1. Pay very careful to your child, learning about the child from the child.
Your child is their own best expert. Often these children are highly sensitive knowing exactly what is bothering them, assuming of course that they have the ability to speak of their ideas in a coherent way. Effective parenting involves the patience to listen to what your child is experiencing even when they cannot speak about it themselves.
2. When does the child do well and when does the child not do well.
Victor and Joseph have distinct strengths and weaknesses.Sometimes, it is puzzling. Why exactly can Victor build computers from scratch and fix the dishwasher when he has trouble remembering the steps necessary to wash clothes. Why is it that Victor cannot clean his room?
Why can Joseph speak in the most articulate way possible yet have a massive difficulty getting ideas out of his own head.
3. Is she/he better with silence and/or low background noise?
Joseph cannot stand any type of background noise. Even the smallest sound is disruptive to him. When I speak to him I speak in the softest and kindness voice possible. He has a diagnosis of asbegers so it seems that this kindness has helped him move from a harsh way of speaking to one of gentleness and kindness.
4. Does your child respond better to a few words?
Does your child have difficult processing a lot of words? Both Joseph and Victor have difficulty processing a lot of words. Probably, one and maximum two sentences should be spoken as in their case that is the maximum wordage that they can understand.
5. Is your child better at listening? Does your child misunderstand things?
Too many sentences will result in misunderstanding as they children cannot process a lot of information at one time.
6. Is your child better expressing him or herself in pictures or music?
Talents can emerge. Joseph is a wonderful singer. He has perfect, time, tone and pitch but has not taken the time to become
a musician where he has learned to read music.
7. What makes your child happy? Does she/he like cats or other animals?
Today was a very special day because today Victor and Joseph seemed like the best children ever. Both of these kids who are now 22 and 19 are on the spectrum. What made things so special today is that I received a call from both of them with their concern about our new puppy, yelping because it had tried to climb stairs and had taken a small fall down one step. The two of them were sitting with puppy, comforting it by gently holding it and giving it puppy food. They were also concerned that the puppy’s mom did not produce enough milk for the baby.
As I listened to these two “handicapped kids” supposedly I was striken with what really marvellous, kind and wonderful people that they two kids had grown up to be. I thought for a second about growing old. It seemed like old age spent with these kids was gift that I hadn’t considered in quite this way before.
8. What circumstances causes your child to disappear into their own thought processes away from the real-world.
Sometimes, autistic kids disappear into their own world just because their own world is comfortable. The trick is to bring them out of their own world so that they can come to appreciate to appreciate the real world more than the autistic world. It is no easy task to autistic people out of their fantasy world but once you learn how with that specific child, it is important to remember what was effective. Eventually, the child can be taught to bring themselves out.
I am just talking about Victor and Joseph. I have no idea if the same things that work on them would be successful with other children.
9. What does it take to move the child out of his or her fantasy world into the real world?
In my experience, these kids move into the real world when the real world is more enticing than the fantasy world. They have to learn to move out of their fantasy world. They need to feel safe enough to move into the real world.
10. What types of food does your child need and when or what time of day your child most need food? Do omegas make a difference?
The omegas can make your child feel better in my experience and so can small, frequent meals. In my experience, the children need to experience different kinds of foods.