All About Autism

[kitty2]

pinkamoon:

I understand how mums feel with #1 being autistic. I was in this situation too and have 2 DDs after a DS. Through these years, I have done many researches to help DS. Things which helps him are

i) Dietary Interventions
ii) Play (I implement my own play instead of relying on OT & speech therapies which I saw no improvements after a while)
iii) Brain Training (something which I am doing now)

PM me if you are interested to find out more. :rahrah:

My friend's ds has been going to the therapists but not much help! She spends about 9k each month on these therapists as they are not Singaporeans. Someone recommended brain training to her too and she can see her son is improving. She has not ride the dietary interventions, can you share ? Thanks

[pinkamoon]

Hi! Dietary is not something easy to talk abt as it involves may steps. Getting the child to be tested for allergies is the first step, then moving on to cutting down food that causes allergies. After that, the child has to eat boiled food cooked over stove and a lot of soup etc. So it is hard for me to give these info all at once and it has to be done in stages.


From my experience, we still have to observe and take probiotics to support and a lot of oils too…

That was how I started for my son who went from throwing himself on the sofa everyday, hitting his head, knocked off his 2 front teeth at 3, going rounds in circles, hyperactive, non communicative (scripting a lot)…

Healing for him took time. He could not stay at our side when we went out, he would run around and we ended up losing him in shopping malls etc. Now, he is able to stay by my side, talks about things that interests him, communicate his feelings and be aware about his surroundings.

It is sensitive for me to talk about brain training as I have a brain training centre. For those interested, PM me so that I can advise you on what to do, depending on where your child is at now.

[fluttershy]

Hi parents,


My son is diagnosed with ASD when he was 2 and he's 2,5 years now. The news brought us as a parents a great deal of shock & stress (I'm sure everyone here has gone through this phase). I have a very bright above than average older daughter & no one in the family has history of ASD

I read some of your comments and I found that your kids are really good with coping with the society when they grow older. I'm hoping that my son will be able to do that as well in the future. At the moment, he's on 25-hour a week of ABA therapy and the therapists are working hard on his receptive & expressive language development & his behaviours (stimmings).

He's non-verbal and speak a single syllable such as car, ball, bubble (buh-buh), up, down, shoes, book. He can imitate when prompted (when the therapist tap the thighs, clap and tap the cheek, he actually follows these 3 movements), he can match identical & similar items as well. He love shape sorters & he can read few simple words (eg. book, ball, up, down, car, go, bow). I'm really hoping he will be able to improve overtime *fingers crossed*. He loves his ABA therapy sessions a lot.

Can any mommies or daddies here recommend other therapy aside from this ABA therapy to improve the condition? Also, we tried GFCF for 6 months and doesn't seem to work so I put him back on the normal diet

Also any kindergarten to recommend for him to attend? I'm hoping he can go to mainstream kindergarten next year. I've been looking at wee care kindergarten. Any input is greatly appreciated! first post here & nice to meet you all

[pinkamoon]

Hi Fluttershy! I think all mums put in best efforts to help their ASD children, thus they improve, just like what you have one to your child. All children are different, so they respond to different treatments differently. Like you mentioned GFCF. When you said you tried GFCF, do you still give corn or soya beans as ASD children may be sensitive to these, especially those gfcf cookies that we buy from stores, they contain a lot of other things which is no good for our children. Sugar or cane sugar is definitely not good.


Just something for parents doing GFCF to take note.

[fluttershy]

hi Pinkamoon! yes, the gfcf i tried is very strict, no cookies no noodles no pastas and the soya sauce we used is the gluten-free ones. Doesn't seem to work for him, so i stopped. We switched his goat milk to almond milk as well. Almond milk does wonder to his physical health though.


Before almond milk, he would have runny nose and cough every 3 months and lots of phlegm. Have to nebulize him all the time. Since we switched to almond milk, his runny nose is minimize (been 8 months with no flu or cough). But changing his diet didn't seem to improve his cognitive ability.

I'm just hoping that he will improve as the day goes by. I heard from a lot of people that early intervention have a great impact affecting ASD kids' future :xedfingers:

Hope to see more inputs ideas suggestions from mommies and daddies here since I'm very new to this. They say \"these too shall pass\" I'm not sure if I will ever pass this. I can only pray, hope & do the best to my ability. The cost of his therapy is more than our income, fortunately I've been saving all these years, otherwise I don't know how we are going to afford it :faint:

[pinkamoon]

Don’t give up on dietary intervention, Flutterfly. I put my child on GFCF but it does not work for him too. Sometimes it takes more than GFCF to be effective. There are other diets like SCD, GAPS etc. We are what we eat. Do not believe what the labels say, like GFCF soya sauce, etc. A lot of the labels have hidden ingredients.


I have an intention to organise some talk on the diet my child was put on. Although my child is not fully recovered, but he has come a long way. I want to share what works for me with parents. Any parents interested?

[Couragemom]

Hi fluttershy,


Welcome to this forum! My son is 2years 9 mths old so our 2 kids are almost of the same age! I FULLY understand the yo-yo emotional roller coaster ride you have experienced for the past 6 months as I am on the same ‘exciting’ ride as well. For my case, looking back at the past 10-11 months, I think I could had been mildly depressed during the initial griefing stage but now I am more at peace with my son’s condition. I am bracing myself to be ready for the psychological assessment to be done when he turns 3 at the end of the year (the psychologist said my son had suspected ASD when he was 22 months old).

Hmm… For weecare pre-school, are you talking about their normal pre-school or their eipic program at Everton road? For the normal nursery program, you can wait list now for next year as it is very popular, please check with them if they take in special needs students.

Other therapy programs you can consider -
- OT sessions for your son. OT can help to overcome some sensory issues that a child may have.
- Early intervention programs (eipic) where special needs children learn in a group setting. There are both govt and private eipic in Singapore.

Do take care of your own emotional well-being in this arduous journey. As ImMeeMee said before, taking care of our special needs child is a marathon, not a sprint. We must pace ourselves financially, physically and emotionally. Dont keep thinking that if we dont load our child’s days with therapies, we are not giving our best to him or her. Our darlings also need their downtime to do nothing, play and bond with us! This nugget of wisdom doesn’t come easy to me as I was exactly like that before until I felt burnt out! Now I am happier with myself and always tell myself that my DS has improved alot and not to worry about things that he cannot do now because he will get there one day, albeit at a slower pace than his peers.

[fluttershy]

Hi Couragemom,


What are the therapies & programs that you enrolled your son at? and how many hours per week? previously my son attended ST & OT once a week but he cried even before the session begin until it ends. I found them to be ineffective at all (we tried 3 months). From my point of view, I think that the behaviours & sensory overload need to be addressed first before even trying on ST, OT or both. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

[pinkamoon]

fluttershy:

Hi Couragemom,


What are the therapies & programs that you enrolled your son at? and how many hours per week? previously my son attended ST & OT once a week but he cried even before the session begin until it ends. I found them to be ineffective at all (we tried 3 months). From my point of view, I think that the behaviours & sensory overload need to be addressed first before even trying on ST, OT or both. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Every child is unique and different. Therapies that work for one may not work so well for another. However, I think we still have to keep on trying.

I was in denial for the longest period of time. At 2, the pd suspected him of autism. My sister told me he was not having eye contact. I was in denial. I brushed things aside, saying he was fine. Deep down in my heart, I was scared. Finally, at 3.5 years old, I enrolled him in a church nursery class and within 1 week, the school wanted us to withdraw him. That began our journey to KKH n CDU.

However, I took control of his life from there. The doctor was saying 'that's it', nothing except OT, ST, early intervention can help. I remembered he told me that there was nothing else I could do. NOTHING. :mad:

For my son, I sent him for OT and ended up paying each session but with myself playing with my child. The reason being, my therapist felt that I could reach out to my child more than he could. After a while, I felt silly paying to play with my child and ended up changing to another OT. My review of the new OT was that the sessions were task oriented. There was minimal communication, only instructions to follow, 1 step, 2 steps etc.
After about half a year, I decided to pull him out of the sessions.

As a mother, I did not feel that OT is very useful for my child. That being said, it does not mean OT sessions are not useful for all children. Every child is different. The basic principle of OT, I feel, is play. Playing should be fun, engaging and child centred. Very often, OT sessions became instructional. How can we expect our children to enjoy playing when what was expected of them was unenjoyable. We should go into their world instead, enjoy what they enjoy and laugh over what makes them happy. When I told my therapist what I intended to do, he was unconvinced. When I shared my dietary intervention with him, he too was not very supportive and cited examples of dietary interventions not working on other children.

My point is, keep trying, parents. Do not give up! Do what you feel can help your child. Spend more time playing with their own child. There can never be just 1 thing that works miracle for our children. It will have to come from all areas. Dietary intervention helps my child to sleep and be more aware of his surroundings. I lost my child in shopping centres because he was not able to stop moving. He was attracted to many things. We had to put him in push carts and 'fed' him with Ipad to make sure we can do grocery shopping. Now he shops with me, helps me take my basket (because I told him to), but still have a tendency to look at things he likes but he comes back, shouts for mummy and approaches other strangers for help when he cannot find me (I always hide behind columns to see how he reacts).

Last year at 6, he was still not able to talk to his sister. Now they talk (babyish talk), play and laugh together. Even my siblings can see his changes over the past years. So for me, playing and getting interested in his games (scripting, running basically enjoying his games), diet, supplements and brain training have helped him.

Our children's body is loaded with toxics, mercury, arsenic, lead. It takes a long time to heal their body. It takes years. I started my son on dietary intervention at 4 and at 7 this year, he is still on special diet. I know he hates it as he smells my food nowadays and says 'It's yummy' and looks at me with his innocent eyes and asks if he can eat them.

He is still on the journey. I know he will be there one day.

[sharonkhoo]

pinkamoon:

As a mother, I did not feel that OT is very useful for my child. That being said, it does not mean OT sessions are not useful for all children. Every child is different. The basic principle of OT, I feel, is play. Playing should be fun, engaging and child centred. Very often, OT sessions became instructional. How can we expect our children to enjoy playing when what was expected of them was unenjoyable. We should go into their world instead, enjoy what they enjoy and laugh over what makes them happy. ...


My point is, keep trying, parents. Do not give up! Do what you feel can help your child. Spend more time playing with their own child. There can never be just 1 thing that works miracle for our children. It will have to come from all areas. ...

He is still on the journey. I know he will be there one day.

I agree with you that we need to get into our child's world as much as possible to make that connection with them, especially initially. My 17yo daughter has Asperger's, and I have been her OT, ST and whatever else you want to call it. We didn't try any formal therapies as they weren't available to us at the time, but from what I have heard from others, the one-on-one way we did it was as good as or better than formal sessions. After all, formal sessions are only an hour or so per week, and parents still have to do a lot in between sessions. I also am not saying that professional therapies are no good or do not work, but that there is a lot that the professionals cannot do which we can.

Inserting instructional times into play was how we managed to get my daughter talking, turn-taking, learning social skills, working on physical skills, etc. It's been a long road, and it's not over yet. We are still working on some social and self-management issues, and also helping her cope with academic skills. But I really do believe that tailored intervention on a daily basis is the best way forward, and since most of us cannot afford that level of professional help, and professionals may not be as willing or able to individualise their therapies, we parents need to take on the main role.