Moved posts:
Hoping I can get away with leaving them here in case she actually wanted to see what I "said" to her. Seems like a giant wall of text, now.
Think every autism community has some parents who extremely suffer because of their children not being tekstbiok average children. Those people flock together. That leaves lots of space where they don't gather. There will probably be groups in the autism community where you would fit in and would feel at home. There are more people on the spectrum avoiding the "SUFFERING" parents like the plague.
Way back before I even had read enough to know what a pervasive developmental disorder was, I had my kid (son, now nineteen) "looked at" by two "professionals" one of which suggested that he be properly "evaluated" which represents the use a nonspecific term that would not get her into trouble if we pitched a fucking hissy fit about somebody saying that our son was not quite "stacked up right."
He did not interact with the other kids.
We could see that our son is who he is and smarter than an atomic whip, taught himself to read out of an an alphabet book when he was eighteen months old, phonetically, because I told him that not only did letters have names but they made sounds like animals do. A week later he was sounding out any grouping of letters he saw and NO ONE would believe us!!!
Anyway after showing this to the only one who suggested that our son be evaluated, she was ready to endanger her career and suggest a child psychologist to us.
Our reading and advanced education regarding the spectrum began that night after the first interview. That was in 2002.
Fast forward about a month and my wife and I are sitting in on a meeting of very sad parents who just want a cure and all have stories of how they are almost "there" and other ridiculous crap. It was supposed to be supportive to all the newcomers like us, but we both just saw a bunch of pie in the sky, rose colored glasses types who were grasping at any straw that did not break when they placed their hopes in it.
Never went back to those people.
18 months old is very impressive. I'd probably be skeptical if I hadn't experienced similar with my son, although a little later (21 months).
I was trying to get him to shit in the toilet, instead of a diaper. Only thing I could think of to promote this "new" idea was to sit there with him with his favorite books until some "business" was done, evidenced by his turn of attention and his expressions.
He just did all the reading things on his own after I started with the sounds that letters make were like the sounds that animals make. He would not let me stop talking about the sounds that letters can make until we had gotten all the way through the alphabet in the first sitting.
Now the potty training took a few more tries.
On another note his little sister required no potty training at all. She just decided to shit in the toilet one day and away we went.
Oh, she was around eighteen months old and my wife and I were talking about it being about time to potty train her and looking at each other and so on.
Want another unbelievable story about an autistic genius?
My daughter did not talk until she was almost four years old, but she was smart in other ways.
She would point (a very specialized talent that my brilliant son did not understand fully until he was about twelve years old) and grunt, then hit something and point and kick something all the while grunting and pointing.
Now this behavior was not rewarded, because we wanted her to find words to use. Even if she just tried to imitate us, using a wrong word, just any word and we can work this through, right. Just use a word - !!!
Well, it happened slowly, but in the meantime she was taking note of everything else that happened when she banged on things and kicked things.
About a year old, most kids are trying to talk, but not her. Walking is a priority at that age and most are getting there. She was fine on all fours at a crawl for a while past when we were worried, but as I mentioned, she was watching things when she kicked and slammed things.
One day she wanted her hat which we had hung on my hatrack attached to the wall opposite her bedroom. I had my three cowboy hats - I keep a straw for daily wear in the sun, a brown formal for dress up and a black, I mean a black hat, No need to explain a black hat - I wear one sometimes. It also had several baseball caps and a few kid hats, including her favorite.
She sat and grunted for a bit, pointing, grunting, but no words, no hat. Finally she gave up on me getting her hat for her and crawled into her room and slammed the door against the wall where the hatrack was, then raced back around, searched everywhere, then looked up, saw her hat still on the rack and crawled back into her room. So I shake my head thinking I can be stubborn, too.
Then she slams the door against the wall again, rips back to look for her hat. I had not yet figured this behavior out, but thinking it needed to be corrected I told her NO. She pursed her lips and crawled back into her room and really slammed the door against the wall knocking her hat off the rack.
Dashing back in, at a crawl mind you, she grabs her hat, puts it on and turns a defiant look at me that she still uses at seventeen. But it all came to me that instant. I did not have to correct this behavior; I needed to find a way the channel it, productively. Lots of luck with that shit!
Anyway, she had defined a geometric problem, including a physics element and solved it all on her own at about one year old.
As tired as I was at hearing her bash the wall with the door, I was very proud of her!
I mentioned pointing being a sort of specialized undertaking, considering the varying components brought to bear by using such a convoluted gesture to actually mean something indicative other than, "Hey, look at the end of my finger!"
But how about spitting? Talk about a specialized undertaking!
It took a bit of trial and error and error ... to succeed.
Is that unique?
