CrazedPhotoMom

Autism Speaks Video Gallery

When it was first brought to our attention that Nathaniel wasn't developing normally, Joe and I were kind of at a loss. We'd never known anyone or seen anyone with autism, other than "Rainman". It was difficult trying to determine what was normal behavior and what wasn't. We did a lot of reading and talking with doctors and eventually figured it out. My FIL sent me a link to a news story this morning and as I read it and viewed the video gallery, I realized how helpful this would've been during that time. The videos in their gallery are priceless. They show NT behaviors at certain ages and then in comparison what an autistic child is like. It is spot on. SPOT ON. Every video clip of the autism behavior I viewed was like looking at my Natey.

There were a few clip in particular that really stood out to me. One was of the kids looking at books. A NT child will look through the book and want to share it with his/her parent or really any other adult that's there. But when you see the autistic child, he/she will look through the book too but he/she HAS to hold the book AND turn the pages without help or input from the adult. I remember trying to read to Nate from an early age and all I got was him fussing and slapping at the book. It finally got to the point where I just quit trying because it was frustrating. Nate loved looking at books but it had to be on his terms. He chose the book, he held it, he turned the pages and we could NOT read the words...he turned the pages too quickly.

The other clip that stood out was one of the communication clips. It showed the difference in the babbling of a NT child to that of an autistic one. The autistic child's babble was lacking definitive recognizable sounds. It sounded like the child was speaking a different language. Nate STILL does this at age 4.5. He doesn't do it nearly as often since he now has quite a large vocabulary, but when he can't find the words he needs, he'll flip into the foreign language mode as we call it.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the link to the video gallery as it's an invaluable source.

Link - http://www.autismspeaks.org/video/glossary.php