Autism

[Angry Ram]

32 minutes ago, Smyth_18 said:

Been a topic in my household for a couple of months now.

My wife is scared shitless that our now 1 year old son is showing traits of autism despite working with kids and knowing deep down everybody will show certain traits at times.

For example, he has been a bit 'delayed' crawling (he only started on his 1st birthday just over a week ago and is now everywhere, deep down again she knows children develop at different rates).
At the moment he also has an obsession with books and especially ribbon/ string. He can sit for ages just pulling it through his fingers, extremely concentrating (i look at it as great that he's into books. And the string/ ribbon thing is practicing his pincer grip).

I know this is normal but i sometimes question myself, 'am i just being ignorant and passing it off?'.

I've also mentioned on a few occasions 'if he was autistic, so what? It's part of what makes him, him. And i wouldn't change anything about him'.

 

I've always showed certain traits myself but that's a whole different story.

1st child? 

That's just sounds like kids mate.. I remember medium angry only eat pasta and cucumber.. Nevber really drunk milk but could walk really early and did puzzles with his eyes closed. 

We went from stressing about his diet, to thinking he was a gifted child in the space of a couple of years. You tend to over analyise everything.

Little Angry.. Meh..  

[Smyth_18]

9 minutes ago, Angry Ram said:

1st child? 

That's just sounds like kids mate.. I remember medium angry only eat pasta and cucumber.. Nevber really drunk milk but could walk really early and did puzzles with his eyes closed. 

We went from stressing about his diet, to thinking he was a gifted child in the space of a couple of years. You tend to over analyise everything.

Little Angry.. Meh..  

He is mate.

To be fair i cherish every moment, and don't take a moment for granted with him which i have never done for anything else in my life. The one thing i am confident about myself with is being a father and always knew it.

It's more the wife who is the worrier with him which i completely understand with the worry i needlessly have had in other areas!

[Wolfie]

2 hours ago, Smyth_18 said:

Been a topic in my household for a couple of months now.

My wife is scared shitless that our now 1 year old son is showing traits of autism despite working with kids and knowing deep down everybody will show certain traits at times.

For example, he has been a bit 'delayed' crawling (he only started on his 1st birthday just over a week ago and is now everywhere, deep down again she knows children develop at different rates).
At the moment he also has an obsession with books and especially ribbon/ string. He can sit for ages just pulling it through his fingers, extremely concentrating (i look at it as great that he's into books. And the string/ ribbon thing is practicing his pincer grip).

I know this is normal but i sometimes question myself, 'am i just being ignorant and passing it off?'.

I've also mentioned on a few occasions 'if he was autistic, so what? It's part of what makes him, him. And i wouldn't change anything about him'.

 

I've always showed certain traits myself but that's a whole different story.

Similar situation here, even with Mrs Wolfie who is a Social Worker and worked with autistic kids, so was primed to spot the signs - and boy did she look for them!.

Little miss Wolfie was slow to crawl & even more so with walking. She's always been obsessed with words & books and her thing has always been feathers.

She's now a well adjusted 5 year old & is 2 years clear of any of her classmates with reading & writing skills.

It's just kids, mate. There are no rules of development which must be followed.

 

[TigerTedd]

6 hours ago, PistoldPete2 said:

I don’t know if this is a trait for me. I suffer from stress , so trying to avoid unreasonable demands or deadlines seems far from  pathalogical. 

This is a problem I find (and you’re not doing it, by the way, just the closest example in the thread so far). You try to explain to people what your symptoms are, and without fail they’ll say ‘oh, I get that sometimes too.’ That makes you feel that you’re either making a mountain out of a mole hill, and what you’re feeling is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about, when you know really that it’s not normal. Or it makes it feel like the person you’re talking to just isn’t getting it, or you’re not able to explain it properly. 

If I tried to explain my symptoms now, you probably wouldn’t think it was much to worry about. And if you knew me casually from work or something, then you probably wouldn’t think there’s anything to worry about. 

But if you were my mum, or wife, or best mate and had known me all my life, you’d realise all is not right. But you’d still struggle to put your finger on what exactly. 

[TigerTedd]

3 hours ago, Inglorius said:

Yes, I was diagnosed 2 years ago with autism being placed as mild to medium on the spectrum, basically diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome. This diagnosis was made whilst I was middle aged, I had to fight to get a referral from my GP to see a clinical psychologist as I had always suspected throughout my life that something was not quite right with my behaviour in certain situations or social interactions.

I have to say that even though I was diagnosed I subsequently went through a period of depression as the clinical psychologist effectively said there was no treatment or nothing they could do for me at my age and discharged me back to my GP.

As TigerTedd alluded to I've developed my own coping mechanisms and strategies throughout my life, sometimes successful, sometimes not. Workwise I hold down a good job, my current employers are aware of my condition but have shown little or no interest in making "reasonable adjustments" to my disability which I have found very disappointing but maybe not uncommon amongst other employers.

 

 

 

When you say ‘reasonable adjustments’, what are you expecting though? I honestly don’t know what you could adjust to make it better. It’s not like you’ve broke your spine and a ramp up the steps would make things easier for you. 

At uni they offered to print my work on different colour, but I thought, ‘what’s the point, I don’t have issues reading stuff on white paper.’ And I couldn’t think of anything else that they might be able to do for me, so that’s why I ended up dropping it. I didn’t really see anything to be gained from diagnosis. 

[PistoldPete2]

16 hours ago, TigerTedd said:

This is a problem I find (and you’re not doing it, by the way, just the closest example in the thread so far). You try to explain to people what your symptoms are, and without fail they’ll say ‘oh, I get that sometimes too.’ That makes you feel that you’re either making a mountain out of a mole hill, and what you’re feeling is perfectly normal and nothing to worry about, when you know really that it’s not normal. Or it makes it feel like the person you’re talking to just isn’t getting it, or you’re not able to explain it properly. 

If I tried to explain my symptoms now, you probably wouldn’t think it was much to worry about. And if you knew me casually from work or something, then you probably wouldn’t think there’s anything to worry about. 

But if you were my mum, or wife, or best mate and had known me all my life, you’d realise all is not right. But you’d still struggle to put your finger on what exactly. 

No I know how bad my stress can be when things have got on top of me. anyone who has a permanent anxiety, whether it's a social anxiety or some aversion to deadlines , or whatever, that must be very difficult to manage with. 

[McRainy]

I’ve had stress and anxiety and know how debilitating it can be. I jacked in teaching as a result, after all. I still sgree with Tedd’s point, though, that the experience of autistic traits is different, and very difficult to explain. 

[Inglorius]

20 hours ago, TigerTedd said:

When you say ‘reasonable adjustments’, what are you expecting though? I honestly don’t know what you could adjust to make it better. It’s not like you’ve broke your spine and a ramp up the steps would make things easier for you. 

At uni they offered to print my work on different colour, but I thought, ‘what’s the point, I don’t have issues reading stuff on white paper.’ And I couldn’t think of anything else that they might be able to do for me, so that’s why I ended up dropping it. I didn’t really see anything to be gained from diagnosis. 

I'm very poor at dealing with imprecise, ambiguous instructions, I told my line manager that he needs to help me by giving me clear, concise instructions that fit within a framework I can cope with.

I also asked my manager to help me with feedback sessions if he encountered scenarios where I may have come across as unintentionally rude or abrupt when interacting with a colleague.

[TigerTedd]

2 hours ago, Inglorius said:

I'm very poor at dealing with imprecise, ambiguous instructions, I told my line manager that he needs to help me by giving me clear, concise instructions that fit within a framework I can cope with.

I also asked my manager to help me with feedback sessions if he encountered scenarios where I may have come across as unintentionally rude or abrupt when interacting with a colleague.

That sounds sensible. I don’t know what I struggle with though, really. I feel like I’ve got everything sorted. But then I’m told I’m really difficult to work with, and I don’t know why. I’ve ended up being self employed cos I can’t really handle working with people. But I don’t really know what I do wrong, or what they do wrong.

I probably need to work with someone to work out exactly how I could improve things. 

[PistoldPete2]

6 hours ago, Lambchop said:

I’ve had stress and anxiety and know how debilitating it can be. I jacked in teaching as a result, after all. I still sgree with Tedd’s point, though, that the experience of autistic traits is different, and very difficult to explain. 

Yes I agree, I know someone who has autism and she gets annoyed with me sometimes for not understanding. The channel 4 pogramme this week helped me a bit. I do think there's a crossover with anxiety though... people with autism often get social anxiety, and anxiety about certain situations.   

 

[TigerTedd]

8 minutes ago, PistoldPete2 said:

Yes I agree, I know someone who has autism and she gets annoyed with me sometimes for not understanding. The channel 4 pogramme this week helped me a bit. I do think there's a crossover with anxiety though... people with autism often get social anxiety, and anxiety about certain situations.   

 

Is the difference that anxiety can be temporary, set off by certain situations. I hope it’s not permanent, it’s what my wife is suffering with at the moment. Apparently it will get better. 

Whereas autism is pretty much a way of life. 

Anxiety is a mental health issue (I went on an mhfa course recently), whereas autism isn’t (it’s not a learning disability either, which is why lots of people with autism slip through the gaps and they’ve had to create specialist teams for them, rather than leaving it down to mental health and learning dis teams to continually pass the buck). 

[B4ev6is]

My mum thinks I have autism as I dont like change my routin and I dont like loud bangs like fire works for exsample. Or loud bang from a car freaks me out.

[LesterRam]

Do you think recognition of Autism is growing nationally, do you think we are becoming more aware in diagnosing the symptoms and this is why its more prominent?

I wasn't aware we had any in our school but I was a parent helper last week and noticed we had five children within one class diagnosed and only one SEN teacher ( yeah I know) 

 

[Angry Ram]

9 minutes ago, LesterRam said:

Do you think recognition of Autism is growing nationally, do you think we are becoming more aware in diagnosing the symptoms and this is why its more prominent?

I wasn't aware we had any in our school but I was a parent helper last week and noticed we had five children within one class diagnosed and only one SEN teacher ( yeah I know) 

 

Dunno really,  my guess is we have become better at recognition.. As a society, we need to put everyone in a pigeon hole now, it’s become acceptable.. Recognition is one thing, acting is another.

[Angry Ram]

5 hours ago, B4ev6is said:

My mum thinks I have autism as I dont like change my routin and I dont like loud bangs like fire works for exsample. Or loud bang from a car freaks me out.

Nothing wrong with not liking loud bangs and fireworks mate.. Routine is also a good thing..

 

[B4ev6is]

I dont like if it is interupted even if my bus is late or I need go to work two hours before.

[Boycie]

5 hours ago, B4ev6is said:

My mum thinks I have autism as I dont like change my routin and I dont like loud bangs like fire works for exsample. Or loud bang from a car freaks me out.

 

 

34 minutes ago, B4ev6is said:

I dont like if it is interupted even if my bus is late or I need go to work two hours before.

Everyone has their differences mate. Sometimes these differences are called a “diagnosis” and sometimes it can be autism.

But it doesn’t mean it’s bad, sometimes it’s a way of getting a bit of help to overcome these situations that some people struggle with.

I don’t think anyone can say they don’t like to do something the same way everytime. It may not always happen the same way, but it’s sometimes just how we cope when it doesn’t turn out like we want it to is how we can be judged.  Some may say “oh well never mind” others might worry and think it’s ruined their whole day.

The important thing is that most people nowadays understand

All you can do is your best, that’s what I think anyway.

[McRainy]

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/is-it-time-to-give-up-on-a-single-diagnostic-label-for-autism/

[Gap tooth ram]

My lads autistic, got diagnosed at 2.  People staring in public used to bother me a lot and had to learn a serious amount of self control to bite my lip at times.  Nowadays it doesn't bother me.  As its become more publicised people are more aware now.

Regarding his early traits it was lining things up, non verbal, lack of eye contact.  As he got older it became food, all pretty much the same colour, the obsession of touching every bollard or lamp post he goes past.  Speech is better but still poor, as are his motor skills.  His memory though is phenomenal.

I've been asked by friends and family, if there was a pill he could take "to cure his autism" would you give it him?  I always answer no, for me, because he wouldn't be him anymore, is that selfish?  For him though if he did, he would be able to be independent, more self aware and conform to what we as society deem as normal, job, wife, etc.

All I know is I love him more than anything and even though he has very limited awareness of the world around him, I know he knows that.  He also knows that I can unpeel his banana for him, so maybe he's just a master manipulator!

[McRainy]

4 hours ago, Gap tooth ram said:

I always answer no, for me, because he wouldn't be him anymore, is that selfish? 

No, that makes total sense to me.