Happy New Year - Autism Spectrum Message Board

ruby41 · 01-01-2008, 10:12 PM

A Happy New Year to everyone. 2007 was a very hard year for me. My son has now turned 8 and as he is getting older he is getting more aggressive. Just as I thought things would never get better I started getting a bit of hope. Over the last week my son started to talk. He has had echolilia for a while now with about 10 single appropriate words. But now he is attempting to put words together. His aggressiveness I hope will cut down as he is able to communicate more. I am hoping this year I will get more progress from my son than in the last 8 years. I hope the same goes for everyones little ones. May God help all our kids.

cazajacks · 01-04-2008, 12:08 PM

Happy new year to you to. I hope you get all the help you need and i hope you son carries on well with his speech.

cazajacks

crabbyapple · 01-06-2008, 07:03 PM

What happy news! Happy 2008!

SamIsSam · 01-08-2008, 03:03 PM

Happy New Year.

Ruby, hope 2008 progresses well for you.

My son is 7 and does not yet have speech. He can be very agressive and gets extremely frustrated on a regular basis causing him to self harm. I think that his inability to communicate is a major factor.

Can I ask how you taught your son. Did you use PECS or someting else. Did he progress slowly or just suddenly start to talk.
Professionals have told us that if a child does not talk by this age then he is less likely to talk at all.
Any comments appreciated.

Thank you, and good luck.

ruby41 · 01-08-2008, 05:15 PM

Hi Sam

My son starting saying some words at about 13 or 14 months. Then at about 17 or 18 months I really don't know what happened one night he started head butting and screaming it was really upsetting to watch. This lasted for a whole night. The next day he had lost his speech completely. He would spend the day spinning around or sit and watch the washing machine go around and around. His main interest was playing with his hands. Nobody could work out what happened. By the age of 3 he started saying Mummy again. He started using some single words by the age of 5 most of them were not used appropriately. PECS was tried but it meant nothing to him. In March of last year he started using alot of echolalia and finally he started putting words together a couple of weeks ago. If your son has used any words at all even if he has lost them the chances are he will eventually get speech again. I read about a boy that had no speech at all and finally started talking at the age of 14 so never give up hope. Have you ever tried Eye Q its suppossed to help children with developmental problems to gain speech and helps to reduce aggresiveness. I tried it on my son and I got a lot of positive results.

Good Luck to all your family