he finds other children and he insists that he go to their houses to play—now, and gets upset when I don’t let him leave with strangers. This is not a small child we are talking about; this is a boy who is going to be 10 years old! Does this sound like a normal approach to socialization to you?


Social deficits in autism spectrum disorders can present themselves in so many different ways. Some are readily apparent like my teenager, but others children may desperately try to make friends and be unsuccessful—or make friends but then fail to keep them. Just because a child “seems” social to you, doesn’t mean they aren’t struggling. My little man is often frustrated and angry when he comes home from a day “at play.”

Struggling for a Proper Diagnosis

Depression, Anxiety, Adjustment Disorder, ADHD are all labels/explanations that are given to partially explain his difficulties, but none of them fit perfectly. I fear he will become one of those “missed” children, as I myself was one of those “missed” children. Being improperly diagnosed makes it difficult to get the help and accommodations needed for our children to succeed. Without proper recognition, he is just lazy, disorganized, inattentive, needs to try harder, and is not living up to his potential—all the things said about me when I was younger. None of them were true, not for me, and I believe not for him either.

We continue to attempt to have him diagnosed correctly. We as parents know our children better than anyone; we are the experts. We interact with them on a daily basis and see a much broader picture than the practitioners who only catch a glimpse seen through the limited confines of the short period of their evaluation process. I urge you, if you have had similar results and frustrations, to continue on, to keep pursuing a correct diagnosis. No one is going to fight better for your child than you. The appearance of being “social” should not in and of itself rule-out an ASD diagnosis—nor does this social appearance indicate that the child has “grown-out” of his autism.

Jeannie grew up with autism, but no one around her knew it. Her book Twirling Naked in the Streets and No One Noticed: Growing Up With Undiagnosed Autism will take you on a journey into the mind of a child on the autism spectrum; a child who grows into an adolescent, an adult, and becomes a wife, mother, student, and writer with autism. Read the gripping memoir of a quirky, weird, but gifted child who grows up never quite finding her niche only to discover at the age of 38 that all the issues, problems, and weirdness she experienced were because she had Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), a form of high-functioning autism. Interested in reading more of Jeannie's work, visit her blog Aspie Writer and follow her @AspieWriter on Twitter!

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Families and Educators of Children with #Autism Must Read "Six Ways To Make Learning More Meaningful For Visual Learners"!!

The connections that parents make with others, either online or in their local community, are extremely important. It is especially so when it is Special Needs Families making those connections. It is my pleasure to introduce Sylvia Phillips, the author of Living and Learning With Our New Normal. Please welcome her, read and share her guest post with others in your circles, online and local communities!

When I decided to homeschool my daughter, Bethany who has autism and other disabilities, I already knew that the majority of children with autism are predominantly visual learners. I also knew through personal trial and error that processing language did not come naturally or easily for Bethany. She simply did not seem to be able to comprehend wordy, complicated sentences of spoken directions, explanations, or even the stories that I read to her. She also did not read, and still doesn’t… yet!

I knew that Bethany would never learn by reading textbooks or listening to lectures. Somehow I would have to adapt and modify traditional lessons plans and learning materials in order to present educational concepts to her in a more basic and visual way so that she could actually learn.

Below are some strategies and products that have worked for us and may make learning more, visual, hands on, accessible, and meaningful for other children with autism as well.

 1) Translate what you want to teach into realistic pictures, photos, or better yet use real objects. For example, if you are teaching your child about the parts of a flower, you can take your child outside to pick flowers, then dissect the flower while naming all the parts and perhaps what each part does. You can reinforce the concepts taught by making flower part flash cards, labeling flower part diagrams, and even cutting and pasting paper made parts of a flower together.

2) Speaking of Cutting and pasting…Cut and Paste activities are perfect for hands on, visual learning assignments! My favorites are: Cut and Paste Mini-Books: Science by Scholastic, Cut and Paste: Science, Math, and Language Arts and My Body all by Teacher Created Resources.

                                 
                       


3) When the verbal explanation of concepts cannot be combined with a visual aide, pairing what you say with sign language gives your child something visual, to associate with what you’re saying. If your child can hear, I recommend using SEE or the Signing Exact English method rather than ASL. We want our children to associate each sign with the word. It isn’t necessary to sign words like the, and, a, or other articles. Just sign the important words of the sentence. For example: if you are teaching the parts of the flower, you might say, “This flower has a stem, petals, and leaves.” I would sign only the signs for- flower, stem, petals, leaves. I have found that it’s nearly impossible (at least for me) to sign every single word of a sentence as fast as I can say it anyway!

4) File folder games and shoe box tasks are both fantastic visual, hands on aids for teaching any number of educational concepts to children with autism. There is a multitude of ideas and resources for constructing both file folder games and shoe box tasks online. Many are even available for free!

5) Two helpful books that offer instructions in creating many useful, visual teaching tools for children with autism are: Teaching By Design by Kimberly S. Voss and How Do I teach This Kid to Read?, by Kimberly A. Henry.

                                         


6) There are numerous companies online that offer educational products and games for children. One product that I love is Versatiles. Versatiles not only make learning more visual and hands on but they also make learning more fun! Versatiles engage students with the challenge of a puzzle. They reinforce important skills and concepts. The activities are organized by grade level and subject. The subjects available are math, reading/ language arts, and science. Versatiles are perfect for independent practice and give immediate feedback for self-checking which is great for kids who don’t like to wait to see how they did!


Whether you homeschool your child with autism or are looking for new ideas and activities to meaningfully connect with your child and keep him or her engaged and constructively occupied during non- school hours, I hope that this list of suggestions will serve you well.


Helpful Resources:

Lakeshore Learning

Educational insights

Mayer-Johnson

*National Autism Resources

Eta: Hand 2 Mind-Hands on Learning Resource for purchasing Versatiles

Shoe Box Tasks

Tasks Galore

File Folder Heaven

Living and Learning With Our New Normal

*Please note that I am a National Autism Resources affiliate. If you purchase an item from this link I will receive a small commission. Thank you very much!

About Sylvia Phillips 
I used to be home birthing, baby wearing Mom way back when in 1976. I’ve been home schooling my 9 awesome children since 1984 and will be until 2019! I am also grandma to the sweetest, most beautiful grandson in the world! 

In 2002 my family's lives changed forever when my then 2 year old daughter was rushed to the hospital for life saving, emergency surgery to remove a very large brain tumor from her very small cerebellum. She has since been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, autism, a severe and complicated seizure disorder, developmental delays, and behavior issues. 

Together we face the challenges of these disabilities one day at a time with faith, hope, and love.