helplessmum3:

TOday I went to 1 session of speech therapy w my son with 2 other kids ..


The teacher was trying very hard to control e class. My son is new but 1 kid who already there for half yr seems very serious no eye contact just grab stuff n make weird sound..and another keep talking her own languages...although she seems to interact n attentive to teacher..

Will this kind of class situation help my son? Will he pick up the kids behaviors along the way?

Don't worry, try to trust the teacher to know what to do. She will be able to intervene if he attempt to do anything not so appropriate. If you son is ok, I would suggest that you try not to stay in room when the lesson is conducted. Usually teachers don't feel comfortable and dare not do what they need to do to control the class when parents are around.

Anyway, you also need to be prepared that his classmates will have some kind of problem or another. If the kids are perfectly normal, they won't be at the speech therapy class...( they would likely be busy in some enrichment class like ballet or IQ enhancement class I suppose..hahaha :evil: )

helplessmum3:

have any one here been to LeoMagan?


Are they good? do they have 1 to 1? how effective are they?

is their place or environment friendly?

Hi helplessmum

My son is with LeoMagan now. They do have 1:1, but it is charge at slightly higher cost. Usually, Magan will assess your child and will recommend if he is suitable to be in a group or not. The group setting does benefit my son with his current stage of language development. Magan is very experience but she may be a little impatient sometimes.

Re: alternate treatment.

There are some DAN doctors in singapore, e.g Dr Erwin Kay, by the way, he was charged/fined by SMC for using these alternate method to treat patients. Nowadays he will have a disclaimer in all his correspondence that the methods are not evidence based medicine...
I contacted him before, but I don't think have the money nor perseverance to go through the program.. so I just do the minimum he suggested, i.e fish oil..

there are lots of alternate methods such as gcfc, biomed etc but there are always reports saying these methods are not scientifically sound. To me, I rather keep an open mind, as long as it doesn’t hurt him, I’m willing to try. For GCFC diet and Biomed, they are expensive and difficult to keep up. So far, I only give my son fish oil, vitamin B12 and magnesium (in the form of multivitamin)


I have also try TCM accupressure. Also difficult to keep up. It doesn’t really help to improve his behavior but it helps in improving his sleep.

helplessmum3:

Specialboymum,

Thanks . My son didn't hav behavior problem yet..

He just seldom want to interact, like to play himself , must call at Least 3 times of his name then he turn n look just for awhile and back to his engrossed with..

When he play drum for instance, he will play and say this is a drum then knock a few time say \"drum\" then graze at me. Just never force me to see him play..

He will pull me to the shelve to get him cookies by graze at cookies. Through his body language n expression I know he want cookies. I will ask him \"u want cookies\" he will smile and just say \"cookies\" very loudly...

Do they need to nop head?

Last time he doesn't like hair dryer sound now its no longer affecting him.. Just stare at me blowing my hair ... Last time he will jus cover his ears by his hands. I didn't teach him how to cover his ears..

You are doing fine. Instead of calling him to get him to interact with you, perhaps you can join in in his game, for example, when you see him playing drum, you can join him in beating the drum, you can also further engage him by singing to the beat or march around the house.

By pulling you to the shelve, it is also a form of communication, to expand his language, maybe you can get your husband to be his model, so when you ask him \"Do you want cookie\", your husband can prompt him by saying, \"yes, I want cookie.\"

helplessmum3:

Mashy,

I did not denied just want to prepare what next n wat are e pros n cons..

I hav make so much mistake now .. So I'm worry I might make any further demages to my son..

I'm not smart or sharp. I understand things very slow, my English is limited too..
And I hav limitation of money & also time. My health is Poor too..

My greatest mistake is I shdnt hav a kid n make him suffer when I can't manage or deal with ..

Hi helplessmum3,

It is very important that as a parent, you need to be strong for your kid. I think many of here understand how you feel since we went through the same phase. I still remember my boy's school principal advised me not to get too stress because my boy will feel it- and it may impact him negatively because he doesn't understand and will be wondering what he did wrong.

Just take things one step at a time. As I mention earlier, don't harp too much on whether is autism or not, just focus on the intervention plan. Maybe start with his most apparent problem first, if it is behavior, maybe you want to start with behavior management therapy, such as ABA therapy. There are different kinds of options available, which I'm sure everybody here are willing to share....
Do also talk to your family members, get them involved in helping your son, as you can't do this alone

Regarding your question on what is meltdown.. it is just throwing terrible tantrum lah. My boy is King of meltdown when he was younger, he will lie on the floor, screaming and kicking in public when he got into some nervous breakdown. You can imagine we always invite lots of disapproval glare. There was once he did it in a busy shopping centre. One family actually stop and stare at me fighting with my son like watching a show. I just smiled at them after I managed to calm him down. They left after the performance ended. It was very embarrassing at first but eventually we learnt to be thick skin and ignored the stares

schweppes:

helplessmum3:

Thank u, thank u very much all.


What is sensory problem mean?

He loves to feel all kinds of texture. He enjoys sands, brush,water and all..

Actually sensory issues mean that the child has difficulties or problems with one or some of the 5 senses. For example:

Tactile (touch) - child is sensitive to walking on sand, grass; wearing new clothes or certain types of fabric which scratches his skin

Auditory (hearing) - sensitive to sounds or loud sounds; they may cover their ears. Sometimes if they the surrounding sound is not loud (to us) but it is amplifying to the child, it will hurt the child and he will cover his ears. This means that what is \"normal\" to us can be 10 times louder to them

Smell - sensitive to certain smells; their sense of smell could be very acute or deficient, it depends from child to child.

Sight - sensitive to light or even camera flash

Taste - this affects the oral cavity (mouth area)

There are plenty books in the library which one can borrow on sensory disorders and the different interventions or strategies to help the child overcome the difficulites. A good OT will help to alleviate and moderate the child's sensory issues

the sensory issues usually varies from kids to kids, while some are hypersensitive and some others like my son is 'under' sensitive. The problem arises from being over or under sensitive is lack of the ability to regulate themselves, which may result in behavior like meltdown, not able to focus, lack of eye contact, speech and language, anxiety etc.

helplessmum3:

Specialboymum,


Does yr child get bullied in school. Is he able to identify danger?

Hi helplessmum3,

so far, no sign of bullying *touch wood*. He is being closely watch in school by the teachers, so I guess there shouldn't be much problem.

My suggestion for your child is to focus on getting early intervention. In my opinion, diagnosis/assessment can only be use as a reference - to identify the help he needs and when he is of school age, to get additional support from the school if require. I still think that as parent, we know our kids better than the doctor, who just see them for less than 2 hours and issue them a label just by going through a check list. Autism is a complex 'disorder' that till today, nobody knows the exact cause. Nevertheless, autism or not, he is still our child, so we will just try to bring him up to the best our parenting instinct think is right.

For therapy sessions, if you have the budget, you can consider going to private to avoid long waiting time. For my boy, I first started him on ABA therapy to work on his behavior, interaction and compliance and speech therapy. I didn't start him on occupational therapy until recently when I notice his sensory issue becoming more obvious.

I heard hands-in-hands is very good but they also have longer waiting time. I gave up waiting and go to another OT.

helplessmum3:

Mashy, thanks will try to check on toys r us.


Schweppes,
My English is very limited. I still dun quite get it the definition on wiki:(.

I'm very worry about the lebal . Something to me like ex convict.

Will this lead to no insurance coverage & etc.

Hi helplessmum3, your kid is still very young and there is a long road ahead of you. Like what others mention, just take it one step at a time. Don't over-stress yourself about the future. Just focus on helping him to overcome his current problem.

Family support is also very important for working mothers.If need to, don't be shy to get their help.

With regards to the label. It is not entirely a bad thing, for example in my boy's case, without it, I won't be able to get the AED support in school, which is crucial in helping him to settle in mainstream education. The disadvantage of the label is of course the social stigma, the unwanted sympathy etc. For this, it really have to depend on us, the parents to correct the misconception the society have on special kids like ours, so that they can eventually integrate into the society, live independently and with dignity like any other normal folks.

JC_SHWOO:

Hi


I am newcomer here.... and would like to seek help....

I would like seek help from mothers who has special need child which is attending mainstream primary school on the Allied Educators support given in the primary school which your child attended.

For i have a special need child who will be attending pri school in 2 yrs time and would like to fine out which pri school is have a better AED support as now all pri school have AED support in s'pore.

i hope any one who see this post would give me your feedback as all feedback is useful & important to me.

Many thanks.

What you can do is to short list the schools near your place, then send an email to the HOD of the allied teaching to enquire the support they have for special need kids i.e the number of supporting staffs, their experience with special need kids etc. You can find the HOD's email addresses at each of the school's website. You can also try calling them, but based on our experience, it is difficult to reach the teachers by phone.

We registered our boy at his current school as their allied teaching team is quite big and they have experience with ASD kids. However, we still don't have an easy time especially during his 2 weeks at school. Now he is slightly better but still 'in his own world' and he needs an AED to be there to help him to keep up with the classes.

Also one thing to share, though the mainstream primary schools accept kids with special needs, I think none will said they welcome them with open arms, as having such kids will only add on to the heavy burden the teachers already face. During the first couple of weeks, I felt so bad about the inconvenience caused by my boy's behavior that I felt like withdrawing him from school, but with all the encouraging feedbacks I got from this forum, I decided to hang on there. Now I have also learnt to accept the 'feedback' from his teacher more positively......

Hi Funz,


just chanced upon this thread and your post. Your description of the child sounds like my boy when he was younger. He is able to recognize words, count and do simple maths at very young age before he started to talk. When he was about 3 years old, his childcare teacher told me he wasn’t interested in anything other then the alphabet blocks and puzzles. They noticed him trying to form 3-5 letters words using the alphabet blocks, while his normal peers who talked well were still trying to learn alphabets. In order to get him interested in other things, they kept the puzzles and alphabet blocks away from him but it didn’t go too well for him…

I think I can understand why the parent doesn’t want to get him diagnose. I remembered when we sent our boy for assessment at KKH, I felt my world collapsed when the doctor announced the term ‘autism’. I was already crying when the doctor continue to do her ‘due diligence’ in reciting her standard speech on "what is autism blah blah… and he will likely be mentally retarded!" At the end of assessment, we were totally lost, because they only tell us the problem but never advise on what to do, except to push us to the next room for the nurse to arrange for registration at EPIC.

It was only when we started him on series of therapies when he show improvement in behavior and speech, then we started to feel better. He is now in primary 1. He is still lacking behind in term of language and communication, and we are facing some challenges with his behavior in school, but we will still continue to work with his school and therapists to help him to cope. In fact, now moving into 2nd month of the new school year, he is showing sign that he is adapting. He is more willing to sit down in class to do assignments and even score full marks for his recent surprise math tests.

Anyway, the point is, perhaps you can suggest the kids parent to consider going for special needs class/therapy sessions, if they don’t want assessment. Whether there is really an underlying problem or not, having these therapy sessions will still benefit the child.