Noobie

Awh my first post! Wonder how long little bit will let me sit and type before deciding I have better things to do and more wonderful things to play with him.

A little about me, I am a stay at home Mom with 2 beautiful teenaged girls and if that wasn't troubling and nerve racking enough I also have a husband, a Mother that is staying with us temporarily until her house is more suitable to live in (going on a year I think now) and a 3yr old newly diagnosed autistic son.

We are working on OT right now which everyone keeps saying once the motorskills are in place and strong the speech will come. I don't see major problems in motorskills myself but they tell me they are there. So we play outside an enormouse amount of time, and I am lucky that he will play in sand, dirt, mud, grass, sticks, water. Unlucky that he would prefer to play with these all at once and has to feel some of these in his mouth, which has caused many sandy diaper changes the next day.

I am often erked by how much he needs weird things for the feedback. All of my cabinets are locked tight because things like sugar, creamer, flour, coffee, tea, spray bottles, butter, peanutbutter, etc. are all things that he seek and will try to hide out with them as he smears or sprays them all over himself.

Verbal is coming along in the last 2 weeks he has picked up so many more words and he has many signs he uses to tell me what he needs or wants. Along with this progress come the meltdowns but they are shortlived and he usually is good at calming himself and the progress is still there after the meltdowns are gone.

I can't tell you how happy my non-verbal fella made me when he started in the last week saying "I see you", "Lightning! Where are you" (refering to his lightning McQueen car) and singing the alphabet and Elmo's World! The meltdowns lasting till 5:30 am were not ideal but I got thru knowing this time that is was just temporary and hopefully sentences (or fractions of) would still be spoken in the morning...or maybe afternoon.