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I work at a dayhab. I'm on the one to one training with a client. He's name is Brunno. Brunno has this obsession with the picture on the wall. One is a doctor, police, teacher, and a construction worker at school. Everytime he sees those pictures, he would take them away and he thinks he is gonna take them home. Can you advise me what tactics should I us to help teach him return those items to me without him hitting other clients and hitting himself or without forcing him and getting him upset. Brunno tends to be real agressive when I try to redirect him not to but them in his bag.
posted by Edward on 2/27/09 7:33: PM

Beautiful sight. Awareness is part of the answer.
posted by Evelyn Shaw on 2/25/09 2:15: PM

My daughter Victoria is now 13 1/2 and is what people call "high functioning Autistic". I do know I am blessed that she can now speak her feelings and emotions and tell me "mommy I love you" which at one time she could not, but please make no misunderstanding...this type of Autism comes with it's own share of troubles, frustrations, public ignorance and heartbreak. People expect so much more from them as they can not see or hear the disease in them. I knew she was Autistic at the age of 2, but was told to "wait and see". She started treatment at age 4 for OCD, ADHD, impulsivity disorder, sensory deprivation disorder and auditory processing disorder but was not diagnosed. She was officially diagnosed at age 8. Until you have been there you have no idea what it is like to hear people say "she's just undisciplined, her parents must be bad parents, she is spoiled, that is a HORRIBLE MEAN child". The fights with the school district for the proper education and placement. The daily frustrations watching your child not "fit in" and fight to do so. I cry as I write this thinking of the things we have seen and experienced with this disease and knowing the things our children will never experience...tea parties with dolls, sleep overs with friends, their first date, their first car, the prom, and for most marriage and raising a family of their own. The effect it has on the child's siblings is also intense and hurtful. I pray that someday no child or parent or family will have to experience this disease with the thanks and generosity of people like these to help to fight for a cure...to fight for our children!
posted by Tracy on 2/23/09 8:10: AM

I have sent this links to 23 people! Please send this video because for each view 0.01 is donated to autism! What kind of world do want?Thank you!!!!!!
posted by Isabel on 2/22/09 11:42: AM

...Yes, please do this. Please, everyone who can.
posted by Introbulus on 2/15/09 8:27: PM

To Learn More About Claudia and Her Journey Towards Recovery Please Visit www.changeherworld.org.
posted by Change Her World Initiative on 2/15/09 9:35: AM

this is really a great video. i am connected with two people with autism, and it is so interesting to talk to them. one of them, one who i rarely get to see, has a much more severe case, but he is a great guy, and if you say a date in any year, he will be able to tell you the day of the week it will be on in seconds. it is fascinating. i also have a cousin, who i see many times a year, who actually has just asberger's syndrome, which is a more mild form of autism. he is a great guy. i would recommend the book, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time", by Mark Haddon to everyone. It is a great story. it is a murder mystery of a dog, told from the point of view of a boy with autism. it is a great read. five for fighting is an amazing group, and this is a great song to put to a great cause.
posted by Eli on 2/14/09 3:45: PM

I am the mother of a 7 year old autistic son. I think this a wonderful video and am so glad that it is raising awareness. For parents and loved ones that suspect their child may be on the autism spectrum: go to a library, or research online. This is a beautiful video, but does not portray the day-to-day challenges families face. The best gift you can give your child is to be informed. A friend and mother of a 19 year old autistic son has a wonderful and very informative documentary. Learn more at: http://transitionsmovingforward.com/ or http://www.storyharvest.org/article.php?id=172 Thank you for making this video of a beautiful girl with autism and helping raise awareness.
posted by Christie on 2/12/09 8:38: PM

This is an amazing video...moved me to tears... I hope that more & more people understand the harm that is happening to our kids & that all of this change to the better one day!!
posted by Musheera on 2/09/09 9:31: PM

Wow, I love five for fighting even more now! This song/video moved me to tears. Thanks. Keep your child safe with a kid safety band. http://www.kidsafetyband.com
posted by Paul on 2/09/09 12:28: PM

thank you for this video.So many times the media portrays autism in a different more high functioning way that people dont relize how hard it can really be.My son is 6yrs. old with sever autism and is also nonverbal with many sensory and obbsessive disorders.Where I live things he really needs like aba and sensory help are not covered and it is simply not affordable so I am helpless in this fight!We need more advertisements like this to really show the reality of it all!
posted by kathy leonatti on 2/05/09 9:41: AM

To Learn More About Claudia and Her Road Towards Recovery, Please Visit WWW.CHANGEHERWORLD.ORG
posted by Change Her World-Parents of Claudia on 1/29/09 10:37: AM

My little brothers were dignosed with this my one brothers ten my others 7and was dignosed at two and my mom played this when she told me they would be a "little diffrent". and i was only 5 when this happened now being 16 it was very hard
posted by Arianna on 1/24/09 11:09: AM

I haven't been lucky enough to meet many kids with autism, but my buddy Matt is a rock star. He is also mentally retarded. By rock star I mean that he ROCKS! We decorated the house for his brothers graduation, we taught him how to sip (not chug), and we've danced with him until we couldn't anymore. He was blessed to have a family like his.
posted by Tim on 1/19/09 12:30: PM

All the best to you and good luck raising the funds to start early intervention therapy and instruction for your daughter. She's a beautiful little girl. My sister was autistic and, unfortunately, she was never properly diagnosed until she was a teenager. She lost years of special instruction that could've given her a much more productive and enjoyable life. I lost her in 1999 to breast cancer when she was only 30. As you know, one of the main "side effects" of autism is the inability (or maybe even the lack of desire - who knows?) to communicate. Since my sister lived in a group home and needed 24-hour supervision, assistance to bathe and to dress, she didn't do self exams and her visits to the doctor were usually only when she was sick. When her cancer was discovered it was very advanced. She died within 9 months of finding the lump, even after a masectomy. Whether it's a coincidence, or if my sister may have had some special affect on my friends, I now have about 5 friends and their family members who work with mentally disabled children and adults. In fact, I heard about your campaign from my best friend who is teaching special needs kids. Again, all the best and good luck.
posted by Michele on 1/17/09 12:12: PM

Hi, my heart goes out to you and your daughter, i`m a mather of a 12 year old boy and at the age of 4 he steel wasen`t talking but with speech therapie (for over a year) now he could talk both french and english. Don`t loose hope and fight for what she deserves. Every day is work for them to learn life, but at the end it is the best gift whene you see the results and do they ever work hard... We have to keep on working with them, cause at the end of the line, whene you see them sucside and there big smile on something they work so hard to acheive is the best gift for a mather and father to see... sorry fr the speling i`m french...
posted by Suzanne Drapeau on 1/16/09 10:27: AM

just beautiful....we do have one in my family..is name is jesse and he is 3 years old...so sad.... very hard on his parents....but they take good care of him...her also have sydrome of golden hare....murielle
posted by murielle on 1/16/09 7:25: AM

just beautiful....we do have one in my family..is name is jesse and he is 3 years old...so sad.... very hard on his parents....but they take good care of him...her also have sydrome of golden hare....murielle
posted by murielle on 1/16/09 7:25: AM

Your video was beautiful. We will be praying for all of you.We hope that this will give you hope. Jeff is an autistic young man who has generated a lot of mail from what he wrote on the Five for Fighting web site.He is writing again today in here just below. He was born in 1969 when autism was very rare. One in 4,000. We had no help so we had to do the work. He was diagnosed at 2 as a very severe case, and we were told to have him institutionalized. That was the last autism person we took him to. This is a letter he wrote today to a mother of an autistic two year old . They are all asking his advice and he is happy to talk to them. Just thought you might be interested. They are sending him pictures,of their children. Jeff's Mom email Jeff at rjoyce1@hiwaay.net Thank you so much for the beautiful pictures. I knew that you would be pretty because you always know by people's words. And you say "Bless your heart", just like my mom does, so maybe you live in the south. I don't know where you live. I live in Alabama. out in the country where it is very green and we have lakes and pastures and hills and some horses in a field behind my house and a lake where all the honking geese go that fly over our house. Your baby is a beautiful baby for sure! He looks like he has blue eyes.Your daughter is pretty too and looks smart and nice. She can email me too. My eyes are brown like my dad's and Mark's are blue green like my mom's. Mark says that my eyes are yellow or that they look like cat's eyes. See, I love cats that have blond hair like this certain girl that I know from my high school, my church and youth and our youth retreats, from 8th grade till now. She was very nice and is a fox, but I kind of got obsessed with her and it got worse, so I had to not go to church there anymore because I got obsessed with her red dress and I wanted her to wear it every Sunday. If she did not, I got in the car after church and hit the back of the seat real hard, so Mom and Dad just calmly said," We will be eating at home today, instead of going out to the Cracker Barrel." I was mad about that too, but I knew that if I let my mad show on the outside that I would loose more privileges. I would end up having to sleep in the van in the garage. I really hate to do that . I just had to 3 times and then I stayed cool after that because it was like time out for a child, and I was grown up, acting like a child, so I would spend the time in there thinking about how to stop my mad in the future so I would not ever have to be in time out in the van again, and I never did. I don't want anyone to know that, OK? In the summer if I am landscaping the yard and someone corrects me, I use to get mad and act mad to punish my parents for telling me what to do different. I don't like that and I already know that these things are autistic acting, and I really do have control over them but sometimes I just choose to let it out even if I loose my privileges. Now I just go jump in the pool to cool off and Mom makes me swim 10 laps. Sometimes if it's hot I swim laps just because it's hot and I decide to do that when I am hot . I use to not notice when I was hot, but that was when I could not feel pain either. That was part of autism. I have to take a gallon of ice water out on the front porch and drink a glass and swing awhile, and by the time I am through with the whole yard it has to be all gone in my stomach. These are rules that Mom and Dad made up to help me ,and then I just learned to do it for myself so they would not be my overseers. So now I feel good about everything. That is about overcoming ! All of my life has been about overcoming. Mom said we all have things to over come. They all tell me what they messed up on and what kind of privileges do I think they should loose and I tell them and they do what I say, if it is reasonable I have to tell you that I was three before the masking tape on my feet to my tricycle thing. But if he is old enough to pedal, he is old enough to have masking tape because it will become a habit to push his feet on the floor, and they are hard to break for us. It is important just to work on one thing at a time and be soft about it. I guess this is information. Use a timer. That way it is the timers fault, not yours.You can stay detached. It is best to do all the training you can when they are little so they want get set in their ways. Obsessions are like drugs, remember that and you will not let you child have one, no more than you would let him have a joint. About talking and language, and communication. At first I had a different language that I made up and only my brother and I knew all the words. Like charcoal was bagacody=, bag -a- coal-de , whygoba= the white and gold ball in the back of the commode, Chanice room = just looking under the house through the grates=Chains-room. Mark would get on the front of the house and I would get on the one in back by the fire place . It was beautiful under there, and we could see each other. It just looked like chains we were looking through. We loved to play chanice room! Mom and dad could not figure out what were doing- ever. Daingestang= dangerous thing. wassy gunk= was the personal syringe.I was obsessed with the bathroom closet and they put a lock on it. nbgrp = ice machine with letters that were on it in front of the grocery store. workie workie=cloriseptic bottle. zicca zicca z= the flour sifter. It sounded like that. gray holder= the roux bottle -hair color . Then all obsessions became "holders" from then on, everyone used the word "holder" to mean like his obsession. And you are becoming "holderfied "was you are making that into an obsession.I made it up and every parent uses it and thinks it's a real word. It is even in books now ! Ha Ha. When I was little I use to like things that were long and rectangular shaped like cool pop holders-wrappers, that was a =duck bird holder- because the first one I ever found was under the little kids playground under a white duck and I got it out, and that was the best holder I ever had. Then Mom had to mess it up, by using it for a reward if I earned it . One of my first phrases was- did I earn it , did I earn it , did I earn it. fast- over and over, till someone would scream," Make him shut up.!!! please!!!!" There were a lot more, but that is a secret that just me and Mark know. You talked about pacifiers. That was my first holder. I had to have it all the time and if I lost it I would scream till somebody found it . I was little, I could not even walk yet, and I was making them look all over the yard and house , everywhere. Mom and dad were carrying me with them to look and they started yelling for the first time, blaming each other for not knowing where it was . Finally Mom found it in the diaper hamper where she put my sheets and it was in them. That was the day that they figured out that I had made them into slaves and they were not ever going to let that happen again. So my passey became something I had to work for. When we went to the zoo I wound not look at the animals and Mark was in his stroller and I was looking for bazooka wrappers. That is all I did was look for them everywhere . They were an all time favorite holder. And I would fold them a certain way and they had to always be like that or I would get upset. Mom took them all away and made me look at the giraffe before I could hold them, till the timer went off, and then I had to look at the next animal and on an on till I looked at them all. Mom would say," What is the giraffe doing?" and I had to tell her before I could have a bazooka wrapper. We would go to the Birmingham Zoo every spring and I had to do more and more and Mom said it was our "measuring stick" to see how well I was doing each year, getting better and better . That is how I learned to talk because I had to . She did it with Richard too. He had never talked and was 11 and huge , because his mom just let him eat anything he wanted like whole cakes because he learned how to make them and cook them and eat the whole thing . He learned to read just one thing ,the recipe on the back, in his head, not out loud, because he did not talk, ever and still doesn't, except with Mom because she will not let him have what he wants until he says the word. He does . He can talk, he just does not have a reason to. His holder is drinking straws with the end bent down. He has millions of them coming out of his closet and drawers and bed and under his bed and to him each one is different by the way he folds the end and he knows them all and he is in his own world with his straws. His family just wants peace but not for him to learn. Well, my Mom waned more for my life than me collecting cool pop wrappers and bazooka wrappers, so she used them to make me learn until I could do it for myself. So I did. I know lots of us could learn to be more happy in the world if the Moms would just try till they were about dead trying. How much you do now decides where your child will live in the future ,when your parents die. I will live here because I can. I did it when they went to Canada on a tour for 18 days. I did fine. If I got lonesome I went down to my parent's friends house and ate fried chicken and talked on the porch. I have know them since the first day we moved here in the 6th grade and they go to our church. I had to write this before I could go out to eat cat fish. But I like talking to you and it helps me to remember and see how far I have come. You have to work every day and be consistent. That is the most important thing . Don't ever give an order that you are not prepared to carry out. These kids are smart, you know ? There is this phrase that says "Let The Crisis Happen" So if you want to stop the thing he is doing, like with the light switches in the bathroom. Do not let him control you. You must always have control over him. Use to, if we were going somewhere and we left and they forgot something and had to turn around and go back, I would have a very bad tantrum. Mom decided to go back home every time we started somewhere and do it over and over until I knew I would not die if things changed. Let things change often and never let your child run your life . It is not good to let any child run your life so why let autistic people do it ? Mom got an A.A. book and she goes by the 12 steps and now we all do. It is a good way to live. Anne Sullivan said, "You can not teach a child until you have his obedience!" That is a good a one and Mom really believes in that one. You have to earn respect ands how are you going to do it if you do not insist on obedience.(doing what a grown up in authority tells you to do.) But not just anyone that tell you to do something that feels wrong to you. They will get bigger and you will not be able to control them and then they can't live at home any more . All of the autistic kids I knew are now institutionalized. Don't let that happen please ! Mom's friend David is there and she worked with him two years then his sister tried to control David out of the house and took a bottle of pills . Then David had to go to the state institution. Mom went to see him and he was bad drugged ,and had his head shaved and scratches all over him. She had nightmares for 15 year over that, and it makes her cry because he was so smart and they loved each other very much. She taught him many things and he earned his metal drinking glass she would have hid in the house for at the end of his time there, and he always went right to where she had it hid . He could smell it. Even in the oven. He liked to clank it on his teeth , and say aaaaa and that meant for Mom to saw aaaa , so he could feel her throat vibrating . He had to earn that too! My Mom is an earning nut! He dose not even know Mom any more and he use to love her as much as she loved him. Mom really makes you earn everything . Well, it sure worked with me because I was in a whole other world and hated being in this one, and I would still be there except for my Mom. She programmed me to be who I am today and she can not even do algebra or spell. She is dyslexic but she made me better in-spite of her own problems. Now we help each other. I love her very much for giving her life to save mine. Autistic people will always be autistic but we can get very good at seeming normal, but not with out daily help. Like even now . I love my music but I do not like someone to give me a C.D, just anytime. That would drive me up the wall. It has to be only one on Christmas. And it has to be me deciding ahead that it is the exactly right one, because I wait for it a year and I know every song on it by calling the radio station. Only Dad or Mark can get it. I would ruin my Christmas and everyone in the house, if that was messed up . You have to pick you battles and that is my top battle. I do not want anything on Christmas but that and Tang, Nestlé's Quick, Coco Chrispies, and the biggest Hershey bar. I will accept a gift certificate because my uncle knows I can use it for anything and it does not threaten my state of mind on Christmas, a calm day. Most autistic children do not do well with holidays. It has so much social interaction. Remember that . It is a big one. The phone books comes at the same time every year, on the same day, and I know that and can count on that. The thing about that is on that certain day the girl I liked in high school with the red dress, her name has to still be in there. That way I know she has not moved. That is all there is about her . I do not ever have to see her, her name just has to be in there. Once my mom thought this needed to stop, so she was going to burn all of the phone books under my bed and she was not respecting my privacy and I was about to start to hurt her. I got on the floor and tried not to get up . She saw I was sweating and having a hard time and she knew that she had crossed a line you can not cross. She apologized to me because Dad said, I was still autistic. He saved the day and I held it together. I have some other obsessions that I do not want to hold or bring home. I just like to see them there where they always are. I am over wanting one . The antifreeze checkers at Wall Mart . I just like to check them out in my own privacy when ever Dad and I go in there, if I am not shopping. And the black eight balls. I can look at them but I can not pick them up, if I asked them if a certain girl has moved and it says "decidedly yes."!!! That is bad, so I got over that by having Dad to have to take me home before I ate at the Cracker Barrel when I got upset. Some things have to be in the same place every time at the right time of the year. These things are compulsions are addictions and they probably won't go away, but if they do, I will just replace them with something else. So we just have to live with it like false teeth, and other things that bother you. See you could go to a therapist to lean all this for 30 years but its better to work it out as a family because you are building a relationship and trust and how to handle it on the spot . You can just always run to the therapist but you can go to friend and family and you are controlling your self and glad that you grew from the experience. Do things quietly because we hear like dogs, and don't scream, and when you touch us it hurts, so do it lightly. We like you but we pull away because we can't help it. All of our senses are heightened, so respect that please. I am not a savant or anything like that . I am just regular but I use to do things that other people could not do because all of my energy went there. When I became more normal and my world was widened I lost my ability to read my mom's mind and stuff like that.Thank you for reading this.rjoyce1@hiwaay.net Love , Jeff posted by Jeff Joyce on 2/14/08 7:21: PM
posted by Jeff Joyce on 1/15/09 8:07: PM

My son who is now 10 was diagnosed at age 7. Like most parents we were fearful and a little shocked but now a few years later we are praising God for the gift of a child that can teach us more about understanding and appreciating the best things in life. Once we have learned how to understand our second of 4 children and how to communicate with him he has taken off like a jet in school and social settings. We have to remember, an autistic childcan teach us a lot more than we can teach them. W-
posted by Wayland on 1/15/09 8:08: AM