 | |
Her First Four Years
 |
Like
many children with Asperger's Syndrome, Katie was born in the usual way
and was quite healthy. Both her 1 and 5 minute Apgar scores were 9. Her
head was so perfectly shaped that her pediatrician erroneously assumed she
had been delivered by Caesarean section when he saw her for the first time
two days after she was born. As an infant, she was very much like any other child. She started walking at
ten months, although she never crawled. Her eye contact was good
and she began speaking rather early. The only thing that made her seem
different was her sleeping pattern, or shall we say lack of sleeping
pattern. She rarely slept for more than an hour at a time and there was
no way to predict when that hour might come. She cried often and could
not be confined in any sort of contraption such as a swing, carrier
seat, playpen or walker. Car trips were torture. She would scream for
hours. She was pronounced "colicky" by everyone and it seemed
a reasonable diagnosis. The photo at left was taken in December, 1994,
when Katie was 11 months old. |
 |
By
18 months, Katie was exhibiting signs of hyperlexia, all of which went
unnoticed by us since we had never heard of the syndrome. We were too
exhausted and perplexed by her unpredictable behavior to notice much
else. She still did not sleep through the night. Her first real word was
"three." She became fascinated with text and her favorite part
of any video was the scrolling of the credits. At age 2, she began calling
out words that she saw on billboards or street signs from her car seat. Later, Katie's
hyperlexia would become an asset in that it allowed us to communicate
with her in writing when speaking failed, but at this point it masked
her language processing deficit and prevented us from realizing that we
had something other than a high-energy toddler on our hands.
|
 |
The
two years that passed between the photo at left, taken when Katie was
three, and the one above is the period we call the "Black Hole." It
is difficult to remember exactly what went on. Although Katie was never aloof or unresponsive to human
contact as some autistic children are, her moods were unpredictable and
no attempts to modify or influence her behavior were successful. We
couldn't take our eyes off her for a second because she was completely
unaware of danger. Twice she was taken to the emergency room for
stitches in her forehead. She
could be sweet and loving one minute and throwing a tantrum the next.
Violent behavior such as kicking, biting and screaming like a banshee
was common. She also began limiting her diet and showing other signs of sensory
defensiveness during this period.
|
Preschool
September, 1997
When Katie was almost 4, we enrolled her in a Montessori
preschool. We did our best to describe her behavior to
the director, but since we had no idea just what we were actually
describing, it did not amount to adequate preparation. Nevertheless,
Katie's entry into this wonderful program could not have come at a
better time. My first parent-teacher conference left me in tears, but
it also gave us the one piece of information we lacked. "She's not processing," the director said.
"It's not that she won't relate to the other children, she can't," she continued.
Processing? We were not familiar with the term "processing" when used in
that context, but were determined to investigate.
At about the same time as our school conference, we
accidentally discovered that Katie had a language problem. She could not
answer questions, even simple ones like "Do you want milk?". If we asked her anything she would simply repeat the
question. (Echolalia) Her speech, though fluent, was not really her own but rather a
collection of phrases and, in some cases, full sentences which she had
"borrowed" from her videotapes and from other people. Since
she was also able to read and had memorized every one of her books, she
had accumulated a rather large repertoire of language snippets. When she
needed to respond to someone, she would pull out whichever one seemed to
best fit the situation.
Why Montessori?
Visit our Montessori section to see how our experience with the Montessori
Method put us on the path to Real Progress.
Next
|
