Hey Everyone !! Just wanted to start my second blog by remembering back to when my son was young. He was a seemingly 'normal' kid. Transitioned well into Kindy and School, enjoyed his time there with no noticed issues. During Primary School, much of the same continued. He acted as though he enjoyed school, made some nice friends, had birthday parties, went out to a lot of kids activities and had family events, as most kids do. His School work was going very well, really no issues that anyone could tell. There were the occasional "strange" happening that we did notice, but really placed no weight on it. When kids are young it is easy to excuse what they do and explain it away as just a personality quirk or they're having a bit of an off day after being sick with the flu. There is a myriad of things we could say. But when you learn about developmental disorders, the traits that are common, reflect on your child's behaviour and think about what happened all those years ago, light bulbs start going off. As I have mentioned, everything is good in hindsight, but if we knew, at the time, what "could" have been an issue, we may have investigated it a bit further, thereby hopefully preventing what has been, for my son, many years of mental pain and torment, not knowing why he thinks the way he does, which affects his behaviour, decisions, ability to concentrate, have friends, relate to people, feel good about himself... it is a long list. I am rambling, but I wanted to tell you the signs that 'were' there early on....the ones we missed, which could have given us a clue.
So, when my son about about 12, he always complained about wearing socks. Yes, socks. "What"? You think "no big deal right'? A strange thing to worry about. He didn't like how the internal stitching felt on his toes. 'Hmm. Weird I thought' So he started wearing them inside out. Also didn't like the texture of certain foods. Apples apparently hurt his teeth (which were very healthy), didn't like crunchy or slimy texture. I can eat anything, so thought again "weird". He also didn't like stitching from inside of T shirts. You know, some are stitched together in panels like a quilt. He said that was scratchy. Well it turns out, one of the signs of ASD (Autism) is hypersensitivity to textures and the way some things feel. Well, 'who knew'? I did not know that then.
Socially, as my son got a bit older, he tended to want to be more on his own. I remember taking him to a school disco, and within 10 minutes he wanted to go home. He stood there, looked around, saw a few friends and came back to me desperately wanting to leave. I did not understand why, but we did go home. Another occasion, my Mum took him to something similar - same thing. She said he walked around on his own. Saw a few friends quickly, stood in line for a while to get a drink, and then wanted to leave. Turns out a trait of ASD (Autism) is not being comfortable socially. Also at a disco, there is the possibility to oversensitivity to noise, lights etc (that is the hypersensitive trait coming in again). Well, at the time, again, this is something that can just be dismissed as the child being 'difficult', maybe he just had a bad day ? These events singularly do not really point to anything, but when seen as a group, if you know what to look for, it could be a warning to keep an eye out. This is why parent education is important. Well, I have babbled on enough for now, but see 'the clues are in their behaviour'. Sometimes there may be a deeper reason... just want you to bear that in mind. Signing off for now …..
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