What’s wrong with Alice

On one of the comments, I was asked what was wrong with Alice. That’s why I decided to tell you more about it today. I will say at once that I will try to write as objectively as possible, but not the fact that it will turn out 100%, because it is difficult to talk about your child omitting emotions and leaving bare facts. For those who for the first time on my channel — I write mainly about the daughter, but sometimes gets and the son. Alice has sensory alalia, autism, mild mental retardation, and ADHD. Ruslan is healthy.

In this article, I will not tell you how we work with all of the following, because then I will not limit myself to one article. So, the facts:

1. Speech. Alice’s biggest and most important problem is speech. She doesn’t understand it. For example, I say to her: “come here”, she hears, but the brain does not process this signal correctly and for her it may sound like “tpynevnyobfr”. Imagine that you are in China, everyone around you is talking, but you do not understand anything. That’s about how it works with speech comprehension. Now she already understands simple everyday oral instructions, but to a full understanding of speech as to the same China on foot. Based on this, she can’t speak correctly either. She has five words in her vocabulary: “mom”, “dad”, “Baba”. “give”, “go”. For her, speech is a background to which she is accustomed, but which does not carry any meaning.
2. Thinking. Alice’s intellect is preserved, but due to the fact that she does not speak, thinking develops in a different way. Of course, because of the lack of understanding of speech, it lags behind its peers in development, what they learn with the help of speech, it comprehends in a different way, something remains inaccessible, something is mastered later. It adapts to the world using available resources, hence the autistic traits. So there are tantrums, as an attempt to explain that she does not want something. In order to understand some task it is not enough just to read the instructions, from this it will be neither cold nor hot. She understands clearly, so she has mastered the tasks, the performance of which can be shown and this will be enough for understanding. A vivid example of such a task-Lotto, puzzle, pyramid. More complex tasks, such as “the fourth extra” is much more difficult to explain clearly. In order to complete this task, the child must know the names of all items, understand which group they belong to (Cup, fork, spoon, Bicycle-what word is superfluous?), it is difficult to master this without understanding speech. It is difficult to follow a pattern. For example, we put a house made of colored sticks and ask her to put the same one next to it. If you put on top of the finished house, it will cope, but not near. Alice remembers well visually and can lay out a word from memory, such as “meadow”, but if you ask her to give a card where this word is written, then she can not do it. Simple and familiar words, especially those that sound in everyday life, she already knows, for example, if I ask her in the Elevator “press the button” she will choose our floor and fulfill the request, but if I ask her to press the button in the new room, which will be located on the table, she will not understand me.
3. Game. She is attracted to object-manipulative activity: towers of cubes, puzzles, Lotto, animal figures, which she sorts by various characteristics (by the way, it is easiest for her to sort by external characteristics-size, material from which they are made, colors, etc., by groups “home”, “wild”, that is, it is much more difficult to make more abstract, 100% true, she does not do this). Can feed the doll, pour her tea, but does it only at my request, after I show how to do it, she is not interested in it. The first role-playing game she had almost 7 years old, when my dad grabbed his back and I put him injections. Alice herself (this is just a breakthrough) took a syringe without a needle and also put dad injections. It was a very big step, it shows that thinking is developing, because the story-role-playing game is one of the key ways to master social interaction. So far, this is the only such game Alice has.
4. Mode of life. Everything here is quite settled, she can serve herself and even help me. She cleans up the dishes, goes to the toilet on her own, dresses, and so on. I wrote about this in More detail here.
5. Communication. She is able to show gestures “Hello”, “bye”, can shake hands. To other people is easy, they are not particularly interesting to her. She is not drawn to children on the Playground, if a child approaches her and asks a question, she often ignores it. It happens that she liked the child, most often she likes small children 2-3 years old, then she can watch him, can come up and kiss or Pat on the head (I will say at once that she alone does not walk on the site and touches children only with my permission, which I, in turn, ask the parents). The contact goes no further than that. In the kindergarten group, she greets the children when she comes, says goodbye when she leaves, they can perform some task together, such as playing with a sorter, taking turns dropping items into the desired slots. In a group, they are taught to interact with each other (normal kindergarten, group “special child”), but still more often they play with themselves.
6. Food. Alice can’t eat soup as usual, just mashed soup. Moreover, up to 1.5 years, she perfectly ate ordinary soups, and then stopped. In the group, many children have this problem. Same with porridge. Second, it is well to eat, for example chicken, chicken, cereal. Set of products. Which she eats is also limited, making her try a new product is almost impossible, she will refuse, close her mouth, spit it out.
7. Sensorics. Alice does not like loud sounds, they cause her discomfort. In the Elevator, when the doors open, she covers her ears. If there’s loud screaming voice, especially the high voice, too, closes his ears, trying to get away. It happens that I bring her to kindergarten, and one of the children screams (we have a specific group, there are few children who speak, so it happens that the child has not slept or is not in the mood or Vice versa terribly happy and shouts about it), in this case, Alice can start crying. Now she has begun to try to influence the source of the noise, she can go and touch the child to silence him. At first, she could hit on the hand, tried to push away if he was near, but we figured it out in time and accustomed to the fact that you can not do so.
8. Attention. It’s hard for her to hold her attention for long. On the street it is necessary to constantly monitor her, she herself can not assess the danger of approaching, for example, a car. Half an hour of monotonous activity she can still stand, then tired and distracted.

In General, on the street or in public places she behaves quite adequately, if sometimes hysterical, from the more like a rude child because she could fall to the ground, trying to run away from me, crying etc. Only here to comfort her at such a moment is extremely difficult, if bred, then bred, to persuade her will not work, she does not understand, only to switch on some action that the street is not always possible. I am glad that such tantrums do not happen often, the last one was a few months ago, and before it almost a year there were no similar ones. There is also self-aggression, for example, when I do not allow her something, and she really wants to, but she does not want to cry so much that she can beat her hand on her forehead, then she becomes sorry for herself and she begins to cry. At the age of 3 years, she tried in such situations to beat her head against the wall or on the floor, but it is very painful and gradually she came to this option. Since we’ve figured out all these tricks, we don’t fall for them, but she hasn’t given up on them yet.

I do not know how accurately I described everything, a lot of some small moments that distinguish it, but the most-most I tried to convey.