Autism-World

My son is going to be five. We found he had autism when he was almost three. We knew from birth that something was wrong, because he was having night terrors (I’m not kidding!), had what I’m pretty sure was petite seizures, and cried all the time. I had to hold him constantly. He had severe problems with colic, just was not a happy baby until he was able to sit in his walker, then started getting a little better.

He never played with toys, never put things in his mouth like babies are supposed to do. When he turned two, he had a serious seizure that was written off as a febrile seizure. After that, he started having SERIOUS tantrums. He would have about 20 a day, and they would last for about 45 minutes at a time. During those tantrums, he would dig his claws into his skin leaving marks, shove his fingers down his throat. He wouldn’t respond to anything we did during these tantrums. No amount of bribery, or ignoring them, or discipline would stop them once they got started. After I taught him how to play with toys, he became obsessed with cars. He would line them up or lie on his belly slowly moving them back and forth staring at the tires. He would spin in circles for 1/2 hour at at time without getting dizzy. His speech had been developing normally, but he started losing words. At age three he only had about 30 words in his vocabulary because he couldn’t retain any new ones. He was still only using two-word phrases. He had serious sensory issues. He couldn’t eat meat until he was after age three, couldn’t drink from a cup without a lid until he was four and still struggles with this. He couldn’t eat a lot of foods because the textures would make him gag. He fought me on wearing shirts because of the tags and hated wearing shoes. He wasn’t sleeping through the night until he was three as well, still had night terrors and was sleep walking. I could keep going! He had a lot of problems!

At age three, I started him on vitamin/supplement therapy, and I started doing my own speech, occupational/sensory therapy, cognition therapy, you name it. That’s why things really started to change for him at age three.

Now, he’s doing very well! His vocabulary is normal but still has poor quality of speech, he uses full sentences, hardly has any sensory issues at all, he’s sleeping completely through the night without night terrors, he’s just awesome. I babysit a boy who’s 2 1/2 now and he’s autistic, too. Totally different than my son! He wasn’t talking at all, not even a sound, until we started therapy with him at 13 months. He didn’t point to anything, didn’t ask for anything, didn’t really cry, didn’t play with anything, didn’t respond to the world in any form. He wanted to be held all the time by his mom only, still uses her to hide from whenever he can get away with it. He hated anyone coming near him, still isn’t real happy with adults but he’s getting better. He’s gone through head banging, hording food in his mouth even overnight, wringing his hands, picking at sores on his body causing infections. He speaks about 50 words now and is finally up to three word phrases. He has a brother who has Asperger’s, but I didn’t know him when he was a preschooler.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 12:41 am and is filed under Autism Stories.