All About Autism

[sharonkhoo]

bs1975:

Can an autism doctor diagnose a child without sending him for psychology assessment?

I brought my child to see a autism doctor at kk at 2 year 1 month and the doctor confirmed he has asd. I find the doctor jumped into conclusion too fast. My child is not the severe type and she also agreed. Today I found out this doctor is only a Registrar, she is not even a consultant. Hence I am not too comfortable with her diagnosis.
I agree my child has some asd traits. I just feel that she labeled my child too fast and too early. He was only 2yr1month old.

Austism can be diagnosed at 2yrs. On the other hand, I personally feel that mild cases are too close to normal toddler behaviour to be definitively diagnosed. If you feel it's mild, then I would regard the diagnosis as a tentative one and observe for another year or 2.

Just to add: early intervention in the form of teaching \"normal\" behaviour in the traits you notice will not go amiss. If your child is not ASD, such training will still be helpful. You don't have to go to professionals initially as a lot of such intervention is best done daily by the carers, not once a week. You may find that that is all that is needed, at least for now.

[sharonkhoo]

bs1975:

My 2.5 yr old son has started eipic at rainbow since last week.

I notice his behavior has changed since. His hyper is back (ie running to and fro). He is more bad tempered .
And in the last 2 days I noticed his eye contact worsen.
His eye contact was not too bad previously.
Can experienced mummy here share with me why there is a change in behavior?
Last week my new helper came. Too much \"new\" stuff and so he is stressed? So sad that he regressed. I have made a lot of effort to help him and he has improved a lot in last 3 months.
He attends cc in the morning and goes to rainbow at 2pm. He has not been taking his nap on days he has to go to rainbow.
Is my arrangement too tiring for him?

I think you have answered your own questions. Try to keep things stable and see how he is in a few weeks when the new-ness has worn off. And any kid who is tired will be cranky!

[bs1975]

Courage mum

EIPIC did not ask me for any report. They do their own assessment and set a goal for the intervention.
The autism doctor I saw at kk is a junior doctor and hence she definitely doesn’t have 20 years experience.
I think my boy’s case is mild. My OT also said so. Even the doctor herself said my boy’s case is "easy to manage".
He still non verbal now at 28 years old and has 1 or 2 repetitive behavior and he tip toe. Tip toeing is one of the reasons he was diagnosed at such a young age.
I don’t mind to send him to eipic since he has some delay.
But I just worried it is too tiring for him and the environment may not be so suitable for him.

[bs1975]

He skipped his afternoon nap again today.

He is not cranky. But I notice his eye contact has deteriorated.

I am so worried as he only sleeps 10 hours a day now.

[bs1975]

My son is very hyper as he likes to run back and fro from Point A to Point B. If I don’t distract him, he could run for up to 15 to 20 minutes. He also likes to look at his shadow on the wall when walking.

I have removed casein from his diet since 2 weeks ago. He is now taking 1 serving of isomilk a day and oat at night.
His hyper improved initially but came back since he started eipic last week.
Any solution to treat his behavior issue? His diet is now CF but I have not removed gluten from his diet yet as it is too difficult.

[sharonkhoo]

bs1975:

Any solution to treat his behavior issue?

I can't comment on dietary solutions as I never tried any. For behaviour issues, I believe that the best way is to teach and encourage/enforce the desired behaviour and give disincentives for the unwanted behaviours. Pretty much like what ABA and other therapies recommend. Read up on those and see if they make sense to you.

I firmly believe that rest and sleep is paramount, especially for small kids. If something needs to be cut, it shouldn't be sleep. A tired child will be un-cooperative and possibly hyper, and mine would be really cranky. Even now at 19yo, if she is tired, she is much more cranky, and her tics and other Aspie traits become more noticeable.

[ImMeeMee]

Gisten:

First, you must know about the grades for standard and foundation are totally different. For standard the grades are A* (91% and above), A (75%-90%), B (60%-74%), C (50%-59%), D (35%-49%), E (20%-34%) and U (Ungraded). For foundation it's Grade 1 (85% and above), Grade 2 (70%-84%), Grade 3 (50%-69%), Grade 4 (30%-49%), U (Ungraded). For foundation, the passing grade is Grade 4, meaning so long you achieve a 30% it's considered a pass. So during the subject banding IEP, I was briefed that:
1. For full standard, the pathway is to Express or NA, depending on the T-score.
2. For merged with 2 standard subjects and 1 foundation subject, it can also lead to Express or NA, depending on T-score. However from what I see from my boy's cohort all of them are in NA except for 1 who managed to go Express and had thus withdrawn from Pathlight to join the mainstream.
3. For merged with standard English and foundation Math and Science, I was briefed that it only leads to NT. At that point of time, I was thinking then what's the use of taking standard English only if ultimately it only leads to NT, might as well take all subject at foundation, life is so much easier and lesser stress too. Well, I have no statistic on this combination to verify if it is true that it can only lead to NT because those who took this combination in P5 all dropped to full foundation in P6.
4. For full foundation, normally it can only lead to NT with very few exceptions who do explicitly well will qualify for NA (it's Grade 1 for all subjects they are talking about).

We have had no expectation on our boy in his PSLE result. So long can pass and promote to Sec 1, and just don't give us this dilemma of whether to repeat P6 or transfer to V Track, this is all we ask for. We couldn't believe our eyes when we saw his score on the result slip! He was actually eligible to choose between NA and NT! No, he didn't score Grade 1 for all his subjects, only for Math. There were also a few others who were eligible too. We chose NT for our boy as we know his language is his biggest weakness and no way he can cope with the humanities subjects offered in NA. Some of them chose NA to try out, after all if cannot make it still can drop to NT in Sec 2. But I don't want my boy and MYSELF to go through that kind of stress (I had just \"taken\" PSLE and O level last year, no way I'm going through another set of coping-with-humanities-subjects-agony this year, I need a break). Anyway the school also recommended NT for my boy and I trust their professional recommendation. My boy enjoys Computer Application (CPA) lesson very much, but he is not happy that now all subjects in secondary school are exam subjects including Arts. Too bad too sad.

Gisten, once again thanks for crystallizing the facts so clearly.

May I ask what are your plans for your child after N(T)? Does N(T) lead to ITE or are there polytechnics that accept N(T)?

[Gisten]

Yes, NT leads to ITE. If the results are good enough, one can always pursue a course in poly after ITE. It’s a much longer path to attain a diploma compared to those Express and NA students who can go directly to poly right after their O levels. At this juncture of time, we have yet to have anything planned out for our boy after NT, hopefully he can continue his studies in an ITE. My boy likes public transportation very much and has always told us he wants to work in SMRT when he grows up. He learnt from his senior that ITE College West offers a course in Rapid Transit Technology which is jointly developed by SMRT Institute and ITE, and he is very interested in it.

[sharonkhoo]

For my daughter, we are intentionally lengthening her educational path because we find that she is maturing quite slowly. I think that may be quite typical of ASD kids? At 19yo, she is more like a 15yo in her maturity, so after her A levels this year, we are hoping that she can get into a poly course which will delay things another 3 yrs. After that, she can hopefully transition into a job. We are also thinking that, if we can find a job which suits her and with a patient, sympathetic supervisor, maybe she can do that after her A levels, but I think it’s going to be hard to find such a situation. We don’t think that she can cope if we try to get her to keep up with her chronological cohort.

[ImMeeMee]

Gisten


I may have been biased, but I hear reviews about ITE being a harsh environment. What is your take?

slmkhoo

You may have heard that ARC has an E2C that does work placement for autism individuals. Not long ago they had some projects with NLB. I have not gone into details as have not reached the stage yet, so I dont know much about criteria and stuff. But I think it offers some ideas for parents to think about ref jobs for our children. And who knows, getting into their program for a job recommendation.

Just some food for thought.