LogFAQs > #944574326

weekoldhotdog posted...

My oldest two have special needs. I was born with Asperger's, but I was high functioning. My oldest (my son) seems to be performing under my level at his age and my 9 year old daughter is right there with him. Unfortunately though for my in laws, they never broke through their kid's autism so they just let their kids be animals.

On the flip side, my son is very polite and though Gamefaqs would likely be an animal to him, he's almost ready to start posting here within a year or two.

My 7 and 4 year olds both seem to be somewhere on the autism spectrum and they have significant behavioral and speech delays, a great deal of difficulty staying on task, stereotyping behavior.

We had my 7 year old attend about two years of ABA therapy. That helped a lot with giving her some kind of vocabulary and rudimentary speech skills, but she is still way, way behind a typical girl her age.

She can tell you what things are, count, make simple requests, and follow simple directions, but she has no capacity for meaningful conversation and she will almost constantly repeat phrases she hears on cartoons and games, especially when she is upset. She can recognize letters and numbers, but is just barely getting to the point where she can read words and do basic addition. It was only last year that we really got her consistently potty trained and totally phased out the pull-ups.

The 4 year old, can only make single-word requests, but not consistently at all, and he can recognize numbers and letters or repeat songs he hears frequently on Cocomelon. But he is just recently getting to a point where he can put his own pull up or pants on, but he won't do it unprompted. Getting him to follow even basic directions has had very limited success.

It can be extremely disheartening and dark thoughts are not uncommon for me.