Hi everyone
I have a son 8 yrs old, diagnosed with autism at age 4. Our youngest daughter age nearly 4 yrs old has been displaying signs of autism for some time. Our middle child is neurotypical and we do not believe that our youngest is showing learnt or imitative behaviour from her brother. Funnily enough, our middle daughter copies our son to get attention or to get her own way like she percieves him to get, but its totally different with our youngest and we firmly believe that she is also on the spectrum in her own right.
But she is seen to behave well at nursery, has wide range of vocab (although her communication and subjects are narrow and only ever factual, not imaginative) and she appears on the surface to be sociable - although we can see its not really quite in the typical way. Am I right in thinking that girls on the spectrum often are able to learn and imitate social skills better and have a greater speech ability because of the female wiring of the brain?
Anyway, we saw our paediatrician today. LO gave the nurse absolute grief when she tried to weigh and measure her and she got so angry that she lashed out and hit me. But then she sat like an angel infront of the doctor. He said he accepted the sympotms we had told him about but also saw some positive things in his observation of her that made him think it may be that she is imitating her elder brother or that she is using negative behaviour to get her own measure of control or to get attention - both of which she might feel she is missing out on being in a family where one child is autistic.
So the question I would like to ask is, how do you prove that the autistic symptoms of a second child are not learnt from their sibling but are caused by their own condition? We have tried videoing the things she does and have kept diary and written notes but all this does is prove the behaviour and not the reason why.
I would really appreciate any ideas.
PS things were the same when our son was first diagnosed. All the professionals that saw him at school and other places thought we were crazy because he behaved just as he should. But now 4 years later, he is in a special school and has keyworker support and every aspect of his life needs to be supported. Intertestingly the same paediatrician we saw today also told us 4 years ago that our son was NOT autistic because he interacted well with the nurse. Maybe I shouldnt take every word he says as gospel because he was very wrong about my little boy.
Thanks everyone for your help.
Emma
