How Edward learns - I call this natural ASD learning, ASD child led

This is how Edward learns - he marries up neurons by putting different things together to help him remember. Play dough and the world map. Matching up blocks on his posters that get pulled down off the walls constantly. The television gets many different items traced over the top of it. Others have included foam letters on the swing and the trampoline, jumping on the foam letters, wrapping his blocks in play dough. Singing and pointing to his posters at the right time. He will look at posters and objects from different stand points, upside down, jumping on the trampoline, rocking on the rocking chair, jumping, swinging standing on a chair, eating his books, tearing his posters, singing his learning songs to different tunes, singing his songs in different places. Because of his lack of caring about people hearing him sing on the train, on the ferry, at the kiddy gym he finds as many different ways that most of us would be put in a padded cell for ( lucky he is cute and 3 years old). 

I am hoping this would give people a glimpse into our messy house, upside down world and give others ideas on how to extend their children.
smile emoticon

my thoughts on asd and autism

I way prefer questions than people assuming..... One of the worst assumptions still is that asd people are low in intelligence.  I have studied up on both Dr Kanner (coined the term autism) and Dr Asperger (coined the term Asperger's syndrome).  In their actual notes, not what people say they said.  They both agree (even though they did not know about each others work) that their patients were bright, hence the difference between other labels.  Just stupid doctors these days have managed to only look at the deficits not the strengths and I strongly believe the medical profession today have done far more to disable our children than autism has.  Mozart could play beautifully and perfectly on a piano blindfolded by the time he was 5 years old, strange laugh, strange voice, found drawing all over the floor.  Thank god no one told his parents to stop him from obsessing over his love.  They encouraged and fostered it.  He was terrible in social situations other than when he was playing and would entertain people playing the piano while he was upside down.

My favourite saying these days is "encourage their strengths" and we live that daily.   My 3 year old knows more about the periodic table than I do, and may also end up being a linguist.  He tried to teach me the Russian alphabet over the Christmas holidays.  Or he might be into astronomy as he loves the solar system and was able to write mercury by the age of 2 years and 10 months.  I am not bragging I am trying to foster how incredible our asd kids are.
Yes he is diagnosed as moderately asd, at 3 years and nearly 10 months he is still partially verbal, has pica, bites and pushes, totally needs to be fully supervised around other children, runs, climbs and is only partially potty trained......oh the fun of being an asd mummy.

Regression - from this families point of view

Regarding regression - from my point of view.

I think they get bored.  We don't read aloud any more..... So many people see as regression I see as boredom.  I try to see what next thing Edward is interested in and make resources available (including myself) for him to utilise to give him other ways of learning the new strength.  I may be not even near his intelligence but I am his key to learn to communicate, they say asd kids use people as tools, but I think it is just their way of involving us in their lives, the more they do this the better they get at communication for everything.

helping with speech for asd kids

Regarding non-verbal children and their odds of talking.

I have done a lot of asd study over the last 2 years.

What I have learnt:

Most experts don't know the most recent studies.
1) fact 75% of asd children over 4 years of age that were not talking after a longitudinal study now do talk.  http://m.pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/131/4/e1128
There is also thought that the more we as parents expect this to be the case the higher these odds will be in our favour.
2) strangely enough of the autistic brain that lights up for speech for nt people is also used for song ........ Asd kids mri's showed that song in the brain was lighting up even better than an nt brain.....so many people including myself believe that our kids get better at speech with lots of song.
Study reference - http://m.brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/01/26/brain.awr335 my son could sing a lot of words that he could not say.
3) try to find any thing that your child enjoys whether it is spinning, lining up, Thomas the tank engine, staring into space......anything, start mirroring his actions as close as he will let you...... If that goes well try a logical or ordered song to sing while you do it.....like the alphabet song or a counting song.  When Edward was not really talking at all I found every chance possible to sing to him, in the car, the barney I love you song to put him to bed (this was really really hard, I was always choking back the tears - it took about 3 months )......this one was the loveliest song to hear my son repeat back to me.....so worth the pain of singing it.  Going up the stairs I would sing "going up the stairs", " getting in the car", put Edward in his swing out side and sing the alphabet song with NZ sign language, I found a ton of songs on you tube and when Edward would spin or flap or jump on the rebounder to the songs, I would sing along to the songs.  I put tile mirrors on the walls near the TV so he was getting more visual feedback of his face when he was trying to make sounds, I put his rear vision mirror back up in the car so he could look at his face while in the car.  He is now 3 year and 9 months and he is partially verbal and I am very confident he will be fluent before he hits primary school.

Examples of children who can sing or learning to sing but can't talk.  (Some people would really not like to believe.... So then there is a good reason not to try)

Nonverbal to helping me sing. Autism progress.: https://youtu.be/HQMM3vpx7S8

This young man can sing Sonia and is non-verbal in speech (or was at the time anyway) Non Verbal Autistic Child sings "A Whole New Worl…: http://youtu.be/pe-KbOiQAUc

So is this boy - 
Autistic mute discovers he can sing: https://youtu.be/b63r79ia_2s

And this little girl who is non verbal is trying to sing, you can tell that she is really engaged and wants to. My non verbal Autistic daughter can sing! -Frozen: https://youtu.be/gpy04KpEj7E

Some children stay silent forever.....but I would not stop trying is all I am saying.....I hear so many parents who just sound like they have given up .....I would never give up.

understanding Asd

Parents are starting to ask about 2e in their asd kids more and more now - I love this :-)
They are not just happy to believe their child's focus is an "obsession" that has to be crushed to stop their child from from going into their own world.

This means they are getting to the point that can see a different horizon of playing, learning and growing with their child's focus and in the process both child and parent succeed beyond wildest dreams.

2e means twice exceptional, a child who has both a disability and a gift.
Our Edward was diagnosed with asd at 1 year and 11 months.

With our son we had him watching your baby can read from 3 months and he just loved the videos from about 1 year and 10 months he was super keen on the leap frog letters.  At 2 years 3 months he was showing signs of being interested in words that we were writing and was making us write letters for him on his mega doodle board.  By 2 years 6 months I wanted to know how many words he might know......we ran out of words to ask him of words that we knew he knew. Short version of word reading: http://youtu.be/KQRhL1VRhNE

Now I thought "oh wow", my world was tipped upside down because we had been told crap about asd kids focus being nothing more than a " splinter skill", nothing real and asd kids IQ were at best 100, all their rubbish (including our EIT spouting the same crap) started sounding like witch craft and with no real merit behind it at all.  "The Spark" by Kristine Barnett was my saving grace, her book and words made the most sense to me and I believe her before any medical expert now regarding possibility, hope and how to go forward.  - I don't believe my son is a Jacob, but he will be the best Edward he can be :-). Jacob (Jake) Barnett "Math and Science Prodigy" o…: http://youtu.be/g91IQsS2spA