Is My Son Autistic?

My son is 3 years old, about to turn 4 after Christmas. There have been things I've noticed about him that make me wonder if he might be autistic like me. Just little things and only occasionally, but there are things there making me suspect it nonetheless. We know that autism is (or at least can be) genetic, so it would completely make sense for any child of mine to potentially be autistic too. Before we dive in, I'm not saying that any given traits listed here are necessarily autism-related, rather that I feel there are too many of them to not at least consider the possibility of autism.

The first thing I've seen in him is that he seems to like lining things up neatly. I haven't seen him lining things up too often in the traditional sense, but he definitely likes building huge towers out of Lego and other things, which is essentially just lining things up but vertically instead of horizontally. He builds towers as big as he can with Lego, with Play Doh pots, sometimes with cushions. And I've found him lining things up on the floor like cars and dinosaurs before.

Something else he does is that when there's a loud noise such as a hoover or a hand dryer in a public toilet he'll cover his ears and complain that it's too loud. This is the one that I'm least convinced about being an autism trait because his sister does it too, and it never seems to actually upset him as such so I'm wondering if that's maybe just a child thing, but still. The possibility of autistic hypersensitivity can't be ruled out.

Speaking of hypersensitivity, he often complains that his eyes hurt. He had his eyes checked recently at the hospital and they found nothing wrong, which for me strengthens the case of it being a hypersensitivity to light. To be honest I haven't specifically noticed what his environment is usually like when his eyes hurt, but he has told me that it's when the lights are bright. I think it's definitely worth me noting down what the surroundings are like in future when he complains. The fact that he's had his eyes checked with no problems found is very similar to how I had my hearing checked several years ago because people noticed I couldn't hear them, yet the testing found that my hearing was fine. His eye pain could potentially be a light sensitivity just like my "hearing" issues are actually auditory processing issues.

After me mentioning that he might be autistic, my wife started to notice little things like he doesn't make eye contact that much. It's not something I've noticed myself, but that's maybe because I don't tend to do well with eye contact either. There's been times when she's had to tell him off that she's told him to look at her and he never does. It wasn't until I mentioned autism that she then realised that maybe that's why and demanding for him to look at her isn't doing any good. Because of my own aversion of eye contact, whenever I've told him off I've always told him to listen to me instead of to look at me.

He can be very hyper emotional at times. Sometimes when he shows this it can easily be put down to simply being a toddler and getting upset or throwing a tantrum as toddlers do. But other times it's not quite so subtle. When he watches anything on TV that even has the slightest bit of peril or threat he suddenly decides he doesn't like it and wants it turned off. It happened with Toy Story 1 and 2 when Buzz and Woody both lost their arms, it happened at the beginning of Ice Age when Scrat struggled to get that nut only to end up getting trampled on by a mammoth, and it even happened with the TV adaptation of The Gruffalo when the Gruffalo picked the mouse up to eat him, although he soon got used to that one. I think this is a sign of hyper empathy because he is a very caring boy and is usually happy to help or share with other people.

There are a couple of things that he is/was late at developing although I don't think that he's late to the point of being abnormal or causing a problem. His old childminder suggested that we had him referred to speech therapy because he was a bit behind but we've always put that down to him being born 8 weeks premature. The speech therapist wasn't worried and from memory I think they agreed with us. With that said there are certain sounds and words that he's currently struggling with saying so he's in the middle of being referred again, although from what we can tell it seems to be more to do with tongue tie this time than autism. We've also been trying to toilet train him for a while now, and it's only in the last couple of weeks or so that he's reached the point where he'll tell is he needs the toilet or he'll go to the toilet on his own so we've been able to completely switch him from nappies to pants until bed time. If I'm honest I think the main reason for him being delayed is that I've not been able to keep on top of training him like I really should have. He had gone backwards with toileting for a while until his nursery suggested trying him in just pants for a full day and he just took to it from there.

So there are a few reasons I think my son might be autistic. I'm not a psychologist or an expert but I think there's enough there to wonder about it. It doesn't make any difference to me or his mum whether he's autistic or not so we've got no plans to get him assessed. Whether he is or he isn't autistic nothing will change, and he's still the same handsome, funny, kind and caring boy that he's always been. All it means if he is autistic is that he's like me, which I can only see as a good thing.

I'm glad to be back to blogging after taking last week off. Let me know your thoughts and comments on this week's post and do the usual - subscribe with the button at the top, and follow me on Twitter @DepictDave. Also don't forget to send me your questions on Twitter using #AutQA for the Q&A post that I've got planned next week. You've only got 1 week to get your questions to me so do it now!

Exciting Things Coming

Just a quick post this week as I'm having a busy day and if I'm honest I haven't been mentally in the best place recently. I wanted to pop online anyway and give you a quick update of things that are planned/happening at the moment.

The first thing I want to mention is that the National Autistic Society is asking people to sign an open letter to all of the UK party leaders ahead of next month's general election. The letter brings to attention the fact that the updates to the government's autism strategy have been delayed because of this election, and it asks that the publishing of it takes a priority as soon as the next government is established. The existing autism strategy (entitled Think Autism ad published in 2014) is in place to support autistic adults by putting a duty on the government to produce guidance for local authorities to help them support autistics in a variety of ways including giving autism training for key staff and developing a clear pathway for autism assessment and diagnosis. The main update to the new strategy is that it will be extended to include children as well as adults. Please click here to read and sign the letter to the UK party leaders. At the time of posting this blog, they need just 600 more signatures to reach they target 5,000.

Second order of business is just a reminder to ask me any and all questions you've got over the next 3 weeks on Twitter using the hashtag #AutQA. I'll answer your questions in the 6th December Q&A post as that's the week of my first anniversary of being diagnosed.

I'm planning on taking a day to go out into York city centre for some market research to survey my fellow locals on their views, opinions and understanding of autism. I've always been curious to find out exactly what the people of York think and the logical/analytical side in me is keen to crunch some numbers and produce a report of my findings. With Christmas coming up it may be the perfect time to get out and find people to talk to so I'm going to aim for a day over the next couple of weeks or so and I'll keep you all posted.

Speaking of Christmas, I spent some time last night designing an autistic Christmas jumper that I'm looking to get printed for myself. Once I've got it I'll model it and post a photo online. The main reason I've designed it is for me to wear it myself, but I'll see what people think of it and if there's any interest in other people buying ones for themselves I might make a few more to sell. Who knows, maybe I'll end up following in the footsteps of some of my favorite autism advocates and creating my own autism clothing range!

The last thing to mention is that I'm looking at expanding the blog's online presence. I haven't really used Facebook for a long time now, but I'm thinking of creating a Depiction Of Dave Facebook page soon when I have the time to sit down and set it up properly. I'm also planning on re-branding my existing Instagram account to be a blog-only one. I've been using it as a personal account since I first installed the app in 2013 but I don't really post that much on it, so if I use it specifically alongside the blog I'll be able to increase my engagements and carve out another way to interact with you guys. Pinterest is another social media thing I'm keen to look at. If I'm honest I don't understand Pinterest but I know people and places that I can learn from as it's apparently a really good tool for bloggers to use.

I think that's everything I wanted to mention this week - just a quick one to keep you in the loop. As always, please follow the blog with the "Subscribe" button at the top of the page because it helps me out loads. Also feel free to follow me on Twitter @DepictDave. I'll keep you updated on any more social media pages as and when they happen, so there'll be loads of ways to follow me.

The Logic Of Death

I'm writing this the day after I had to have one of my pet rats put to sleep. Her name was Pebbles. She was old and she was the runt of her litter meaning that she was the more poorly one out of her, her sister and their mum who were all cage mates. She had a mammary tumour just next to her left fore leg and because of her age and her fragile health we decided it was best not to operate, but instead let her ride it out until her quality of life declined. That happened much sooner than I expected.

I like to think that I deal quite well with death, and I put that down to 2 things;

a) The fact that I've had countless different pets over the years and a number of them were put to sleep with me being there to see it, so I've experienced it enough to learn to cope. And,

b) I think autism helps me cope with it too. We autistics are often fiercely logical, so whenever I've experienced the death of a pet - or even a family member - I've always looked at the logical side of things. That's not to say that the emotions I feel are any less, but logic helps me cope with them. Admittedly I think I struggle to let my emotions out as much as I probably should do, but that's a separate issue. What I want to do in this post is look specifically at Pebbles' euthanasia and the logical way I processed (and still am processing) it.

The first and most obvious thing is looking logically at her age and her health to decide whether the risk of operating is worth it. We got Pebbles, her sister Ari and their mum Lennon from my wife's cousin because she wasn't able to look after them any more due to personal circumstances. We already had 2 rats called Sprout and Parsnip that we got from the RSPCA a couple of weeks earlier, and 4 out of the 5 rats had respiratory issues brought on by the stress of a new home. Pebbles was what the vet called "Patient Zero" as she was the one who was most affected by it and she showed the biggest improvement with the treatment they were given. Although she massively improved it soon became clear that she would probably never fully recover but she was well enough to have a good quality of life. Ari had a small lump that the vet noticed when we first got them and when it kept getting bigger and bigger we had it removed. A matter of weeks after that we noticed that Pebbles had a lump in the same place. It was just a small lump to begin with so we kept an eye on it to see if it would get any bigger. It did and the dilemma we had was whether to operate on Pebbles like we did with Ari, but we had to take into account that even though they're sisters they're 2 different rats with different levels of health. We also realised shortly after this that the trio were all older than we first thought, so with her age in mind as well as her respiratory issues we decided that operating was too risky and that it was better to just let her go when the time was right. Knowing that we considered these factors to make the right decision at the right time helped me to not feel guilt alongside the heartache of losing a beloved pet.

Another way of looking at it is that although we took them on, looked after them and cared for them as our own, the main reason we took on Pebbles, Ari and Lennon was as a favour to my wife's cousin who is going through a rough time at the moment. So we took the 3 rats on partly to help take the weight off her shoulders, and also to give the rats the best twilight years that we can as they definitely wouldn't have had that if we didn't re-home them. It gives me peace to know that we definitely did that. It's a shame that Pebbles didn't make it for as long as we expected, but again they're all older than we first realised so we now know that we probably won't have them for more than a year in total.

When we first got the mum/daughters trio we always planned to introduce them to Sprout and Parsnip (who I like to think of as the OG's as we had them first) and keep them all as cage mates, but because of their respiratory issues that wasn't a good idea to do right away. Following the course of treatment the vet said it would be best not to introduce the 2 groups at all because Pebbles wasn't likely to ever be fully healed. Now that Pebbles isn't with us any more we've decided to introduce Ari and Lennon to Sprout and Parsnip for a couple of reasons. The first reason is because rats are sociable animals who need to be kept in groups, or at the very least in pairs. Sprout and Parsnip are both only about 9 months old so we haven't had the same worry with them, but with Ari and Lennon being older we didn't see that we had a choice other than to introduce them otherwise when the next one dies it's going to leave 1 on her own which isn't good, and at least if we introduce them as 2 pairs instead of a 1 and a 2 it means that they've all got somebody that they're familiar with. The other reason we'll be introducing them is because the risk of their respiratory issues coming back is a lot lower now that the most prone one is gone. So the logic is that it's a blessing in disguise in this sense. As much as we love Pebbles, her not being here allows us to do what we were planning to do all along and keep all of the rats together in 1 cage. It protects the rats against ending up on their own when we lose any more of them, and it also works better for us in terms of only having to clean 1 cage out and so on.

The final bit of logic is the simplest one in that it's just the acceptance that death is inevitable to all of us and we all have our time. It was clear to me and my wife that it was just Pebbles' time. Rats only tend to live for about 3 years unless they're either really lucky or really well looked after, so the fact that Pebbles made it to 3 helps reassure us that she had a good long life despite the fact that we only took care of her for her final few months. Knowing my wife's cousin I've got no doubt that they were all looked after properly before they came to us so I'm sure she had a happy life as well as a long one.

While it's never nice to lose a pet I find that it certainly helps me to look logically at the situation and see what you can do with it. I think this applies to almost all aspects of life, and logical thinking is definitely something that is very common in autistics. It doesn't make the pain of losing a pet any better, but it does help me cope with it by analysing the reasons it happened and and the things that can be done with the situation I find myself in. I'll leave you with my favourite picture of Pebbles below, which I loved so much that I turned it into a meme. Rest in peace Pebs. Have loads of fun chewing everything in Rat Heaven.

This wasn't the post that I originally had planned for this week, but I hope you found it interesting or relatable. If you did, why not follow the blog with the Subscribe button at the top of the page, and follow me on Twitter @DepictDave.

[Image description: A picture of Pebbles sat on my shoulder and looking into my ear as if she's whispering to me. Pebbles is a white rat with a little bit of grey on the top of her head. The top caption says "Ssshhhh..." and the bottom caption says "Let me tell you a secret".]

Sensory Differences

At its simplest, autism is a difference in brain structure. This difference in the brain can cause all sorts of differences in how the autistic person experiences and processes any and all sensory stimuli. I briefly touched on sensory processing when I wrote-up my support sessions that I had a few months ago, but I wanted to go through some of the atypical ways my senses work in more detail.

There are 5 classic senses that everyone knows about; these being vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. During my support sessions when they asked us what we think the 6th sense is I joked about seeing dead people, but in all seriousness there are vestibular, proprioception and interoception, making 8 senses in all.
Vestibular is the sense of balance and spatial orientation, co-ordinating the two for movement.
Proprioception is the sense of positioning of the body and its parts in 3 dimensional space and involves the effort that's used in movement.
Interoception is the sense of what's going on inside the body and helps to understand whether you're hungry, in pain, tired etc.

With any of the senses, the person can be either over-sensitive (hypersensitive), under-sensitive (hyposensitive), or both depending on the person and the situation. Hypersensitivity can lead to things like meltdown through the stimulus being too much and triggering the person's fight/flight response. It can also cause burnout through the person having to process so much at once, especially if it's over a prolonged period of time. Hyposensitivity is often found in sensory seekers where they need to find or create additional sensory input to get the amount they need. I personally haven't had any experience of being both hyper and hyposensitive interchangeably, but it can change depending on the situation, the person and the sensory input.

The first of my sensory differences that springs to mind is my hyposensitivity to pain. This explains why I enjoy getting tattooed as it's a sensory seeking activity for me as much as it is about the tattoos themselves. It also explains why when I was hospitalised a few weeks ago with appendicitis I a) struggled to rate the pain out of 10, and b) decided it was around 6 or 7 whereas most people with appendicitis would rate it higher. It felt horrible as it was, so I dread to think what it would have been like if I had a neurotypical pain tolerance! My experience of getting admitted to hospital didn't help as I was on my knees in the A&E waiting area in agony and vomiting for quite a while before I was given a bed or any pain relief, but I digress. My last thing to mention in regard to pain processing also relates to my preference for chewing. Before I got my chewer I found myself biting my fingers to shreds and I often found it enjoyable to bite my fingers hard enough for it to hurt. I do miss the pain of it, but now that I've got my chewer it's much better for my fingers and I get enough out of it when I need to.

I've always been aware that my sense of smell isn't brilliant compared to most people. I do detect smells in the air but not always, and if I do smell anything it's often only after somebody else has mentioned it that I notice it. I also really struggle to identify what a smell is. Being a parent of 2 young kids has taught me to identify the smell of a nappy that needs changing (and sometimes even which child specifically needs changing!), but even then I don't always pick up on it. It's a similar thing with taste in that I often can't identify a certain taste without knowing what it is that I'm eating. But they do say that smell and taste are pretty much the same sense except one is in the tongue and one is in the nose.

The last one I'm going to mention isn't so much a hyper/hyposensitivity thing, rather it's more to do with the processing of it. This is my auditory processing difficulty. The example that I used in my autism assessment is that if me and my wife are both in the bathroom and one of us is in the shower while she's trying to talk to me, because of the noise of the shower I struggle to hear what she's saying even though I can hear her voice talking to me. My brain struggles to decipher both at the same time, so because the shower is the simpler one to figure out (it's a shower - it makes a shower noise) I can't figure out the words that Sarah is using despite the fact that I can hear her voice loud and clear. Looking back to when I was younger and used to go on nights out every weekend I now realise that my auditory processing issues were quite obvious back then as well. Everyone seemed to be able to hear each other absolutely fine over the music in whichever pub/club we were in but I struggled to make out what anyone was saying to me. This lead to people thinking that I needed to get my hearing checked when in fact my hearing itself has always been fine, it's just processing multiple sounds at the same time that I struggle with.

These are just the sensory differences that I'm aware of. I've been diagnosed for almost a year now but following diagnosis the journey of self-discovery and realisation can last a lifetime. There's also the fact that things can sometime change as we grow older, so I'm sure there are plenty of other differences that I'll notice and come to understand in myself as time goes on. Speaking of being diagnosed for a year, I'll be doing a special Q&A post on the week of my 1 year diagnosiversary (that's officially a word as of now), which will be in 5 weeks' time on 6th December. Please ask any and all questions that you've got for me on Twitter using the hashtag #AutQA and I'll answer them in that post next month. It doesn't even necessarily have to be about autism - depending how it goes I might answer some non-autism questions as well.

That's it from me this week. As always, please click the "Subscribe" button at the top of the page to follow the blog, and also please follow me on Twitter @DepictDave. It helps you keep up to date with the blog, and it helps me get the word out there for autism acceptance.