Programs for non-verbal autistic children

Early Learning Early Learning General Discussions
1

I know there is at least one mother of an autistic child here. So it seemed semi-reasonable to ask here.

My cousin’s daughter, almost 3, has just been diagnosed with autism. She is completely non-verbal and has multiple sensory disorders. The little girl’s birthday is coming up and we’ve always bought all my cousin’s kids some clothes, a toy and a book for their birthdays and holidays. My mother mentioned a dvd program that was aimed specifically at autistic kids, but she can’t remember what it’s called and wasn’t sure if it was worthwhile anyway.

Anyone know what this program is and if it works?

She has just started therapy. At this point is only speech therapy, which seemed odd to me. Is that normal? What can we give her that will help her progress in conjunction with her therapy?

Any other resources?

Background for those concerned:
I’ve tried about 6 times to describe the situation, but there’s no way for me to say it without making my cousin sound like a bad mother. She is not, she is a victim of very unfortunate circumstances. She is not nearly as involved as the parents here. Her children are watched by someone even less involved during the day (because they cannot afford better care), and her husband is not a hands-on, play with the kids type of person either (and he works nearly 100 hours per week between 3 jobs). My family honestly thought her youngest hadn’t started talking yet because she was rarely spoken to. When we heard the diagnosis, we decided that we need to do something to help her (the daughter) no matter what the cost, but we still don’t want to be wasting our money. My cousin would not be able to afford anything that is not covered in the therapy. Before anyone asks, my cousin lives halfway across the country from me and has too much pride to accept financial help. Otherwise I would watch her kids for free, or pay for a better daycare, or something. We’ve already turned holidays that are typically not gift-giving holidays into excuses to send things for her kids. What kid doesn’t love a Canada Day gift?

2

Was she refering to this?
http://www.disability-resource.com/Autism/language-program-for-autism.html

This info may be useful too: http://www.disability-resource.com/Autism/autism-and-biofeedback.html

PS: My child isn’t autistic, but I remember finding years ago a information about a pilot research project with neurobiofeedback and language programs and children were improving. The problem is I can’t find that info anymore…

Andrea

3

I wonder if your mother may have meant this programme:

http://www.babybumblebee.com/I_landings/Austim_PDD.cfm

My daughter is not classically autistic, but is experiencing some difficult to define developmental disorder with a lot of very similar symptoms and challenges.

I had a sample DVD of the above programme and she got bored of it because of its extremely slow pace, so I never explored it any further. (Interestingly, YBCR although not designed to increase the vocabulary of an autistic child, was a great success and she did pick some new words from it as well as learned how to read them.)

Waterdreamer will be the best person to give you advice on this topic as she also, if I am not mistaken, lives in Canada. Your cousin’s daughter may be entitled to ABA therapy, which is the state-of-the-art therapy for autism.

As there is not much state support where I live (whether you have a diagnosis or not), I am trying to DIY-teach my daughter some skills myself based on ABA principles (I can’s afford private help). I am using this resource:

www.rethinkautism.com

which is great, although not free. It is, however, cheaper that hiring private help. I am aware that some families use it while waiting for their child to be placed into an ABA programme, since it is so important to start early.

4

Thanks for the advice. Apparently it was not either of those programs. My mom allegedly found it by googling, but I haven’t been able to find it. I’m going to have to ask her specifically what search terms she used.

I’m going to do more reading and see what I can find out for myself.