Friend's child with Autism

[mrsperez]

I have a friend who has an Autistic child. I want to be helpful and give her the right answers, but I'm not sure if I'm saying the wrong things. She asks me questions about my kids, on napping, eating, development, etc.

I don't want to seem like I'm boasting when I'm answering these questions.

So I guess my question is, explain to me your daily routin with your autistic child. (preferably, agest 0-5).

Thanks.

 

[DLX]

Up until Quinlan was 4, she napped every day from 1:30 to 4:30. She was always a very good eater. 3 meals plus a snack. She didn't really play with a lot of toys. She liked physical play a lot more (ring around the rosie, running jumping, playing at the park). She could watch TV all day every day. We had therapies for her starting at 2 years old. Play therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. She would tantrum A LOT when she was about 18 months to 4 years. She had trouble with retaining her bowel movements (hold them for days and days - even weeks) and then she would poop in her diaper and play with it. I don't know. That is all I can think of right now. Hope that helps a bit.

Lexi

 

[kayd1966]

My day can be quite long and its bound by a lot of 'routine' type things. My son is 4 1/2 years old and is very high functioning but I will give you an overview of a typical weekday. I hope it will help.

- James wakes up anywhere from 6am-7:30am
- He has breakfast
- Gets dressed
-We leave for school at 8am
-We arrive at school at 8:30am, it starts at 8:45 so arriving early gives him a bit of room to breathe before everyone arrives.
-He is in his early intervention program till 11:45am
-We go home and have lunch
- His Aide arrives at 1pm and he starts his Home Based program
- During his hime program they work on speech, reading, turn taking, writing, pretend play, sentence structure, etc.
- His Aide leaves at 4pm (except Thursdays, his Speech Therapist arrives at 4pm and works with him one on one till 5pm)
-He watches TV or plays with his trains till supper time
-Supper is always a struggle and can last up to 2 hours
-(depending on how long supper takes)After supper he has play time with his Daddy
-Clean-up toys time
-Story time
-Toilet time (he has a BM every night around the same time)
-Bath time (clothes in basket, wash, play, dry, brush teeth, comb hair then to his room)
-Into PJs & Prayers
-Lights out by 8pm and he sleeps about 11 hours.

All day, everyday, we work on his speech and interaction with others, so if he is singing, I have to join in and S L O W the singing down and pronounce every word clearly so that he will learn that songs are made up of words, if he is pretend playing then we try to join in on some level so he is interacting with us and learning that words make sentences and tell others what we want, how we feel etc. On the weekends we relax a bit with the intervention because I feel he needs to be a little boy just playing but we still have to make sure he doesn't suck on things, roll his eyes, etc because those things are a stimming behavior and we are doing our best to stop them. If stimming behaviors are dealt with before the child turns 5, then there is a very high chance of stopping them completely. We have already had 100% success with two of his stimming behaviors. He loves being outside and we are really blessed because we live in the country so my husband has cut all these paths for him in the back fenced-in field. He loves pulling his wagons out there and it gives him a wonderful time outside with out many limits.

Some things that people don't always understand:
- James only uses broken pencils and crayons because it forces him to hold a pencil properly.
- for the longest time, James only ate peanutbutter and honey sandwiches with strawberry milk so I mixed strawberry meal replacement into his milk for almost two years.
- we have to be absolutely strick with him, because being consistent is what he learns from.
- he watches a lot of educational TV because he is a visual learner.


I hope this helps...God Bless