We're starting CTC on Monday. I'm very excited it looks like a fun program. I'm not going to use it exactly how it is written. I already had ES Physics bought for the year so we'll use that instead of CTC's science. We'll also use GWG instead of R&S. I also didn't get DITHOR. I want to see how the first few weeks go and how much time we have. Dd has an outside writing class, co-op classes one day a week, and we are adding Latin to our schedule I didn't want to overdo.

We're not going to use all of the LA for CTC. I'm going to use the poetry and dictation. For grammar we are using GWG 5 which we were already using. For writing I'm still undecided. Dd is taking a writing class this fall from a fellow homeschool mom. Last spring when she took her class she got quite a bit of writing so if we do writing here it will probably not be a lot. I'm thinking of doing some IEW when we have time because dd may do CC Challenge program next year and they use IEW.

I'm sorry you are having such a rough time. I don't think there is anything easy about dealing with Autism. Not having appropriate therapies in place make it even harder. Our OT sees lots of older kids but that is because it is next to impossible in our school district to get school based OT. My son's school doesn't even staff an OT and they have over 600 kids enrolled. As a result if your child needs OT you seek it privately so there are lots of school aged kids at the few private clinics in the area. I wonder if lack of older children enrolled in these places in your area means that the school district is good about providing services. My boys use the same speech therapist. She's used to working with kids of all ages. My 7 yo is NT and my 3 yo has ASD. If you are looking for behavioral therapy I've heard of lots of people not getting coverage for it after age 7. A mom I know on another board is about to lose her ds's behavioral coverage because it is only covered until age 7. If that is common in your area a lot of people probably stop behavioral therapy due to no coverage and that's why these clinics aren't used to treating kids over 7. Here in MD it takes years and years to get onto the waiver program that pays for behavioral therapy so most of the kids getting it are older. My son is the only child under age 10 our ABA trainer works with. I've had more the opposite experience you are having. Most things covered for Autism on my plan (play therapy, social skill classes, etc) my son is too young for. Stuff for younger kids like behavioral therapy isn't covered at all and OT/Speech has so few visits allowed we pay most of it out of pocket anyway. We've also had to go out of network to find places with experience dealing with ASD. Most everything in network when I called was not set up for kids with ASD.

I haven't started it yet but I've been looking over it and I like it a lot. It's for my 8th grader to do independently and I think it is going to fit the bill perfectly. She's already doing CC Challenge program and a Writing Class taught by a local homeschool mom so she's already got a fair amount on her plate. I wanted a straight forward one year American History program for her that she could do mostly independently. She hasn't had that before and I feel she needs it before she gets into high school next year. I'm going to have her skip the creative writing assignments because she is already heavy on writing from other programs. I purchased both the student workbook and lesson review and I think it will depend on her other coursework how much we use those. She is dyslexic and tends to be a slow worker so we'll see how it goes. When I compare it to the Social Studies she got at PS last year this is so much more in depth. They spent most of their time watching movies.

I ordered from LOF a week ago and am still waiting on my order. I'm pretty sure they ship out of CA which is probably why I don't have it yet. Ground shipping to the east coast can take awhile from CA. If you are close to CA then you'd probably get it a lot quicker. I got the new Apples book for my 7 year old twins. I can't wait to get it.

You can get Spry and Glee from iherb.com They have free shipping over $40 which I never have a hard time meeting with the variety of stuff they carry.

This sounds similar to the program my son attends. He is in a class with 12 children (6 typical and 6 special needs). Last year there were 3 classroom assistants so I assume it will be similar this year. I'm pretty lukewarm about it after 6 months in the program. My ds really hasn't made any progress so far and the school has not been very helpful about making any changes to the program for him. We just hired an advocate to go in to try to change his IEP goals. If you do go through with it spend a lot of time discussing those goals because that is what they will work with in the classroom. I wasn't sure what kind of goals to ask for at ds's initial meeting so just went with the standard goals. They are too hard for ds and getting them changed is proving more difficult than I'd anticipated. For example one of his goals is to answer questions with a 2 word phrase. He rarely answers questions period and if he does he usually repeats the last word you say or says no. The speech therapist is stuck working on this goal that is several steps beyond what he is capable of. Needless to say he has made no progress with the speech therapy. I have observed ds in class twice and it really seems like an okay program for most kids. The teacher and assistants all seemed very involved and try to make things interesting for the kids. However it just isn't set up for my child's particular special needs. I'm planning to leave ds there for at least this school year even if we can't get any modification to the goals (we should be able to because of the lack of progress). It gives me a 3 hour break on school days to work with my other children. He is extremely high needs and I'm constantly checking on him because he can destroy things quickly. I know he's safe at school and they are trying hard to work with him even if he isn't responding to them. He's also one of the youngest kids in the class which I don't think helps. All of the typical kids are ones that are going to K the next year so ds was 2 years younger than a lot of the kids in the class last year. He was no where near ready to be working on Kindergarten readiness skills which is the focus of the class.

I think it's pretty reasonable. My 11yo and 13yo girls take turns cleaning the kitchen each night. That includes unloading dishwasher(we use dishes out of it all day so it there is usually minimal stuff to put away), load dishwasher, clean off counters, put away any leftovers, and make dh's lunch for work the next day. Up until recently dh was loading the dishwasher because it takes a bit of planning to get all of the dishes for the day in there. Dh has been working really long hours so the girls took it over and they're doing pretty good getting it all in. If the kitchen is really messy they'll share the job or dh will help them. It does generally take at least 45 minutes to do everything. My 7 yo son clears the table, wipes it down, and sweeps the floor. My 7 yo dd cleans the cat's litter box and picks up all toys on our main floor. Their jobs take around 30 minutes. We don't really rotate jobs here. My son has had clearing the table for probably 2 years. Now he does such a nice job because he knows exactly what is expected of him. He does ask to switch occasionally but the few occasions he's traded with someone he's not liked those jobs any better.

Yes we gave it for about a month. We dropped it temporarily while we started B12 injections. I'm planning to add it back. It increased speech in my son within a couple of days. I've heard if you are going to see positives it will not take long to see. It does cause hyperactivity in some kids. We give folinic acid which is supposed to help with that. I believe it's 400mcg of folinic for every 125mg of DMG. Kirkman's makes a supplement with DMG, folinic, and B12 all in one. That's the one we used and why I dropped it. I need to get regular DMG because of my son getting injectible B12 I'd prefer not to give him extra orally. I've heard TMG is similar, it just has an extra methyl donor. TMG can interfere with injectible B12 so I haven't tried it.

We've mostly used word of mouth from other parents. Most of our providers don't take insurance either. All provide forms to submit to insurance which I do myself and am sometimes able to get some reimbursement. I wouldn't discount a place that is used to working with younger children. We took a chance on our ABA trainer who had never done ABA with a child under age 10. She is absolutely wonderful with my son. He has responded better to her than to anyone that has ever worked with him.

I've seen reports of kids making speech and other gains with reintroducing milk. One theory I've read is that milk is high is cysteine which is one of the precursors to glutathione that a lot of autistics are low in. My son has gastrointestinal issues but GFCF hasn't seemed to help them. I'm getting ready to try SCD with him. I haven't found GFCF to be too hard unless we need to eat away from home. SCD looks like such a huge pain but I feel I need to try it a couple months. I like that SCD adds in dairy products like kefir and yogurt. At what age did your ds start talking in sentences? My 3.5 yo has been stuck on single words for the past 2 years. I've heard some kids never move past that but we do occasionally get a bit of combining but he always loses it. The Neuro is suspecting seizures which I really hope is not the case. We're doing an EEG next week.

Waiting for assessments is so hard. It took us almost a year to get our ds diagnosed. I wouldn't be so concerned if it is speech only. Look at nonverbal communication as well. My friends little girl is speech delayed but unlike my son she points to things frequently and uses a lot of nonverbal communication. My son does not do either. My ds has had several speech regressions so we are doing an EEG on him next week to see if he is having seizures.

My youngest ds is on GFCF. We have not gotten any noticable gains from it other than he started sleeping better while on it. That said I do think diet stuff works. My ds is so picky though so when we went GFCF he spent most of the day munching on GF cereal so I don't think it's a big surprise it didn't help much. What he needs is healthy food that is so hard to get him to eat. We have since ditched all cereal in an effort to get him eating better. My ds has a huge yeast issue so the bigger thing for him is very little sugar and grains. I'm trying to slowly put him on SCD diet right now. I've left in well cooked rice noodles and the occasional slice of GFCF toast right now but it does seem to be helping some. Whether it will be worth the huge inconvenience remains to be seen.

We hardly ever watch the DVDs. My dd isn't that crazy about them. She does really like LFC though. She says it is her favorite subject. I mostly pull them out to make sure we're pronouncing stuff correctly.

My dd did TT4 and went into Saxon 6/5 after. It is challenging for her after doing TT but it's working well so far. I think it is going to be a huge jump to go from TT4 to Saxon 7/6.

When my youngest was born we didn't have anyone. We wound up taking all 5 to the hospital with us. Dh wound up missing the birth though because he spent most of the time going back and forth with our then 14 month old. Luckily ds came pretty quickly and we were only there maybe 3 hours before the birth and since it was around 9 pm when i was admitted the kids mostly slept in the waiting room. Not really my ideal birth. Now that my oldest is almost 14 I'd just have her babysit. Of course now that we've lived here longer i have friends i could call but we'd moved here right before ds was born.

We did Vision Therapy with our oldest child (now 13) when she was 7 and it made such a huge difference for her. We paid $6000 for 15 months of weekly visits. She went from stumbling through the most basic sentences to reading short chapter books in around 9 months. We did wind up following up with more therapy at age 12 as she seemed to hit a wall. She did PACE/Master the Code combo which cost another $6000. It does get really hard to pay for all of these therapies but they have helped a lot. My dh is dyslexic and didn't learn to read until age 9. He actually did vision therapy when he was 8-9 years old and he remembered it helping him. I'm pretty sure my 7 yo son needs vision therapy as well but the high cost of it is difficult and our insurance doesn't cover it. I have heard of people getting coverage for it though. We've got a self funded policy that is exempt from state mandates and excludes all developmental disabilities (our state has a mandate requiring coverage for development disabilities). We're also swamped in medical bills for our son with Autism so there is no way we can add Vision Therapy right now as much as I'd like to. I'm going to try Barton with ds for 6 months and see if that will help. After that if he's not improving I may see if my mom could cover part of the vision therapy. She's in a position to do that but I hate asking. She just bought some therapy equipment for our younger son which was a huge help.

We were quoted $8000 but that is for a full panel evaluation. There would be several specialists there- at least psych, OT, and ST. Plus they are recommending an MRI, genetic testing, and a few other things. I'm still waiting for the final amount but I'm not going to be surprised if it is close to that. I don't think we are going to do it. For a standard psych eval we've been quoted between $1800 and $2300 for that but it is the psych only.

We had psych testing done through the school. We are looking into private testing and it's very expensive. We keep getting referred to Kennedy Krieger which I do think would do a wonderful evaluation but I have yet to figure out what that wonderful evaluation will do to help my child. We've heard Kennedy Krieger would run close to $8000 for an in depth evaluation. Even if insurance paid some I'm sure we'd be left with a hefty chunk left to pay. I'd almost rather skip the eval and just put it towards therapy.

Have you read this book? I think it is so interesting how the author thinks ASD, Autism, Asthma, and Allergies relate to each other. http://www.amazon.com/Healing-New-Childhood-Epidemics-Groundbreaking/dp/0345494512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308968611&sr=8-1 We just did IgG testing on our son and eliminated all gluten (he reacted to all gluten grains but not any others) and dairy. Ds had a reaction of 1 of 3 to them which is the lowest level but he has improved some with GFCF and is trying to talk more.

Try adding something with Magnesium before bedtime and see if that helps. You can get magnesium from baths with Epsom Salts which are very calming or just do a chewable supplement. My 3 yo son is a horrible sleeper. We give Melatonin along with Epsom Salt Baths and I put some GABA Magnesium cream on him right before bed. If I forget any of those things it is a horrible night. It's awful being tired. I can deal with so much more when I can get a decent night's sleep.

I wish this was true everywhere. I think OT is very important for a lot of kids. My district only provides services to those enrolled in school but they will do the testing for homeschoolers. I know other states will provide homeschoolers with services. I have my son with Autism enrolled and he does not get school based OT. My ds has sensory processing disorder, low tone, low trunk support, balance issues, and trouble with motor planning. The school says adaptive seating is sufficient. They actually don't keep OTs on staff at any of the schools and I haven't been able to find anyone in my county that has successfully gotten school based OT. On the one hand I'd like to get a lawyer because I think they'd provide it then but it would probably cost more than just getting private OT for ds. We went through the IEP process back in January and I'm just now figuring it out a little better. We just agreed to what the school offered which was definitely a mistake. All ds has on his IEP are academic goals. For someone with his sensory needs he really needs a sensory diet on the IEP and we are working with his private OT to come up with what we want before we request another IEP meeting. Also we are going to request that a county autism behavioral specialist observe my son in class and develop a Behavior Intervention Plan for him. I would ask for what you want soon. When we requested testing in January we had to wait until the end of March for results. The school is allowed 90 days to do the testing so it can take a long time if you wait until Nov to start the testing process. For the stims you may want to look into supplements. With my son we've had luck reducing things like his constant chewing on things by giving him extra zinc. He doesn't do any kind of hand or eye stims but I think magnesium may help with that. One good book to check out is Healing the New Childhood Epidemics http://www.amazon.com/Healing-New-Childhood-Epidemics-Groundbreaking/dp/0345494512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308931858&sr=8-1

I know our Ford Windstar could not accommodate 3 Radians across the backseat. I'm not sure about other models. When we went looking for a bigger vehicle we went straight to a 12 passenger van. We don't really need the space but the 12 pass was cheaper than the big SUVs we were looking at and being able to take extra people is nice. It just was hard to find one as it isn't a very popular item. Most dealers we called didn't even have one we could test drive. We wound up getting ours in another state and driving it home.

My son was only diagnosed 3 months ago and I still don't feel like I have a good treatment plan in place for him. I know we are doing as much as we can right now but I think I'm always going to feel like there are other things we should try. When I get down about it I try to focus on all of the things my ds can do. There are many 3 year olds with ASD that do not talk at all. My ds may have extreme difficulty using words but he is verbal enough that I can often figure out what he's trying to say and really that is a wonderful gift. I have a friend with a 10 yo with ASD who is still completely nonverbal. Most of my frustration right now is on the lack of coverage for ASD kids. Our policy covers very little and there are so many therapies I think would benefit ds but ruining our financial security to pay for them will not improve ds's quality of life either. When I took my son to OT the other day his therapist was telling me about a boy with ASD she used to do therapy for. He's getting ready to graduate from high school and doing well. This boy couldn't speak at all until the age of 4.5 so it really gave me a lot of hope for my ds.

My 11 had this and she wound up having a missing permanent tooth on the bottom as well. It's really not that noticeable with it being on the bottom.