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Have you celebrated today the little achievements your child has made or did you let a day pass without realizing that even the tiniest of achievements in the world of autism is like a super duper giant dinosaur step that moves forward? Well, let me tell you about my boys.

Our oldest has been very interested in the news. He is taking a special interest in what is happening in Syria and I do not need to turn on the TV to know what is happening in the Middle East because he tells me all about it with full details.

One of the things I have been teaching him for a long time is to ensure that when he is having a conversation, the other person is also interested in the topic that he is interested in. I noticed for a while now that when he realizes that he is talking a lot about a particular interest, he stops and says: “Am I boring you?” or “Are you interested? We can change topics”. It took a long time for him to learn this so I am ecstatic that he is putting into practice.

Also, I do not even need to check how the weather will be tomorrow because my teen- meteorologist knows all about it and gives me a crush-geography course on the rainy season and how storms and thundershowers are formed as well.

Now, if anyone have met him when he was 4 or 5 years old, nobody would have guessed that this little and VERY hyperactive pre-schooler who couldn’t talk properly and who struggled tremendously with the simplest of tasks could one day became a handsome teenager, reading perfectly, using a computer better than most people and having conversations with me about NASA robotic rover in Mars.

My not-so-baby (He is the youngest so he will always be my baby) has been having small conversations with me, I am amazed at how much he understands when I talk with him and he has been responding correctly and on topic in those little conversations, he is also a great actor and loves to get our oldest in trouble, loves to pretend that he cries and then when I am not looking, he laughs while looking at him.

Just the other day, I was in my room and I saw him approaching the kitchen before lunch, opened the fridge and then closed it. I called him and he came to me with a serious face and with both hands behind his waist. I thought it was a little odd. So I asked him: “What do you have in your hands?” And he kept looking at me with smirk on his face”¦you know, that smirk of mischievousness. I asked him to show me his hands and after a little reluctance he did to discover that he was hiding three chocolate chip cookies! Naughty boy! For an autistic child, all this requires a lot of careful thought and planning.

Last but not least we have Mr. Middle one. So I was doing the dishes today and my husband was bathing the kids. He called me to show me something so I left the dirty dishes and went to the bathroom. He was there waiting and my husband was showing him the different products we have in our shower area.

He took the shampoo and asked: “What is this?”, and he looked at the label and said: “Shampoo!”, then he showed him the conditioner and asked: “What is this one?” and he said: “Conditioner!”, then he showed him the moisturizer and Jonah looked at it”¦read it and in perfect English said: “Moisturizer!” Now that word for a kid like him who struggles so much with speech is very hard. I said great job son!

While I was doing the dishes, all I could think of with a big smile on my face was:

Moisturizer! My boy said moisturizer! Nothing else matters today.

These past few months have been very exhausting. Yes, I know what you are thinking: “You have three autistic children, you should be always exhausted!”.

I know, but in the last few months have been really hard. Our middle son, who is now eight years old, and who I would describe as the one who seems to portrait the most symptoms of classic autism, is having a very hard time coping with anything around him.

He seems to be extremely bothered by any sort of noise, he doesn’t want to do anything related to learning or playing and he seems to just want to walk up and down the house telling everyone else what to do or teasing them and laughing hysterically.

At first, I thought he was bored but as the time passed, we realized that his symptoms are not related to him being “Bored”. He goes out very often and we realized that more often he goes out, the harder it becomes for him to settle down when he comes back home. It is like we never took him out in the first place.

He also displays aggressive tendencies when things do not go the way he wants them to go. For example, today my youngest decided to go by the living room where he was. He moved the curtain to see outside and our middle son saw him and got very angry and agitated, ran towards him and started hitting him, just because his little brother touched the curtain. You can well imagine the chaos in the house when things like this happens. It is very frustrating mainly because his behavior is so unpredictable.

One day he can wake up in a great mood and the day can go quite okay but other days like today, he seems to wake up in some sort of “Mood” where he would start laughing for no reason and teasing and doing things he knows he is not supposed to do. The most interesting thing about his behavior is that when he does have the opportunity to bond with you and have that one on one interaction, he doesn’t want it..he just wants to continue teasing.

The thing is, teasing is not really a characteristic of autism. According to the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Vol. 33, No. 1, February 2005, it stated that: “Teasing requires the ability to understand intention, nonliteral communication, pretense, and social context. Children with autism experience difficulty with such skills, and consequently, are expected to have difficulty with teasing”. It doesn’t seem to be the case with him, I could see in his body language that he seems to understand that he is expected not to do something but gets a kick out of our reaction when he does it. This also reminds me of the fact that every child with autism is different.

In recent weeks, we also had to do a few changes around the house in order to accommodate the needs of the kids. During lunch and dinner, our middle one has been teasing our oldest endlessly (Trying to kick him and laughing, throwing his napkin on him, teasing the little one, etc). The biggest issue is the fact that because we have three children in the spectrum, their reaction to his teasing is never ignoring him but all the opposite.

Our oldest gets very angry and our youngest starts screaming and crying so we had no choice but to get a separate table for our middle one so he can eat by himself and our oldest and youngest can eat in another table in relatively peace. My husband and I hardly eat at the table anymore (We eat late at night when everybody is asleep) because it is the only time we can actually enjoy a meal. And yes, everyone likes to eat together as a family but our family dynamics are a little different.

Sincerely, there are times I feel like I am losing my mind so I try to relax at night, watch a movie that makes me laugh, eat something I like or read something inspirational”¦anything but feel sorry for myself or get caught in depression. I know that no matter what, my kids are NOT choosing to be the way they are, they have autism.

Today was one of those crazy days and I came across the Keli Thorsteinsson’s Story. Margret Ericsdottir is the mother of Keli, a severely autistic non-verbal boy. All the doctors and specialists who saw Keli told the mother that there was no hope for him, that he has the mind of a two year old and that he will need to be institutionalized. Thank goodness, his mother refused to accept it and went to a journey to try to unlock the mind of her son. She traveled across the US to look for the best specialists in autism and try to get answers to help her son. It is recorded in the HBO documentary called “A Mother’s Courage: Talking Back To Autism”, I haven’t seen it as yet. Margret heard there was a treatment in Texas that could help non-verbal autistic children learn how to communicate using a letter board and after a while, the unexpected happened: Keli started communicating.

The first three words her son wrote were: “I am real” and now he writes beautiful and inspirational poems that can help so many lives. Can you imagine being locked up in your body and in your mind you have all the words you want to say and you understand what is being said to you and yet you are unable to say them?

In a part of this documentary, Keli tells his father that the “Words just couldn’t come out from my mouth”. It is interesting because when our oldest son (Now fully verbal) was young and he was unable to speak, he told me that he could understand everything around him but for some reason the words just couldn’t come out even though he knew the words in his mind. Same exact thing Keli said.

Our oldest couldn’t speak when he was five or six years old and many times we wondered “Will he ever speak?” “Will he ever”¦” And he is now, 14 years old, fully verbal and saying words I cannot even spell! Talking about astronomy and science. If you ever meet him, you would never guess he didn’t talk until that age. I know it will be the same for my two other children.

We have been entrusted with a huge responsibility in this life as parents of three children in the spectrum. Just recently someone said to me “Did you ever ask God why?”. And I answered: I have, many times but deep inside I feel like I have been chosen for this work. And I am not saying this to sound inspirational or greater than any other parent or anything like that but really thinking back in my life, it almost seems like I have been given clues that it was going to happen”¦

When I was a little girl, I was the one always befriending the kids who nobody wanted to be friends with, not out of feeling sorry for them or anything like that but because I truly wanted them to feel good and have a friend. While most of my classmates were laughing and making cruel jokes about certain kids, I would be the one standing up for them and saying it is the wrong thing to do and I was just 5 or 6 years old. As the time passed, something incredibly odd started happening to me. I realized that a few people with special needs would try to befriend me but they wouldn’t do it with anybody else.

I recall a point in my life that I had a friend, who was visually impaired, another girl had a severe global development delay and a guy with down syndrome. One day, I just finished talking with one of them and I went to my bedroom. I laid down on my bed and asked my grandma: “Don’t you find it strange? “I wonder why is it that people with special needs seem to want to be my friend. I love them but I am just wondering”. My grandma thought for a few seconds and replied: “Because they know they can trust you and you will not hurt them”.

Many years have passed since that day, and I am convinced more than ever that for some reason I have been asked to do this. I do not recall how, why or when it was told to me but I know it happened. And rest assured, I intend to complete my mission.

As a mother of three autistic children, I am always online trying to find ways to help them: New ideas, best teaching methods, the correct approach to different issues, etc and I always come across messages, or sites or videos that promise “Miracle cures” for autism: “Autism can be cured!” “Autism can be reversible!”.

Many times I thought that perhaps the cure for autism (Like cancer) already exists but is not convenient because current methods are a multi-million dollar business so it does not call for a “Cure” anytime soon. How sad that is?

I think as parents we are all at different stages of accepting our children’s conditions. It is certainly not an easy process, and as much as we love our children I don’t think any parent was hoping to have a child with a disability. It is a different world where we all learn to cope each day and give our best to them because we love them very much.

Some parents have a harder time than others accepting this and they look for cures anywhere (Who can blame them?) and they are willing to pay any price so that their children can be cured and treated. There are people who unfortunately will take advantage of their situation.

My heart breaks in pieces when parents share with me their stories of taking loans, or giving their last savings to people who promised that a certain method will work out for their child. The methods cost thousands of dollars.

Miracle cures do not exist for autism. Perhaps we should spend more time trying to figure out ways to maximize our children’s potential with the tools they already have rather than spend thousands of dollars in “Cures” that only cause broken hearts and broken pockets. Do not get me wrong, I know there are methods that can benefit children in the spectrum but the issue is finding the correct approach that works for your child and the right people who are genuinely interested in helping them succeed rather than seeing them as a number.

Over the years, I went through different phases in my life with regards to my children’s condition but one thing always remained clear to me:

I am my children’s best advocate and I will utilize every single drop of energy I have to ensure they are not used or abused for profit. I am their voice, their constant companion and I will always ensure to speak up on their behalf.

I know a few of you asked me to review services but I would like my blog to focus on the issues that parents of children on the autism spectrum face every day.

You can read reviews about services here. Only parents will be able to access these threads after registering:

APATT

Please feel free to check that link and post your own review of the services you have experienced so other parents can read and benefit as well.

Thanks.

A few days ago I was reading an article about the Schneider twins from the USA. If you never heard their story, it is about these two young men (Age 19) who are profoundly autistic (Non-verbal, they need 24 hour supervision, etc).

One day their parents heard about this running club that paired experienced runners with children with special needs and they were lucky to enter the program so when the experienced runners took their boys for a run for the first time, the parents couldn’t wait for their return. When thirty minutes passed and they came back, the runners told the parents that their children were natural runners with unlimited potential. It’s more, they told them that one of them in particular is gifted and they would have to find a coach to keep up with him because he is extremely fast.

As I read the story, a thought came to my mind. What about if all children with autism are somewhat undiscovered savants?. In a lot of the stories I read, the parents found out about their children’s talents or unique abilities by exposing them to a whole lot of different environments and activities.

But how many parents in Trinidad have the chance to do that and the resources to make it happen? Not many. How many times our teachers, our relatives, our society or even ourselves as parents put limitations to our children just because they have special needs without realizing the unlimited potential they have? How many times teachers seclude children with autism because they think they are not capable of understanding or learning? Like the phrase says:

“Everybody Is A Genius. But If You Judge A Fish By His Ability To Climb A Tree, He Will Spend His Whole Life Thinking He’s Stupid.”

Our oldest son is a great artist and even though he doesn’t enjoy drawing too much he is very good at it so it is something that I try to continuously encourage him. He also plays the organ very well. Just a few days ago, I saw our middle son playing basketball for the first time and I couldn’t believe how much stamina he had and how good he was at it. Our youngest, is also a great artist and is very good at using computer programs.

Every child with autism is not only capable of learning but also capable of achieving great things in life. For those who are high-functioning, it helps them develop confidence and self-esteem which is so extremely important for them to succeed in life and for our middle-low functioning children, they need exactly the same thing because no matter what side of the spectrum a child with autism is, they all need validation and encouragement particularly from their parents.

Trinidad has a long way to go as far as offering professional services for children with autism. There are countless parents out there, many of them single parents who are unable to afford child psychologists (How many real/qualified child psychologists are there in the country anyways?”¦And no a Masters Degree does not qualify) let alone afford fees associated with art, swimming or music lessons. More needs to be done from the government as well as private organizations to help and support children in the spectrum as well as their parents who need respite. We also need more professionals willing to work with them and help them succeed.

Having three children with autism, my job as a mother is not only to be their advocate but to ensure that each one of them reach their full potential. Many times while doing that, you are faced with a lot of challenges. Whomever said that teaching a child with autism is easy has no clue what they are saying. It is hard work and a work of love.

Believe in your child, believe in your child’s ability and potential and the great things they could achieve, and let them know they can do it and whether they can answer you or not, they do know that you are there for them and that you believe in them no matter what. If that’s not love, I do not know what it is.

So when I see my oldest and he tells me he wants to be a meteorologist because he loves storms, and earthquakes and thunders and tornadoes or a game programmer where he can develop the most amazing games of all times”¦my heart feels all warm and I smile…

And when I see my middle son so interested in my cooking, and asking for this ingredient or the other”¦I imagine him in the Food Network one day as a great chef battling Bobby Flay in Iron Chef”¦and I smile…

And when my youngest little one like today, tells me in few words that he wants to go to the moon with me”¦I ask him if he wants to be an astronaut, he stops to think about the meaning of the word “¦nods in agreement, smiles and says “Yes!””¦…I smile back and think how in the world I am going to get him a rocket!”¦

“Do not fear people with Autism, embrace them. Do not spite people with Autism, unite them. Do not deny people with Autism, accept them”¦ for then, their abilities will shine”. (Paul Isaacs, an adult diagnosed with Autism in 2010 & Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome in 2012 as a young child he was non-verbal and appeared both deaf and blind. He didn’t gain functional speech between the ages of 7 or 8 years old).

Real Estate Prices are ridiculously expensive in Trinidad. An average small house (Nothing fancy) in an average neighborhood is over $TT1.5 million (Over US$230,000). It is no wonder why so many Trinidadians apply to HDC (Housing Development Corporation) and have no choice but to rent and be subjected to unscrupulous landlords or have to put up with noisy or rude neighbours. Add to the whole equation that you have a child with autism or in my case, three. Yes, we rent unfortunately. Like a lot of people, we are unable to afford the high prices of local real estate.

When you rent, if you are very lucky to get a place because most landlords do not want children (Autistic or not), the house you are living in is not yours so you are not free to do as you please. For every change you attempt to make or think to make, you need the authorization of your landlord. But how do you deal with the fact that periodic adjustments need to be made in order to keep up with the changing needs of your special needs children?

You might have to make a hole here or there to put a barrier, to adjust a certain door, to close up the kitchen, to safeguard the stairs area or a balcony and the list goes on. You see, places for rent are not designed for autistics in mind. Jonah particularly gets into a lot of mischief around the house and there is no much we can do about it.

Because it is not your house, if the landlord decides he/she no longer wants you there, they can ask you to vacate the premises whenever they feel to. Then you have to “hunt” for another place to live and every time you do, you are putting your autistic kids under a lot of unnecessary stress because you all know how hard it is for them to deal with things like that. A house of their own could allow them to feel safe, secure and enable us to make the necessary adjustments to meet their needs.

Over the years, these are some of the things we read or heard:

1. Apply to HDC and just get whatever house they offer.

We applied ten years ago and when you have autistic kids, you just cannot take “Whatever” they offer. You need to take something that will benefit your children, a house is a place where you plan to stay for good. Going to an unsafe area serves no purpose but to make the situation worse. Going to remote areas also has no benefit since all the possibilities of schooling and therapy are located within certain areas.

2. Ask for a loan in the bank and purchase your own home.

We would do so if we could but let’s face it, your average Trinidadian does not get $TT25,000 in salary every month in order to qualify for a mortgage.

3. Go and live with family members.

Say that again? You mean, take three special needs children and go to live by someone? Our kids have needs, special needs that not everyone understand or would be willing to put up with. That’s not even a choice.

As parents, this is our number one goal right now. To get our own home so our boys can have that special place where they can feel safe and protected. We are not your average family and we are not asking for charity, we are just asking for an opportunity.

Dealing with meltdowns are perhaps one of the hardest things to deal with when you have three kids in the spectrum because when you need to see about calming one of them, the other two get meltdowns of their own because of the noise, screams and shouts the first one is making. It is even harder if out of the blue, one of them has a meltdown in the middle of the mall or the grocery store.

In the past, I was always concerned about the fact that people would stare at us. Of course, they would stare and give you judgmental “Looks” and on several occasions even approach you to tell you that the child needs “Licks” and they would attempt to give you a crash-course on how to parent your own child, even after you mention the word “Autism”.

I cannot blame them entirely, I think if I didn’t have any kids with special needs, I would probably be one of those people looking from far away and thinking they have everything figure out, when in reality they don’t have a clue. Perhaps, I need to invest in some of those shirts you see online that says: “I am autistic, what is your excuse?”. Having said that, there are also a few people who even though they cannot relate to what you are dealing with, they are helpful or they try to be understanding and accommodating.

Some time ago, we went out for a little bit. Our middle son loves to ride in maxi-taxis. He is usually very quiet during the trip; it is something that soothes him and he always look forward to it. We didn’t have any other choice that day but to take a taxi (H car) back to our home. When his eyes met the car, he was a little reluctant. We tried to convince him to get in and he did but all of the sudden he just had a huge meltdown while the car was already in the road. He was screaming, shouting, biting, kicking, scratching, including kicking the door open while standing at a traffic light. My husband tried his best to control his behavior so he didn’t hurt himself or others and then.. Our youngest started to behave in the exact same way when he saw his brother acting out like that so I had to also keep him under control.

Just imagine, two children in the spectrum in a taxi shouting, screaming and crying like if they were being kidnapped by terrorists. Cars passing next to us were watching us like if we were kidnapping the children; I was praying nobody call the police.

We tried our best to explain the taxi driver what was happening, he was very understanding and we paid him extra for the inconvenience. We had to stop the taxi at a certain location and take a maxi-taxi back home so they could down and they finally did. Our middle son got into the maxi and sat down like nothing ever happened.

This is one of the things about autism. After a huge meltdown and once they are somewhat back to normal, they act like nothing happened while of course, you probably lost all your hair, you are in tears and of course, stressed beyond comprehension. A successful family outing for me is one without meltdowns or one where we can all finish our meals.

Going to the grocery store with both of them at the same time, proved to be a challenge as well. When they are together they seem to feed from each other, so if we have no choice but to go in with both of them (Usually when we need two or three items), we cannot use a trolley or a basket, we have to carry the few items in our hands because otherwise they start fighting and having a meltdown over what exactly you put in the trolley.

If you happen to have neuro-typical kids, you just go around doing things naturally without much thought, but when you have kids in the spectrum you need to pause, stop and think just before you act, how exactly is my child going to react if I do X? How exactly is he going to be affected if I do Y?

You must be reading all this and thinking how do you guys do it, autism + 3? I don’t know. I sincerely do not know. I have my days and at night, I try to relax a bit: eat something nice and watch a movie or something that makes me laugh. I need a few laughs because it gives me the strength to deal with how the day is going to be tomorrow.

When you are raising three kids in the spectrum, your goals aren’t about what is going to happen in a month’s time or next year or in the next ten years”¦your goal is to make it another day in the best way possible, trying your best to help, teach and serve your kids without going insane in the process.

We see improvements, sometimes those improvements seem to be too slow for our liking, but we remain positive and hopeful that all the things we do for our kids will have an impact on them and they will learn and be able to succeed in life. Because you see, when everyone else dreams with their children’s future as doctors, engineers, lawyers and they are preparing their kids to accomplish such great goals, we are also raising our kids to accomplish a great goal: That they can live independently one day when we are no longer here.

For some, it may seem so little and insignificant”¦but for us, it is the biggest and most challenging goal in our lives. And we hope”¦we hope for a brighter future ahead of us and we dream with the day when we are very, very old and we can see them coming to our home with a big smile on their face saying: Mom.. Dad.. Guess what? We made it.

I thought I would start my first post by describing each one of our children so you all can become familiar with them.

My Oldest son

When he was a year old, we started noticing that his speech wasn’t developing like the rest of average children, we also noticed that he was unusually hyperactive and it was extremely hard to keep him under control. A few doctors thought he had ADHD but I knew inside me that there was much more going on inside his mind than just ADHD but I wasn’t sure what it was. He started a pre-school near our home for a while and we started realizing how far behind he was from everybody else.

We decided to take him to Mt. Hope Hospital’s child guidance clinic for a complete evaluation. Anyone who is familiar with Mt. Hope knows they still are in the pre-historic days. When in the US, they diagnose children as young as 18 months in order for them to access the therapy they need right away, Mt Hope dislikes to test/diagnose children under the age of five. Imagine how much a child loses during those first five years of life. He was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (Pervaside Development Disorder, Not-Otherwise Specified although at this point he displays all the characteristics of Aspergers. Basically, he was diagnosed with autism and the type of autism that did not fit in any specific category.

I knew he wasn’t ready to start primary school and I knew that based on experience in the educational system in Trinidad, no teacher would be willing to take his/her time with him and be able to help him so I decided to homeschool him. He was on Ritalin and Concerta for one year. After a lot of work, at the age of seven, he was reading his first book. A child who two years prior, couldn’t say a proper sentence was now reading.

He is now 14 years old, fully verbal and very high functioning. His challenges are mainly about social interactions, OCD, ODD and learning social cues and it is something we are working together every day. It is not easy for him, especially at this age. He is really good with computers and drawing, he is learning coding and flash and loves to play computer games and read about history and astronomy.

My middle son:

When he was a baby, he was extremely quiet. He seemed to have developed normally until the age of one. We did not expect him to also be autistic. We decided to have our third when he turned one since he seemed to be doing very well but when time passed, he started developing behavior that started to concern us.

His limited speech was just sounds and he disliked to talk and shouted for everything he wanted to do. We also noticed he suffered with a memory problem and he would forget things very easily. We also noticed how he would stim, flip hands and had different obsessions with sameness. He would want a specific plate to eat, a specific napkin with a certain pattern, a specific fork, etc and would shout and cry if certain shows on TV were on. He would make little to zero eye contact and he would enjoy swinging.

We knew at this point that he showed a lot of autistic tendencies, as a matter of fact, he is the one that displays the most classic autism characteristics. We tried to change his diet, we tried to use calming techniques and nothing seemed to be working. As the time passed, instead of seeing an improvement as we saw with our oldest, we saw that his behavior was getting out of control. A psychiatrist stated that he is autistic and also that he has a severe development delay.

That day, during a doctor’s visit, my son was behaving like someone coming from a psychiatric unit. He was screaming, shouting, fighting and throwing everything everywhere. We decided to try Concerta since Ritalin is banned in Trinidad. The problem is that Concerta is a time release capsule and he does not know how to swallow pills and he wouldn’t want to try or if he did, he couldn’t do it.

We invented a few things and put it on his food, and even though we saw little improvements, the side effects of lack of appetite and the “Crash” after the drugs wears out caused us to stop the drug and deal with him as he is. He is now 8 years old and his behavior hasn’t changed. He is anxious as soon as he opens his eyes in the morning all the way to the night. No amount of food, or outings, or fun things or toys, or computers or games or time with us seems to help him calm down. He lives in his own world and has meltdowns in the middle of the street, grocery store, etc if things do not go the way he thinks they should go. If others talk to him, he would ignore them.

He spends his days fighting with his two brothers and telling everyone in his own language what they should do. He also struggles with sensory issues, especially loud noises. Christmas/New Years and other holiday celebrations are a nightmare for little Jonah. He is extremely affected by fireworks and shouts and cries inconsolably. He enjoys going out and seeing new things, and recently learned the concept of time and days which helps a tiny bit with his anxiety.

He is a very loving child, loves to hug and kiss and also likes to help. He is also great with computers. He was formally diagnosed with moderate autism.

My youngest son

When my middle one turned one, we decided to try for baby #3 since we did not know he was also autistic. Of all three, our youngest seems to be the one that displays the least autistic tendencies. The number one problem we have is that he loves our middle son so much that he imitates him in everything, including all the bad things and the bad habits.

He speaks full sentences and can understand everything we tell him. His body language also indicates that he is very aware of what is happening around him. He is picking up some traits from our middle one such as getting very upset if things do not go the way he expects them to go and struggles with trying new foods. He eats mostly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, crackers with peanut butter, pasta, tacos, chili, cereal and that’s about it. We are hoping as we offer more foods, he would try to eat other things.

His speech is not yet the same as a child of his age but is slowly improving. He is a great observer and learns this way the best. His emotional maturity is also a little behind, he is very much like a “Baby” still, this could also be due to the fact that he is the youngest. He is also quite anxious and hyper and when he walks he “Jumps” rather than walk naturally.

He also has sensory issues, same as our middle one with regards to noise (Although we observed that since he does everything his brother does, if his brother shouts he would do the same even if he is not affected) also sensory issues related to ‘smell”. He seems to be comforted when he grabs my arm and smells it and then hugs me.

He is also a great artist, he can draw very well with a computer program and has a vivid imagination and loves to spend time with mommy. He was formally diagnosed with PDD-NOS just as our oldest one.