Living with Autism

Hope I got the attention of you ladies as I am aware that your staff are reading the threads.Here we are in 2007; Ireland is one of the most prosperous countries in the world. And there are families in crisis all over these boards because your Health and Education Departments cannot provide a timely adequate service to parents on diagnosis.Mary Han' you boasted on question time that the cabinet posts held by women in the last Dail were responsible for 45% of the budget.What have you done with the money?Maybe you need to ask the Department of Ed and NCSE to refocus their energy on providing services, rather than blocking and removing resources from the Hedge schools that provide ABA from age 2 and WORK.Ms Harn': Yes, you are pushing Shite up hill trying to get the managers and administrators in your hospitals to be proactive in using their budgets to get sick people off plastic chairs and into beds. You could also start some capital works in the way of publicly funded nursing h…

Bratty has sat in a state ASD classroom since the end of 2002. As part of this she has been made to attend "circle time" regardless of her ability to understand it, for the better part of 4 years. She had an assistant to get her to "attend" but in a class of 6 children to one teacher, it hasnt been possible to tailor scheduled activities to her interests. As a result she has had little input into the activities which come up in the curriculum as a matter of course.
Recently the class was doing an exercise on Shapes at "Circle time", and she began pointing at the shapes and naming them verbally. She is mostly non-vocal and uses PECS to communicate, so this was a BIG DEAL. She even answered on behalf of other children who were too slow for her.
News to us? NO, Bratty has been able to label shapes, animals, numbers and colors for 18 months in her home based ABA programme, because we broke it down into steps to suit her level and tailored it to her interests.
W…

Hi there,
Thought I might share a little analogy from the wonderful world of living with Autistic Spectrum Disorders
As you have gathered by now, I have two children with Severe Autism, my son is 9 and my daughter 7. My son bit another child (at school) on Friday, while I was marching in front of the Four Courts, for the 5th time in 2 years, He bites himself all the time, despite my repeated requests for a behavioural analysis and treatment plan. And now my Darling Daughter has just spent the last half hour beating the hell out of me.
Why? Because the company that makes the apple drink in a box that is (the only thing she will drink) have changed the color of the straw in their packaging. And she won't have it. On Friday we stocked up with our usual supply of 3 trays x of 9 boxes of 3 packs, half of which had the new straw. By Saturday the boxes with the old pink straw had run out, but we had loads with the new green ones.

She is functionally non-verbal, but last night she decided the…