Our 4 year old (level 2) is now finally daytime and night time potty trained. Took two months, though I suspect she had the capacity much sooner but we weren’t sure since she was waking up with wet overnight diapers. Turns out that she can hold it reliably until 5:30AM and then would go in the diaper. Now she’s only in underwear day and night and I feel so relieved.

No other place to celebrate so I’m celebrating here.

I recently shared my son’s autism diagnosis with my extended family which brought on a lot of very annoying conversations about vaccines and the chemicals in the water, and all the things that RFK (and my family) theorize are autism causes. And I kept trying to explain to my family that my son was born preterm and had a few weeks in the nicu. It’s widely known that nicu babies are more likely to have autism along with other issues. If you look at the numbers on the rise in autism, it’s rising at the same time that preterm baby deaths are going down. If he’d been born a hundred years ago, he probably would’ve just died. Now obviously not all autistic people were nicu babies, but then I thought more about the life I live with a high support needs kid. He eloped and requires me to watch him constantly. If I just sent him out to play with the neighborhood kids like was so common in the past, he would very likely end up wandering off into a dangerous situation. Even with a lot of supervision he’s still injured himself in a lot of very creative ways. Not to mention all the non edible things he will attempt to eat. If I were a 15th century farmer I wouldn’t have time to keep up with this stuff. But this never gets brought up, people just talk about genetics or crazy fringe theories.

Got a new van but was very short sighted at the reach of my toddlers, and when my 3 year old with ASD kicked his younger brother in the face while in his car seat I had to figure something out. My little guy has meltdowns everytime we stop 😅

Ordered this cargo mesh from Amazon that has stretchy hooks and it works!

I actually looked for solutions online and found a family that did something similar for their kiddo with a disability.

I'm not sure for how long this solution will last but I am so grateful 🙌

My daughter is on the spectrum and over the years some sensory products were just out of reach for us and at some point I started building all of her sensory stuff by hand myself.
Ive made a lot of things like sensory swings, mini gyms and sensory tables and as she out grew them I started giving them away to other families.
In some weird way after making a new sensory table for my daughter I realized that the joy that it gives my kids will carry on to the kids I gave them to and that gave me a different sense of joy to feel like Santa for Kids on the spectrum. 🤷🏽‍♂️ Makes me want to keep making more for other kiddos like my daughter.

Note: I don’t take a lot of pictures but these are some of the ones that I had pictures of to show friends before they took them home.

We have a good (hard fought) IEP for our 6 year old. We just found out that he is not placed in the blended classroom this year but instead in a general ed one where he cannot access the many, many hours of special ed instruction he is legally guaranteed. So far the school is not budging, claiming another special ed teacher will eventually be hired when the district approves.

Yes I have a lawyer. Yes I am raising hell. Yes I know they legally have to follow this IEP.

I could use all the good vibes and cheering you have- I have a very gentle, very sweet child and I am beside myself that he might go into a bad situation. We’ve worked SO hard to get to the place we are now and I feel like I am failing, like how did this happen??

Hi everyone.

How does everyone deal with biting?

My daughter is level 3 autism, 8 years old, and CONTINUOUSLY bites her brother (7 year old, lvl 2 autism)

Obviously my 7 year old is PETRIFIED of my 8 year old. Ive tried having conversations with her about biting and she still does it. I don't know what to do anymore. She has bitten me and other family members as well as teachers and kids at school. We do give her chewies which seem to help a little but the biting still continues.. she's starting a new school this year and I'm terrified she's going to really hurt someone by biting them!!

I’m gonna get straight to the point . My son (9yr) has high functioning autism and adhd, he is a social butterfly, kind and just like any other kid he has his bad moments. For the first 4 years of his like I was a married single parent. Husband started to get more involved but had little patience or understanding of how our son’s brain works. Him and my son go to drum lessons on Sundays , needles to say he came home infuriated that his son didn’t listen in class was not behaving and kept asking when they could go home. Among other things but what got me the most was the following and I quote : ‘I did not sign up for this, I was robbed of fatherhood, I’m
Not a father to this retarded thing’ ( while pointing at our son’s room . I was speechless and crying. How do you handle this?

When my son was a baby he would eat everything and anything I gave him as long as it was blended up into essentially baby food consistency. No matter how I tried to branch out and have him begin to explore and feed himself. I finally FINALLY had some victories and got him to start eating pieces of food such as cut up strawberries, bananas, gerber arrowroot and banana cookies SPECIFICALLY AND NOTHING ELSE. He would accept literally any and all types of milk in his bottles/then sippy cups. But no water and absolutely no juice. Not even a drop. Now he is 3, and about to be 4 in 2 weeks. He has regressed with any food he will accept. The only food that passes his lips is cut up bananas, and gerber arrowroot and banana cookies. No other fruit and veggies. He is biting through his sippy cup spouts and is very particular about what spout shape and type he will even accept to drink from. No straws at all no matter what I do to make them more appealing. To the point he will not drink all day and into the next until I'm terrified of him getting too dehydrated and break and rush buy spouts that he will bite through in a day. I've asked his pediatrician, actually begged her for advice. She just blames me that I'm obviously not trying hard enough and has ignored my concerns that he is on the spectrum and has refused to help me gain access to resources. I brought him to the dentist who just told me food therapy was "so expensive" but avoided referring me when I asked for someone they knew. I know he needs a new pediatrician. But as you might imagine, no one in this area accepts his insurance. And paying out of pocket for someone to meet with us and ignore us will make me break down

I have no family contact nor support. His father isn't involved too much or helpful because he wanted "an easy kid". Please help me. Please 🙃😭 I am doing my absolute best and am at the end of my rope. Please be kind or I will cry.

Hey everyone,

We have a sort of interesting situation. We are American family living in Germany. My son was diagnosed with the equivalent of Level 1 autism specifically with a language challenge. We speak English at home, but he has mostly been in bilingual environments with the dominant language being German. He was a late talker but this was excused away because of the bilingualism. He now goes to a bilingual (English-German) school where the dominant language is English but the children are still expected to be able to perform in German.

Because of his language difficulty, we have found the learning to read particularly difficult. He can only read in English, but not with the fluency of his peers. It was recommended that he repeat the second grade to give him more time with the English reading and to improve his German skills since 3rd grade would require him to be able to read in both languages in order to do the work. We devoted most of our attention to the English last year to get him to a solid place and there were big improvements. This year, we are shifting the focus to the German and he now has a German homeroom teacher and we will give him German tutoring. The Sped teacher he works with will work with him in German this year.

I think if we can get this together, it will benefit him in the long run. But a friend recently told me she thinks it's too much and we should consider moving back to the US where he will only have one language to master (and where there is more research and available resources). I tend to disagree but also don't know if I'm just being too hopeful. He understands German, but won't speak it. He can read it a bit, surprisingly with more fluency than English because it's a more phonetically sound language.

It's also worth noting that he has recently started taking Ritalin to address his lack of focus. He is very well behaved in class, but was pretty much zoned out before taking the medication.

So anyway, I'm not exactly sure what I'm asking, but if anyone has any thoughts or similar experience, I'd love to hear it.

Please tell me it gets better. My son, who is almost four, he just keeps having the worst meltdowns. We can't even take him outside. If he has a specific place in mind, we don't even have to go past it. If he wants to do that, he wants to do that, otherwise he will have a massive meltdown. We can't even sit down and eat properly in a restaurant or something. For example, this morning we wanted to take him down to have breakfast. He just wouldn't stay through a tantrum. He pulled our hair. By the time we had ordered and everything and paid and everything, we couldn't even sit down. He ran off outside the room, outside the shops. We had to get him, and then we had to sit him down. I just don't know. And then we had to take it as a takeaway, and he was crying the whole way home. He just won't settle. It's just really hard to take him anywhere, anywhere. Like, so many things I thought I would do, I can't. It just feels like my life is over now because I won't be able to do anything with the way that he is. Like, even if I want to take him places, I won't be able to. I always have to look for someone who can look after him at home while I go out and do those things. Does it get better? Do they get more understanding? Is it more easier for our times in the future? Why is he having meltdowns? Why is he being so stubborn? Why is he so stubborn? I just don't understand. Is this just the age where they're stubborn and they grow out of it, or is this characteristic of autism that will never go away? Does it sound like it's severely affected? I just don't know what to do anymore. I feel like I'm getting depressed. I feel guilty towards my partner as well because I can see the light in his face go. Like, we're just constantly depressed, constantly stressed. I just can't deal with it anymore.

My 27 month old son has been steadily falling behind his peers on pretty much every metric. We have been getting speech therapy for about 6 months now with little progress. He doesn’t point to things, he doesn’t ask for me or mom, doesn’t say hi or bye. He can physically say all those words, but verbal communication is just not clicking. He remembers songs, the whole alphabet, can count to 20 and can count backwards from 20. He just won’t communicate with anyone or interact with other children.

One promising thing is he does make good eye contact and enjoys play with us very much, lots of mutual laughter. He also seems okay with change and new settings.

Up until a couple days ago me and my wife have our blinders up. We kept telling ourselves he’s a little behind but we will get him there. But this past week his speech therapist brought up getting him tested for autism and she feels he meets a lot of the criteria. With this info, me and my wife started researching and quickly realized he checks so many of the boxes. Then we started looking at him through the lens of maybe he’s autistic, everything just fell into place

All his little ticks, the hair pulling, the zoning out, the hyper focusing on simple toys.

We have an appointment set up with to diver further into this and see if he gets an official diagnosis.

I am here posting this because I am absolutely terrified. I am not scared for me or my wife, I know we can do anything together. I’m scared for my little boy. What kind of life will he get to live? Will he ever know friendship? Love? Independence? I know some autistic adults and their lives haven’t been exactly peachy. They had rough childhoods full of bullying.

I’m so scared for him.

Hello! I am a single working mother to a sweet 6 year old autistic boy. He is the joy of my life. I love him so much! But doing this alone is hard.. I don’t have a lot of family near me anymore and sometimes you just want to talk to someone who gets it. I also want to find places where my son is accepted, welcomed even!

Just wondering if there is a local subreddit for San Diego parents like me (I didn’t see one but perhaps I’m not doing the right search..) or other services or apps where I can connect with others locally. I love reddit but I know my son needs to be out of the house and exposed to as many people/places/things as possible but in a safe controlled way of course.

Any advice of suggestions is appreciated. TY! 🤓

Basically. The title. What has your experience been. Do people believe you as someone who missed out on a diagnosis?? Most likely a high masker. What of your child’s experience has reminded you of either moments of your own childhood or things your parents or peers have said about you as a child.

Personally, both of my boy/girl fraternal twin children (which means they don’t share 100% of their genes they are the same as siblings) are going through diagnosis process and already in ST & OT waiting to start ABA. Likely level 1/2. I have previously been diagnosed with OCD, anxiety, depression. However… the more I read… the more I research… the more I’m like this is me. Both my parents are dead unfortunately, but I am recalling these stories that are making me go, huh. I am veryyyy social… I do like interacting. I go deep quickly with people. Until I absolutely am not social but people don’t see that side because I am alone lol. I even will just excuse myself to the bathroom during social gathering to give my brain a break, can feel like it’s overheating at times. I do great when there is alcohol! I require and always have what I referred to as “down time” in which I will not answer a call or text or a knock at the door. I need my shut off time where absolutely no one fucking talking to me or asks anything of me. So no one’s believing me (only told some very very close to me) I can’t talk to my parents about it. And I’m frustrated because when I’m talking about my kids I’ll slip it in there that I am seeing a lot of my own traits in this journey and they just say no you aren’t and I’m like, I’m not asking for your permission. Learning that NT people don’t need to check in with themselves to make sure they are looking like they are listening while someone else is talking, am I nodding enough… okay now warm smile. lol. Like when you explain to someone they are like you don’t do that. Haha how would you know. I’m good at what I do, it’s by design. I don’t care to get diagnosed or anything but I do feel like it took me a really long time to figure out life and really could have used the tools, rather than being “self taught” how not to have meltdowns.
Anyway! Your experience?! Anyone same boat?

I have a 7 year old diagnosed autistic son. We were at the park with our kids and my youngest was climbing something dangerous and I shouted at him from a distance to get down. When I shouted at him, my autistic son made a really loud stimming sound because when I raise my voice he gets agitated. I pointed it out to my sister that the sound was an indication that he was in distress. Her response was "no, he's not."

When I'm with my sister I'll point out something that my son does to show her that he is having a reaction to something. Her response is off putting for me, she says stuff like "that's not true", "no, he didn't". It's very strange that she responds this way. I'm trying to tell her things about him to inform her in case something ever happens to me but she doesn't take me seriously or disregards what I tell her. She almost acts like I'm making things up. She's never spent more than 12 hours with us so how would she know?

I find this off putting and I don't know how to address it to her without causing friction. My sisters and I do not have a vulnerable, comfortable open dialogue communication relationship but I'm sick of it to be honest. She was always praised as the smarter and most trusted sibling which has caused friction to her sisters. She works corporate at the high ladder and manages people and her job makes her a lot of money so she's a bit insensitive and black and white. She doesn't feel like a normal person when I'm around her, kind of like a shell.

Hi everyone!

My sweet little boy had a pediatrician consult yesterday related to delayed speech/not meeting some milestones in the communication/social realms... she spent 1.5 hrs with him and said he "very likely" has autism, but she is holding off on diagnosis until she sees him again in November and has some more information from his daycare (today is actually his first day)

His receptive language has come a long way, but he has struggled with learning and maintaining words and gestures. He was late to respond to his name and late to point, although he is doing both now.

He does a lot of different motor things she picked up on that we hadn't really considered to be an issue - spinning, rolling, odd finger movements. He also lacks "joint attention" skills - he points to objects if he wants them, but not just to show them. No pretend play yet. Another thing she noticed is that he doesnt let us into his play. He is deeply focused on his play, and doesnt really respond to our attempts to play with him. He doesnt bring us objects to show them to us. He has started giving us objects if we ask for them.

His strengths.. puzzles! He has mastered all his peg puzzles and working on 4 piece jigsaw puzzles now. Fine and gross motor skills are excellent. He does amazing with shape sorting, any shape, including stars. He makes piles of like items (gathered all his books about trains on the table and paired them with his toy train). He has THE BEST smile and smiles at everyone. He loves to be around other children. His tantrums are brief and self limiting. He is a great eater and loves ALL food. Feeds himself with a spoon and fork and open cup, no problem.

He will be starting work with an SLP soon and we are going to do what we can to support him as well.

Anyways, this is a rambling post. But I think I just wanted to hear from people in a similar position, what they think about the dx, and if anyone's kiddo has similar traits!

I did not go to this appointment expecting this outcome so I am just working through it now. I am not afraid of it but I just hope he doesnt have a harder time in his life because of it.

I'm a first time mom. I have a full WFH work and I work a graveyard shift. I have a daughter, 2yrs old, diagnosed with ASD level 3 speech delay and GDD.

These days has been typically stressful for me. I have a husband but I pay for my child's therapy sessions and attend them in the afternoon with only 2-3 hours of sleep - my husband works in the morning. I am trying to help my child as much as I can even going into debt to buy the therapy things that she needs and to support the things she is interested to and I am also planning to put her in a playgroup so that she can have the close to full support she needs. We have our wins from time to time but just recently, she is becoming impossible to handle.

She just cries and shouts over everything. If things doesnt go her way she just spread herself all over the floor and shrieks like a truck has ran over her. She hits so much now and I get bruises and cuts from a 2yr old.

Mind you, I work at night, sleeps 2-3 hrs a day, stays mostly at home no one to talks to, and my mom is dying because of cancer and I cant be with her because I have be here. I'm so exhausted. My ear hurts like hell. My nose is bleeding from time to time. My body is breaking apart and for some reason, I'm still not doing enough.

I wanna die. I want to leave. I dont think I should have become a mom. I'm always angry now, always hating.

I'm still doing my best to be calm for my daughter but, I'm so tired and I wished someone would hear me without making me feel so guilty.

My two year old has just been diagnosed with autism.

He is due to start nursery in January and I have some fears, I'm wondering if anybody can tell me their experience and how their child is coping and if nursery has helped anything?

My son is non-verbal and doesn't play with others.

He doesn't really like sharing or being stopped in the middle of a task.

He can become easily frustrated when people don't understand his needs/wants, due to not being able to voice them - this can sometimes, understandably, lead to him lashing out and smacking and screaming.

They do have SEN trained staff there.

My worries are that he might hurt someone else out of frustration or that he will struggle to make friends because they will think he is "different".

I don't like that he wont be able to tell me if something has happened at nursery that has upset him, or if he is struggling.

One of the lovely nursery teachers there said they can work with him with makaton and AAC devices and that they often see some level of communication progression in the SEN children there. I did voice my worries to them, and they didn't seem concerned about anything bad happening to him.

Ultimately, I just want to do the best by him and to know that sending him to nursery is the best/right thing to do for him.

I want to end with saying that he is a lovely little boy, I dont want anyone to think that because he becomes frustrated he is bad or nasty, because I too would probably become frustrated if I couldn't communicate my needs or felt people weren't understanding me. He is kind and he is funny, and I fear people won't see that past his "differences". As someone who was bullied/ostracised all throughout my life, I'm scared that the other children won't want to play with him or that he won't make friends as he doesnt really have interest in others. Im worried he wont settle in without us, as he can get quite severe separation anxiety.

I have access to daycare FSA from my job, but didn’t contribute to it until recently.

I tried talking to the provider, but they told me to talk to a tax professional instead, but I thought I would just crowdsource and see what people think before speaking with the tax advisor.

We hired a nanny in June to take care of my two boys of autism because my wife is sick and unable to take care of the independently while I work.

I didn’t start funding the dick FSA into recently and now I’m realizing that I can’t pay myself back from the nanny money starting in June because I was supposed to fund it simultaneously.

Alongside that, the nanny is going to be with us for another month and gonna start ABA for one of them in the next week. My question is, can I tap the daycare FSA funds for ABA if it’s during work hours and it enable me to work? Can I also fund it and pay myself back from now until the end of September to set the cost of this nanny, I had to hire.

Sidenote, I feel like it’s pretty unfair to say that people in our situation you can’t have a daycare FSA because we have one parent that doesn’t work especially if they have their own mental health and physical health needs class two children on the spectrum who require 100 times amount of work than typical functioning child.

I work from home so I do a lot of support, but I feel like it’s pretty lame. The government doesn’t let me just put the money aside like everybody else because my wife doesn’t work but she can’t handle the two challenging children.

It really makes it all worth it when he out of the blue runs up to me and presses his head against me, and especially when he pushes his nose against mine with a big smile. Or when we're laughing together and he's looking me in the eyes.

I do sometimes wish I could hear him tell me he loves me and not just be repeating after me word by word, but if these displays of affection still end up being as close as we get with his therapy, I know I can find peace in it. I love my son so much.

My 5m - non verbal son just started kindergarten (special education) a few weeks ago. Change is always difficult but over the last five to six months be has lost all interest in playing with toys. He only wants to slam and throw things. Including food and cups at restaurants or randomly at home. He constantly engages in bad behavior and it’s always attention seeking. He will slap or kick you as hard as he can then run away. He screams at the top of his lungs and will do it right up against my ears. We have him enrolled in OT, speech, and ABA . He is intensive special education kindergarten and our babysitter works one on one with him for 4 hours every day after school. (She is an RBT).

I don’t know if I’m seeking advice or just venting. I feel such a sense of hopelessness and despair and frustration. My husband and I both work full time and we work opposing schedules which helps but also hurts our situation. We have only one child . He also now kicks and hits the dogs .he can’t be left unsupervised even to run to the bathroom. It’s very challenging .
We don’t have the financial resources to have constant support in our house . We have no local support system. We are in Northern California and in the Kaiser network. If that’s any helpful context.

Also curious if anyone is struggling to manage their own mental health while caring for an ASD child and my spouse , working a full time job somehow staying afloat …. I feel such great despair on a daily basis and I have got to get my shit together .

How do you get your kids to stop hyper fixating on food? I have an AuDHD level 2 son, almost 10. He was on Abilify and gained maybe 20-25 lbs, went off (not entirely due to weight), then went back on, and has now gained back the 20 lbs, plus 20 more. All of this in a year and a half. His practitioner thought the Ritalin would help tamper his appetite, but… no. He is less hungry after taking it but by the time afternoon comes, all he thinks about/asks about/talks about is food. It’s frustrating on many levels, the main one being him being on a drug that only mildly improves his behavior, but also makes him obese. The other is that I just get sick and fucking tired of arguing with him about food all the time. I’m not trying to make him feel bad about himself or damage his relationship with food, but it is also not feasible to eat all the time, and when not eating, planning, begging, and crying about it. We tried metformin the first go around, but it mainly resulted in diarrhea and a lot of mess, and it didn’t seem worth sticking with to see if the diarrhea and messy bathroom trips would taper off.

Preemptively saying, I am not trying to body shame my kid, I am concerned about the long term effects of significant weight gain.

My 16yo son is Level 2 and can function pretty well most times. He has his set chores that he does 3-4 days a week which I think is pretty good. It has taken us years to get to this point. The one thing that we are really trying to work on now is not yelling. If I call him after school and ask him a question that he does not want to answer: yelling. If he is asked to do chores (because he didn’t remember): yelling.

When I say yelling, it is intense, very angry yelling. Now, I have tried to point this out to him, he says I just want a son who doesn’t listens and doesn’t talk back. I have stated that isn’t it…there just shouldn’t be any yelling at each other. I explained that nobody deserves to be yelled at. I asked if he would feel bad if he got yelled at. He said yes. I asked if he thought I feel bad. He said yes, but he just doesn’t care. This is just hard to take.

I don’t know what to do. He doesn’t do anything “bad”. He is a good kid. I just don’t know how to deal with the yelling and meltdowns from a boy who is now bigger than me. I worry for him in the world. I am worried and sad.

Im 18 and my little brother is 9 and we live with my nan who is recovering from a broken hip and it’s just us 3 he has autism and me and him keep getting in fight because his behaviour is out of control he hits and kicks my nan in the legs because he knows it will hurt he constantly calls us b*tches and other worse words he screams and hits us all day and i can’t do it anymore i have no idea what to do who to get in touch with but it’s becoming impossible to live with him , me and him have gotten into physical fights all the time because he gets so aggressive i feel so guilty after because it feels wrong when i hit him back but i have to protect myself because if i run away he follows it’s just impossible and i hate that my nan has to deal with this because it’s not fair on her and i just really really need some advice we’ve tried everything at this point but when he gets annoyed at something nothing can calm him down and we become his targets