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Date:         Wed, 16 Dec 1992 20:20:33 -0500
              <AUTISM@SJUVM.BITNET>
From:         John G Doherty <jdoherty@WORLD.STD.COM>
Subject:      Our 6.5 year old PDD kids

Dear Deb Good of Duluth,
        Our son Brendon was officially diagnosed PDD at about 4.8 years
old, although we had our suspicions prior to the official diagnosis. It
seemed like a lot of the professionals knew more than they were saying,
but they each feared being the first to say the RAS word. His official
diagnosis is autism, as we were told that many service providers would
give us a blank stare if we said he had Pervasive Development Disorder.
This has proven to be good advice.
        Brendon was born to my wife Judy and her ex-husband in March of
'86, and I met him when he was three years old. It was clear he was
different: hand-flapping, squinting into lights, delayed & echolalic
speech and occasional odd vocalizations. On the other hand, he enjoys some
expressions of affection, and loves to be with other kids, even if the
mechanisms of formal games elude him. He also shows no self-destructive
behaviors, except perhaps for an undeveloped sense of dangerous
situations.
        Brendon entered an early intervention special needs/mainstream
class in January of  '91. He entered the kindergarten program in Sept. of
'91, and he is repeating it this year. He has made progress, and we have
lately been hearing more generative speech, often under his breath to test
its correctness. If you repeat these bits to him, he'll deny it. For
instance, at the end of a long day at my folk's house (with lots of
cousins, which Brendon loves), we were mounting the front steps to our
house. Judy  was running through the schedule verbally with Bud (BrendonUs
nickname): RFirst a bath, then you get in the pajamas, then to bedS. Bud
replied, "As you wish", sotto voce. When we repeated it, he exclaimed, "No
as you wish!", but he seemed pleased it was a successful volley. We're
pretty sure he picked up this phrase in context from Winnie the Pooh or
one of his other videos, and saw an opportunity to use it. These moments
of lucidity are the exception, although more frequent these days.
        Bud underwent SIPT (Sensory Integration) testing in August,  which
showed a wide  variance in his sensory skills. It took forever to get the
results, about three times longer than the tester told us. When it did
arrive, it of course was very top-heavy with jargon. Even though my wife
is a trained teacher  and I'm a college graduate, we found ourselves
re-reading sentences 3 or 4 times to make sense of it.
        The most difficult aspects of Bud's PDD day to day are the
communication problems and the fact that he is not toilet trained. I am
sure the fact that he goes weekends to his biological fatherUs house and
after school to his grandmotherUs are compounding the difficulty in toilet
success. Coming up with uniformity has been near impossible, although all
the involved parties have tried at times to present a unified approach
with schedules, rewards, etc.
        Last April, Judy gave birth to our daughter Caroline. Although I
would say the impact on Brendon has been strongly positive, so far it has
curtailed the toileting. With Judy quite pregnant, and now with an infant
& her needs, the stress of the training has been to intense to undertake.
We recently qualified for in-home O.T., though and we may be giving it a
bid again sometime after this retail season comes to a close (Judy is in
retail sales). Brendon seems to get the idea that Caroline is "one of the
kids" who will grow up in his house, and we see a real rapport developing
between them . Have others out there had a first born autistic who
benefitted from later mainstream siblings?
        So thatUs a long-winded response to your two line inquiry, Deb. So
what's your story?