New to LC board - help with hs a 5yo on the spectrum

[StaceyinLA]

I got some great tips and ideas from PeterPan when I posted on the General Ed board, but just thought I'd post here to see if anyone wanted to share some of their best ideas/tips for HSing a 5yo on the spectrum.

It's my grandson, and I told my dd I'd ask for some input. He's the 3rd of her 4 kids, and has done some private speech and OT, along with a group speech which was stopped due to Covid. His OT eval with that therapy center had to be rescheduled.

He talks plenty (and repeats tons), but still has some issues really explaining himself and what he wants. I think he functions fairly well, interacts and plays with his siblings, wants to hold the new baby, plays with and shares with cousins (big strides over the last year), etc. He's smart, memorizes everything, recognizes all the letters, numbers, and can write them. She really wants to start doing some things with him while he's such a sponge, and I'm looking for ideas!

[PeterPan]

Hey, welcome to LC! What is your dgs support level for his ASD? Usually they'll say something like 1, 2, or 3. 

When you say he repeats tons, is he scripting? My ds, for instance, would repeat whole paragraphs from audiobooks. He'd come up and tell us about a show, but he was literally telling us the lines from the tv show (about sharks, whatever) straight. And we didn't realize it, because maybe we hadn't watched the show. So that's something to look for, whether the language is original in say a narration (when he's telling you about what he watched/read/did) or whether it's largely repeated. Scripting is a normal stage of language acquisition, not something to squash definitely. But if it's going on, you want to know so you'll be focusing on language. You can pretty much never go wrong focusing on language.

You might consider a set for narrative language like this https://mindwingconcepts.com/collections/early-childhood/products/braidy-the-storybraid-quick-start-free-icons  which is targeted at his age. I think we mentioned to you narrative language and linked the methodology page, but you might not have seen yet how cute Braidy is. 

Is he going forward with math, etc.? That's so exciting. My ds has SLDs on top of his ASD, so I forget what it's like to teach a child who's different, lol. She's totally right to be pushing forward in areas of strength as well. I think every kid is just different on the when. I remember one of my ds' friends with ASD memorizing states when he was maybe 6/7, and ds is just now ready at 11. Seriously.  But if he's ready, that is awesome, go for it.

You might find this book inspiring https://www.amazon.com/Just-Give-Him-Whale-Fascinations/dp/1557669600/ref=sr_1_1?crid=14GEMHQFUVWFA&dchild=1&keywords=just+give+him+the+whale&qid=1589506307&sprefix=just+give+him+the+%2Caps%2C369&sr=8-1  It doesn't mean you need to buy the book. It's more just a concept, so you could skim what's online and go oh yeah, makes sense, got it. 

https://www.aapcpublishing.com  This is one of my FAVORITE places to look for books on autism, because you can be guaranteed everything here will be really high quality. Almost any topic you're dealing with, like how to handle pottying or teaching conversation or teaching cooking/life skills or social skills or even what evidence based practices are for education and how to do inclusion instruction (LOVE the Nest approach) etc. will be here. And if you're like oh I don't have money to buy a billion books, well then don't. Almost all of these people/authors will have given talks at major conventions or workshops, so you can often find their websites, videos of their lectures, pdfs of their slides from their presentations, all kinds of things. Lots of free learning there when you know what to look for.

If you really want to get wild, try to hit an autism convention. There are several at a national level. I go to OCALICON and a lot of the big players show up there every year. https://conference.ocali.org

[StaceyinLA]

As far as I know, he has not been given a support level. Some of his evals were put on hold due to Covid. We are hoping those will be rescheduled soon.

He mostly repeats stuff he's heard - yes.

I don't know that we have identified strengths per se - we just know he knows and recognizes all letters and numbers, and he has been writing them all for a while as well. We had no idea he could do it - he just did it one day.

He wasn't super delayed with potty training or anything. I think he was around age 3, so not dramatically later than his siblings, although he was a little more unpredictable with #2, occasionally going in places other than the potty (though not in his undies). 😜

He loves all things sensory - just thrives on it - so she's definitely incorporating a lot of that into his days.

I got the Play Project book you recommended in the other thread on my Kindle, and I'm gonna start reading that ASAP. It looks really interesting.

Thanks so much for the other resources. I'll start checking them out!

[PeterPan]

8 hours ago, StaceyinLA said:

He mostly repeats stuff he's heard - yes.

https://www.northernspeech.com/speech-language-acquisition/natural-language-acquisition-in-autism-echolalia-to-self-generated-language-level-1/  Something to get you started. There's a book and there are two CEU courses. I'm not necessarily saying buy the course but more just watch the brief free intro video so you get the idea. 

Another good thing to consider reading about is hyperlexia. https://www.linguisystems.com/Products/37612/the-basic-reading-comprehension-kit-for-hyperlexia-and-autism.aspx  This happened to my ds, where he was reading beyond his ability to comprehend. So while she's going to want to go forward with reading, it's REALLY IMPORTANT to watch for complete comprehension with kids with ASD. 

https://www.amazon.com/Kelly-B-Cartwright/dp/0325026939/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2KYXF29ZS40GR&dchild=1&keywords=word+callers+by+kelly+cartwright&qid=1589687096&sprefix=word+callers%2Caps%2C166&sr=8-1  This is the book I ended up using with ds.