Autism can come in at many levels. Having an extremely autistic child can be very wearing on the family as they can be prone to behavioral problems. When my youngest son was in primary school they informed us that he was slightly autistic, although before this we had no such thoughts about him.
As a young baby he was prone to sickness after his feeds, he refused his bottle at the age of nine months but had no trouble reverting to a drinking mug, as a result at the age of twelve months he was out of nappies and clean and dry.
Even at night times he never had accidents so to us he was a model baby. He was fourteen months old when contracted what we call a gastric stomach he had bad diarrhea which persisted for three days, they took him into hospital and put him on a salt water diet for a couple of days which cured him.
The nurses were amazed with him as although he was so bad and they put him in nappies he never soiled one nappy, even at the age of fourteen months he made them aware that he would only use a potty.
He seemed so forward in many ways but he was very late walking, he was seventeen months before he walked but used to get around everywhere before that on his bottom.
He had a bad habit of sitting on the settee and rocking, backwards and forwards and hitting his head on the settee back. That was his only problem, apart from that he played quite happily with his older brother apart from the odd squabble of course.
His toys never lasted long as he used to take them apart, he always seemed curious about what was inside them. He wasn’t a naughty child and was extremely lovable.
As I said the first idea we had that he wasn’t progressing so well was when we called to the school, they said he wrote upside down and back to front which was signs of autism.
They told us that he could understand what he had written but they couldn’t. We were told that he should have tests and an appointment was made. The tests were done in hospital where they did a scan of his brain by placing lots of what looked like round disks attached to wires.
After it was completed they studied it and came back to us. We were told that although he was nine he had the mentality of a five year old, and it was possible that when he grew older he would become violent and very aggressive. This worried us a lot but they had no answers to what we should do.
Life continued and his difficulty at school continued, at the age of twelve he could neither read nor write. It was at this time that he began to have one to one lessons with a lady that was very patient and she taught him three times a week for two hours at a time.
After a few months of this intensive training he could read, write and spell correctly. He is a man now and he has never been violent or aggressive and is in fact the opposite. As I said at the start autism can be at more than one level. I do not have experience of extreme cases except what I have read in magazines etc, but it just goes to show that many can be taught if they receive the correct tuition and help.
