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19 months grandchild show autistic traits

NAS79538

Hi, I am looking for others who are in or have been in a similar situation to myself.

My grandson is displaying Autistic traits and is is non verbal at present. He rarely responds to his name

and has a variety of different/unusual behaviours. We have been denied a referral by Speech and Language.

We are waiting for a hearing referral too. We have started intensive intervention with him. Any advice or info would be greatly appreciated.

  • in reply to JuniperFromGallifrey

    I haven’t read Fromm but I agree with much of what has been written here by JuniperFromGallifrey. I find the idea of you starting ‘intensive intervention’ upon your extremely young grandson quite chilling. You don’t even have a full picture of what his difficulties are down to at the moment. Instead I would concentrate on the ‘regular’ parenting/grand parenting skills of being present, being loving and caring, and being sensitive to your grandson’s needs. At the moment he needs just the same as any 19 month old child needs from there family: a loving and caring environment. Be very careful because you can easily do more harm than good with an intensive approach that is based on what you think you know about your grandson. Tread gently, pay attention to his needs - AS HE EXPRESSES THEM - not as you may have read somewhere about how to ‘treat’ autistic children.

  • The current model of 'intensive intervention' is based on a lot of misinformed research. So much so, that it won't be too long before a LOT of medical papers only based on each other will be nullified. But these types of therapy can cause trauma, trauma response, and then set your grandson back even further psychologically impairing him in ways which weren't a problem to begin with.

    If you've looked around online a little yourself, you'll notice how many times Autism keeps adjusting what it is and isn't in the DSM manual which is merely a guidepost and not set theory. The idea of intervention is in relation to a cure, but in fact Autism is not in need of a cure itself - it is merely a different way of using the brain to think, reason, perceive and process. If you're interested, this is a researcher pointing out all the problems in Austin "Research" https://twitter.com/AnnMemmott

    While Autistic individuals and Non-Autistic individuals can have additional learning disabilities, it's important to first understand if his Speech and Language are impaired or if he is communicating in different ways. It's also important to understand the specifics behind 'different' and 'unusual'. The question here is good to contrast with Non-Autistic behaviour. Are there motor skills he may need help with or does he enjoy the aesthetic of lining up items, the geometric shape of things in positions. 

    Many of were deterred from specialised fields we could've excelled at simply because we mature 100% different and we present out-of-the-box thinking. For some who aren't speaking, it can be thought of as Arrested Mutism, due to a hyper active brain - an overload of information incoming and being processed MUCH too fast for one to keep up with. 

    The Autistic brain can process way too fast. It can require precision. We are better with exacting calculations, with dependable parents. We can be Analytic by nature. But one can not have it all. You cannot have both an extrovert and an introvert. The best way to raise an Autistic Child is to read the WW2 era Sociologist Erich Fromm and adapt classic principles of being human, classic ethics and respect.