High functioning autism is a form of autism that doesn’t effect a persons ability to be independent or learn, but it severely impacts their ability to socialize and communicate. They struggle with making eye contact and often tend to miss social cues. They have a hard time making friends, tend to focus intently on one thing, have repetitive behaviors, sensory problems, and struggle with change.
After my son was diagnosed and I talked with the therapist about the connection between his behaviors and the diagnosis, I realized that the symptoms had been showing a lot longer than I had noticed. At 4 years old my son doesn’t have any friends that he wants to play with outside of daycare and in the daycare he doesn’t know how to interact with them, his knowledge of bugs is astounding and he gets so excited when he talks about them, and will have a meltdown if we stray from our evening routine. He also has trouble with being in public places and wearing shoes and socks. These small behaviors that I thought were just him being him, started when he was 2.
However, because high functioning autism only effects the person socially, you typically can’t tell the difference until the child is preschool age, and some people aren’t diagnosed until they are much older.
Most of the challenges we are facing with my son tend to focus around sensory processing. If there are too many kids in his classroom or we take him into a crowded place he gets overwhelmed. His sisters crying can send him into a meltdown and keeping shoes and socks on his feet is close to impossible. Sometimes, even the taste or smell of certain foods can send him spiraling.
Talking with his teacher, we started noticing that most of his behaviors typically started around 9 in the morning, when drop off was the highest. Because I work an early shift, my kids are usually dropped off at 7:15, and he has really good mornings until that point. In public places, like a grocery store or a restaurant, he very quickly becomes irritated or starts running around. These are typical signs of being over stimulated. He would cover his ears, or progressively make loud noises that I now know are part of how he copes. We have introduced headphones for public places and I am having a meeting with his teacher and daycare director about letting him wear them during the day.
Shoes and socks on the other hand is a bit more of a challenge. He HAS to wear close toed shoes at daycare because of some of the activities and field trips they do, but it’s hard for him. As soon as he gets in the car after daycare he is kicking them off, but he wants to go in places that require shoes to be worn. This is an issue that does not have an easy fix, but hopefully his therapist can give us some tricks to make him more comfortable wearing shoes.
Meal time is also a big struggle in our house. He either refuses to eat completely or will only eat certain food on his plate. I do give him daily vitamins to make up for what he doesn’t eat in meals, but surviving off of chicken nuggets and pizza doesn’t fly in my house. We are currently offering new and brightly colored foods, as well as letting him help pick the weekly meals. I also let him help me prepare our food and it has helped as far as vegetables, but meat is still a struggle.
Suggestions are always welcome on this page and I will try to incorporate some of them into our lives and let you know if they worked for us or not, but remember that just because some of them didn’t work for us doesn’t mean they don’t work for others. Remember to embrace your chaos and thank you for reading!
Embrace Your Chaos 