re cost, I have a nut milk recipe here on the blog, search it… should work out much cheaper than buying rice milke and it’s goo nutrition if one isn’t allergic to nuts. And re GF cooking, you can make good home muffins, cookies with millet, buckwheat, arrowroot flour without buying the pre-packed stuff and quinoa makes good porridge and amaranth is good with rice puffs to make ‘muesli bars’ and GF cornflakes you can get fairly cheap. So GF can be done cheaply with help from books like Special Diets For Special Kids… again ask your library to try and get it in…

thing with gluten intolerance is if one has low IgA one will test negative to it yet it can still destroy the gut villi in those who nevertheless have gluten intolerance and that’s the end of digestion and goodbye blood health and brain nutrition. So your husband is right, that not all kids with autism will have serious gut-brain related issues, but it can be worth a 60 day open minded trial just to find out, but good idea to keep a cross check re salicylates, that they haven’t gone excessive and that nobody is eating fluoride toothpaste (which strips the lining of the gut).

If your husband wants to find out if the gut can effect the brain, he can get drunk, drink 2 litres of red cordial or not eat for 4 days and see if his perception and info processing change. If one can’t detox or digest food properly the results are similar.

Again, remember that not all kids with autism have significant physiological issues underlying severe info processing and sensory perceptual disorders… same can happen in kids with infant stroke for example… but its worth 60 days of open mindedness. He might benefit from looking closely at my childhood photos here

http://www.donnawilliams.net/about.0.html

there’s plenty of pics there showing similar sensory perceptual and info processing issues to what you describe. Gut, immune, metabolic disorders weren’t the WHOLE of my issues, but have reduced them by about 50%. I’m still autistic, sometimes that’s a challenge, sometimes it’s got its blessings, but I’m glad I’m not as disoriented and struggling as much as I did before late childhood.

Warmly,

Donna *)

I have a 22 month old son who was recently diagnosed as being on the low spectrum. Jack is extremely loving, giving hugs and kisses all the time ~with people he feels comfortable with. He finds humor in many things, laughs and giggles for things like when his sister sings to him, or when he see something on TV that amuses him.

Jack doesn’t talk and wasn’t communicating with eye contact, facial expressions or gestures. He rocks back and forth, appears to ignore people and animals, loves to touch walls and run up and down the hall, shake his head, looks at objects oddly. Like getting very close to a white wall tilting his head up or sideways to peer down at the wall or on the floor staring at the carpet from a side angle or upside down. When I read an article about you and your words about how carpet and textures seemed to ripple for you ~I thought OMG that could be what is going on with him.

When we was an infant I briefly thought he had hearing and sight problems. I tried several things and discovered he could hear fine ~he just wasn’t reacting to what he heard all the time and sometimes over reacted like for a loud dog bark or a balloon which he still doesn’t like. The sight issues I’ve noticed seem to be better now but I still see them. Jack seems to fade away at times and when he does I noticed that one of his eyes floats out of alignment. I can clap, snap, and talk Jack back to me and then his eye pulls back aligned with the other. I’ve taking him to an eye doctor but they can’t seem to get Jack to open his eyes for them. So I’m not sure how to proceed with that.

As hard as it’s going to be I feel like I have to switch him to a GFCF diet ~even for a slight chance it will help. I say it will be hard because my husband isn’t totally on board with all this stuff I’ve been doing and pushing for Jack AND it is hard to find GFCF related products to easily make meals. I purchased rice milk yesterday (omg it’s expensive) and tried switching him last night but Jack refused to drink it ~then I got to hear from husband how I was wasting money

We have very little resources but have been fortunate in finding FSU’s First Words Project. I got them to do Jack’s first evaluation at 15mnths and now thru the Early Steps program we have an occupational and speech therapist assigned to help us. The internet has been my best friend leading me to the best resources like YOU.

Thank you for being who you are and sharing with us all!! I appreciate you so much and if you ever come to Tallahassee Florida USA I would love to meet you.

Slowly, very slowly like clouds in a slow motion folks appear for the dinner club. That’s just and update.

But since you give a very detailed bio profile, and some like b. sharp are scientifically inclined to uncover new things…

I think the unemployment has to do with one small thing. Spectrum folks have difficulty telling a lie, even a white lie. And that as we know is fatal in getting a job – the first step being an interview.

Here is an excellent article, you might want to run a separate post. If so, I’d be ever so interested for all the comments, as this puts me a lot of things in a morally interesting and challenging perspective:

people on the spectrum are diagonal opposites to pathological liars who cannot tell but lie. spectrum people on the other hand are unable to lie, due to grey-to-white matter ratio and the role of the pre-frontal cortex. I am sure you’ll find it fascinating.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1504096/posts

Speech therapists traditionally worked with oral dyspraxia (the sort of speech impediments Temple Grandin had in being able to say ‘bah’ but not ‘ball’).

Cognitive and educational psychologists generally work with SPD in those with autism, as traditional speech therapy is more limited there.

This was pooh poohed by the speech pathologist.
I still reckon he has semantic pragmatic disorder..
However , I am no professional.He does fit the criteria though, in my opinion.

I was assessed as psychotic at age 2 in 1965, then still tested for deafness at age 9. I was echolalic since 18 mths and by 9 had a vast repertoire of jingles, songs, advertisements and strings from TV which I used as self directed and later other projected expression.

I developed functional speech between age 9-11 after language was slowed, simplified and gestured for me, however I was nervous of using this new system so experienced some episodes of Selective Mutism as I settled into this clunky system but by age 13 could do litanies and by 17 had around 50% functional speech mixed with 50% of my old ‘Donna Speak’.

I was diagnosed with autism in my 20s. My IQ at that time was under 70, in the mildly mentally retarded range. This was due to severe written and verbal language processing problems and inability to work well visually with meaning. Because of this my diagnosis as an adult was autism, not Aspergers. I also have a diagnosis in adulthood of a visual perceptual disorder and a severe receptive language processing disorder.

I have checked with the psychologist who diagnosed me, a man with 40 years experience diagnosing people on the spectrum and one of Australia’s leading experts, was he sure I didn’t have Aspergers. He confirmed that it was very clear I did not have Asperger’s.

Your friend may understand better if she looks up Semantic Pragmatic Disorder. The test results for these people is significantly different to those with Asperger’s, as is their language history. Most people with autism also have Semantic Pragmatic Disorder. I can function as well as some people with Asperger’s and have some strengths most of them don’t have and some weaknesses many of them don’t have.

Your friend can call me Asperger’s just the same as she can call me a rabbit.
But I am what I am. I am someone with autism who now functions in the mild-moderate range after a vast range of interventions.

I’m not in the severely autistic range but began in the severe-moderate range, moved into the moderate range by mid childhood, then into the mild-moderate range by my teens and adulthood. Perhaps the best way to view me is someone with severe sensory perceptual disorders, co-morbid mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders, gut, immune and metabolic disorders present since early infancy, who responded autistically to these challenges and has treated, managed and found adaptations to that range of challenges so now functions far better than I once did.

Sometimes the world isn’t black and white, it has all kinds of greys too.

… Donna Williams *)

But the strengths and weaknesses are different

so the person with HFA will usually have such significant written and verbal RECEPTIVE processing challenges that they are less likely than most with Asperger’s to work in jobs requiring extensive reading or where they have to follow written or verbal instructions.

Those with significant receptive language problems have difficulty mentalising internally even though they may become good at expressive language and can use external tools to do some complex mentalising.  there’s often also significant difficulty visually processing objects, contexts, faces and situations.
by contrast those with Asperger’s may struggle more with the expression and reading of emotion because the person with language processing disorders has usually learned to compensate by acutely mapping shifts in people’s tone and movements even if they also can’t read facial expression or body language.

There is also less implication of personality in HFA as the diagnosis of autism is based more on language processing disorders than personality features. Where in Asperger’s, it’s often down to the manifestation of personality traits far more.

I can hang out with my Aspie friends but my receptive language processing skills are often too simplistic to sustain complex conversation although, with effort, I can track their speech using objects on the table to ‘peg’ key concepts and order the objects to capture conceptual relationships. At the same time I’m more emotionally expressive than most of my Aspie friends although I tend to appear rather blank when listening or watching due to the receptive processing struggle… again similar ain’t same.

generally I function in the mild-moderate area. But in testing, yes, I didn’t fit Asperger’s because of the significant struggles with receptive written and verbal language.

Language delay alone doesn’t mean language processing disorder. Oral dyspraxia can mean articulation problems delaying speech, Selective Mutism is part of an anxiety disorder and learned dependency can also lead to late speech. Again, similar isn’t same. One of the problems is SPIN. That those who’ve spoken by 3 or 4 years old continue to latch onto this as proof they had autism rather than Asperger’s. A severe receptive language processing disorder doesn’t disappear at 3 or 4, even though it may decrease, and it will still be present on testing an adult with history of LDP in autism.

Donna *)

Would appreciate your thoughts Donna.