I have to say that my daughter who is 8 was diagnosed with Autism when she was 3, when we demanded the explanation for her behaviour.
We took that on board and read all we could about it, as well as finding out all we could from the specialists. She was statemented by 4.
because we caught it at a very early age and accepted it, we were then able to get on with life.
We have done so much for our daughter and now we can take her into places we once thought were impossible.
Surprisingly we have taught her a sort of adlib humour and we have a great laugh at some of the adlib she comes out with.
She has great difficulties trying to socialise because she just doesn't know how to. She smiles so much, but not always in the way the "normal" human beings smile. She learns it from videos etc. She laughs but her laugh is false because she laughs the way she has learned from TV and Video.
She can read perfectly as well as write and ask her to read a book out loud - brilliant.
Does she fully understand it - probably not.
I taught her how to use the computer at 3, when the specialist told me not to. I used special needs equipment to get her started and then progressed to using the same tools as us. She knows how to use the computer better than most kids of her age.
She is very lucky that we have two children of a similar age in our street who are prepared to play with her on her terms. She is unable to play on their terms.
When she plays, she re-enacts things from her videos. She has no real imagination.
She has learned how to behave in our society, so that when we go out, or she goes to school, she knows that she has to behave in a certain way.
When she gets home, she goes into her world and as such lives in a dreamworld.
She is very good looking, has a sense of humour, and now talks inccesantly. Her talk is so repetitive. Anybody looking at her would think there was nothing wrong.
When she doesn't understand us, she screams and shouts and gets so upset, to the point of making herself ill. We have learnt how to deal with this and are able to pull her out of her self destruction most of the time.
She loves school, but plays and works along side her peers, but does not socially interact. She is now in mainstream and gets 1 to 1 support for 20 hours a week.
Both my wife and I get lots of hugs and kisses (that makes me laugh, because her kisse are not real kisses. She copies what she sees from videos like sleeping beauty. She doesn't look at us when she is kissing).
Its so hard for her, but I would like to think that she is better prepared to live in "our" world because we have done everything we possibly can together with proffesionals, to teach her what is needed to survive.
We woudn't be without her, but it makes us so sad to think what will happen when we are not around. Who will look after her with so much love and care, and try to understand her world.
Most of her teaching in the early years was done through using pictures, flash cards etc time and time again. This repetition went on for about 2 years before she started to put words into sentences. Then we started to see some progress.
Why have I put this on this post. It is to try and help people to understand a little bit more about autism.
I could get technical, but that woudn't help people who know nothing about Autism.
Did the MMR cause our daughters Autism - I think not. Having said that, we refuse to let her have the second jab. Why, because we could never forgive ourselves if anything happened to make her any worse.
I hope some of this makes sense. Please believe me when I say that we are not looking for any sympathy, because we are not.
We love her to bits.