Talking to pedi - advice? (A little long)

Re: Talking to pedi - advice? (A little long)

• ILoveBoys member

  March 2014 edited March 2014

  -auntie- said:

  Are his interests restricted to dinosaurs and space or can he he have fun with peers playing what they want? Does he have friends? Is he a good and appropriately behaved friend? How does he do in school? Does he have any tics or repetitive behaviors? Is he an anxious kid? Does he have any other sensory behaviors, like a limited diet or problems with loud sounds? Is he Ok when peers break rules or does he become unglued?

  
  

  @auntie - He doesn't have any "friends" per se. He plays with a couple kids from across the street who are in a large homeschooled family, and he plays with the little boy who visits his grandparents next door. This child is 6 and in my middle sons 1st grade class at school. He hasn't been invited to a birthday party since Kindergarten (he's been with a lot of the same kids since 1st grade), and has never had a sleepover. 

      The couple times I've had someone from his grade/soccer team come over, he tends to want to play alone (Nintendo, read, etc). He almost does more "side by side" play like you'd see in the younger kids. 

     His schoolwork is fine, so far. No grades until 4th grade here. We REALLY worked with his 1st grade teacher on his behaviors. He had a chart on his desk 54321 and every time he would do a certain behavior (we usually had 2 we were working on) he would have to mark out a number. It helped keep him accountable to his behaviors because otherwise he would be at a 1 and tell me he had a "great day" at school.  He still has what I would call moderate self-control. He doesn't like testing. He does okay with the math MAP test, but reading....he tends to not read the whole thing and just guesses on the answers. He says he doesn't want to read it all, its too much. 

    No tics or repetitive behaviors, unless you count picking his nose (gross) which he still does. One of the reasons his classmates say they don't want to be around him.

     Anxious.....I've never thought of that word before. He gets overwhelmed, and you can sometimes SEE it happening. One time we were at a water playplace at a zoo and there was so much going on, he just ran from object to object and then out of the blue he hit some little kid. When he gets overwhelmed he tends to break down and cry, his reasoning being "I'm tired". He has to have alone time when that happens, then he's better after a while.

    No other sensory behaviors that we've noticed. Just the scratchy clothes thing. He pulls at the necklines of his shirts a lot.

    He gets loud when his brother doesn't do what he thinks is right. He does have a tendency to correct other kids when they're doing something they're not supposed to do, he really likes rules. (Didn't think anything of it, as I tend to like rules too they keep me out of trouble).

  
  

  At this point, most teachers allow kids to read what they choose, but those days are about to end- will he be OK when assigned a book report on Holes or Hatchet? DS, who has Aspergers (ASD), ADHD, GAD and dyslexia would rather read about trains or history, but he's acing his required literature classes.

    He doesn't have the capacity right now to read long segments at a time. He likes to trade reading with us, it keeps him focused on the task at hand much longer. Leave him to read to himself, he will "read a  book" in 15 minutes and say he read the whole thing. That may just be him being 8.

  
  

  Bright kids on spectrum often use language in odd ways- they may use one formal precise vocab across all settings, they may avoid pronouns, they may struggle to answer "wh" questions especially if the information was inferred rather than stated outright, often they don't recognize sarcasm, hyperbole, idioms, etc. Their affect and prosody tend to be flat or off.

    This was something I left out. He doesn't read social cues well. He has a hard time with sarcasm and jokes, unless he is the one telling them. Very very literal. He's my "black and white" child.     His affect is not flat although he tends to go from content/happy to emotional explosion and sometimes we don't even know WHY he's upset. It's over the smallest things sometimes. Volatile is almost the word I would choose, although that sounds negative.

  Blake 04/29/05 Will 06/12/07

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• ILoveBoys member

  March 2014

  
  

  
  

  -auntie- said:

  Another legitimate concern.  Did you share this with your pedi? Im sort of mad if this was blown off. 

  
  

  When DS was at his 7yo checkup, I didn't mention any certain behaviors. Just that he had lack of self-control,  because truly, that was I thought his biggest issue at that age. A lot of these others have really come to light A) the more I look into it, think about it and the older he gets, I suppose. So I wasn't blown off, it just wasn't made into a huge deal at that age.

  
  

  
  

  What behaviors were you seeing? What is atypical now, if anything?

  
  

  The behaviors we were working on with the teacher were staying in his seat (he would stand and then when the teacher asked him to sit down he would say "I am sitting" and then realize he was standing. Also, staying on task, not blurting out, keeping his hands to himself, not correcting his classmates. Granted, this was over almost an entire school year. But he did get much better at most of those - with work from home and his teacher. She was wonderful.

     He still will correct his classmates, pick his nose. When his classmates say things that aren't nice to him, he tends to yell at them, so he gets into trouble for yelling when it's not appropriate. Once he gets upset, he has trouble verbalizing what's wrong, we usually get I Don't Know! So I'm pretty sure he's not communicating well to the teacher.

  
  

  
  

  How's his reading level? Could he have a specific LD issue around reading? Many with HFA/Aspergers are fabulous decoders but suck at comprehension- especially around inferred information and character motivation. 

  
  

  He is in 3rd grade this year and reads maybe at about a 5th grade level. I can get his lexile level, if that's helpful. With the MAP testing they do 3 times a year, he tested on a 1st grade level in both math and science at Christmastime. His K teacher even told me that he would grasp concepts well the first time and then get bored when they had to go over it. He was put in Accelerated 1st grade.

     

  Thank you, thank you @auntie. I will print these and take them with me. It helps to already have things on paper.

  
  

  
  

  Blake 04/29/05 Will 06/12/07

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• ILoveBoys member

  March 2014

  @ auntie - So sorry. I meant he tested on a 1st grade level in math and READING, at Christmastime in Kindergarten. He LOVES science, etc. For example, we got him a volcano set and a world map for Christmas. My inlaws got him an electric circuit set. He will sit and use the instructions to build the various circuits for hours if allowed. Solar system, too. He got the Science Award for boys out of everyone in his whole class last year in 2nd grade, his peers voted. He's been saying for a year now "I want to build computers when I grow up"

  
  

  He never really has had much of an imagination. Just in the last year he's started being able to do a lot of that sort of thing.

  Blake 04/29/05 Will 06/12/07

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