bountifulplate

I have mentioned before that when we first received Dominic's diagnosis of Autism at age 2 1/2 , my first thought was him as an adult sorting paperclips into boxes. I thought he would never talk. I knew nothing at all about Autism. I did grow up with a neighbor named Tommy who had intellectual disabilities and he would visit our home frequently.  This was the 1970's when those with disabilities were separated in school and many parents were told to institutionalize their children. Looking back, Tommy's parents went against that thinking. They let him walk around the neighborhood unsupervised. I never asked Tommy if he had Autism, we accepted him the way he was.  Speaking of acceptance, it took me about two weeks to come to terms with Dominic's diagnosis of Autism. In my own opinion, I think that is very important to do because you really can't move forward until you have done that. After the diagnosis of Autism, Dominic subsequently received diagnoses of ADHD, Gener...

Yesterday morning, Dominic said two sentences spontaneously.  When he came downstairs for breakfast, he told me, "It's snowing!" Then, shortly before he got on the bus, he looked out the back window, saw a bunny hiding behind one of the trees in the backyard and said, "bunny in the snow!"   That might not seem like a huge deal, but to me, I was ready to have a party!  For children with speech delays (like Dominic), getting him to describe what's going on and initiating conversation is a constant challenge.  At his parent/teacher conference in March, I talked briefly to Dominic's current speech therapist. He has been blessed to have had some amazing speech therapists that have worked with him since he started school. The speech therapist filled me in on how he was doing at the conference.  She gave me some great suggestions on how to elicit more spontaneous speech, like cover the words in a story and make him ...

If you have a child with Autism, you most likely have heard of the term "echolalia." For those of you who don't know the meaning of that word, according to the Autism Speaks website, it is the "repetition of words, phrases and intonations, or sounds of the speech of others."  Out of the many, many Autism websites out there, I have found theirs to be one of the best. Here is the link:  http://www.autismspeaks.org/ . When Dominic was just learning to talk he was the "king" of echolalia.  If we asked him a question like, "what do you want to drink - water or milk?" he would either repeat back part of the sentence or the last word in the sentence.  That is called "immediate echolalia."  Dominic has a remarkable memory.  He can recite entire passages of a book, movie or video that he has seen in it's entirety.  That is called "delayed echolalia" or "scripting" because he is repeating back something that...

I looked up in the dictionary recently what the word "special" means.  The first definition I saw was, "out of the ordinary."  I was thinking, well, that certainly describes my son.  He is anything but ordinary!   Ordinary means something that is the same.  Wouldn't the world be a boring place if everyone was the same??   I had to hear that our son was "below average" several times at his recent IEP (Individualized Education Program) meeting in October.  The IEP is an annual meeting with usually the child's teacher, social worker, psychologist, speech therapist and the parents to discuss the special education services your child gets through the school system.  We were getting results of the many tests that were administered to get his current "performance"  level.    I had to hear that our little guy was extremely "below average", well "below average" and  that his language impairment was "profound."  I am r...