Monday Live: Is Your Child Autistic or Not?

Hey, good morning. Good morning. How are you doing today? I'm doing a live on Monday and we're going to talk about is your child autistic? And the reason why I wanted to make this is basically because one of my, one of the parents who, who I've been like talking to, she said, hey, Ming, after looking at my child for like some times now, like, I, I've seen her child's videos a few times. And then she says, oh, what do you think about her language ability? What's her diagnosis and what is the, you know, do you think that she has anything other than language issues? Well, first of all, I want to tell you that for all the videos that you will send me, or you would, or you shall or you might send me, I cannot make a diagnosis. It's just against the rules to do so. And I would like to stick to the rules even if I'm not in a place where I need to stick to the rules, especially on the Internet. Because you don't really need to stick to the rules on the Internet. I can say whatever I want. But I'm going to tell you that for full on diagnosis, you will need a full on assessment. And that usually entails that, you know, a therapist looks at your child for quite some time, like maybe like an hour at least, right? So she asked me, hey, do you think that my child has autism or anything that might be of concern? So if you have a therapist who is not a psychologist or a doctor, tells you that, oh, I have a concern for autism, or like, oh yeah, your child's autism, please go get a diagnosis, or they just tell you bluntly, just straight up and say that, oh yeah, there is the autism and you have to be careful. You have to be very careful, right? Because what happens is that, you know, if someone can neglect the rules and actually tell you something like that, that means that they're not being careful about the words. As a service provider. Right. So does your child have autism or not? Well, it's very easy to actually answer that question, right? I would say that after three is a much more safe range to do like a diagnosis. And basically why is because I've seen a few times where the child seems to be fine, has been talking, communicating, and then three comes boom, loses a few words and starts going on to other things and into their own world. Right? And this happens apparently because, well, I read this in like a textbook and then my, my previous boss back in Hong Kong, my first job, usually talks. It talks about it a lot, right, between like two and a half to three. A child of a ASD child. Well, a brain of an ASD child changes. Just something changes inside and then basically. Oh, that's why they call it. It's like a neuro. It's like a neural kind of disorder because the brain kind of changes the wiring or something like that. I'm not an expert at this in any other. In any way at all. This is a huge disclaimer. I do not know much about anatomy, physiology, and also brain functions. I have a very basic understanding good enough for my work. And that's it. Okay. So much safer to do it after three, right? So before two, does your child have autism? Well, the best way is to get a rapid. Like a rapid screening test, right? Which is kind of accurate, apparently. But the. The matter of fact is you can't do it now. You can't do it over the Internet. There are questionnaires where you can fill out, but it's very suggestive. You know, I mean, like, the questions that they ask you are very. I can go in any way. That's what I mean. You know, they can ask you, oh, does your child have any, like, repetitive behaviors? Whatever. But, you know, everyone has repetitive, repetitive behaviors, right? And for myself, I also have repetitive behaviors. Like my. If my girlfriend is here in my house, I go out to grab something, I will still lock the door by accident with the keys outside. That's repetitive behavior, right? That's a habit. So when you're filling in those questionnaires online or wherever, you really need a professional to read it and you need to give examples. And it's very suggestive for the questionnaire to tell you, oh, yeah, does your child have any repetitive behaviors? And then you write it down. You take yes or you press take. Then they keep on asking you about different things like, oh, do they have any stimming? Do they have any, like, do they have any language deficits? Right? And then it becomes very apparent that, oh, my child really does have autism or something. So when you do those online questionnaires, you have to be careful. You always have to have a professional who can look at that questionnaire and validate it. Is it valid, that kind of questionnaire? Or else you're kind of doing it for like, what's that called? It's kind of like horoscopes, right? You kind of do like a questionnaire for horoscopes. So one time a parent was like, oh, yeah, I did this online questionnaire for my child. It says that he has autism. I'm so scared. What should I do? And I'm like, hey, don't listen to that thing. Wait till they're three and then go get a real assessment by a psychologist or something like that. Right? So you might say that, okay? So I don't care for the assessment. I know for a fact that my child is different. In many cases they say like special individual needs. And I. And autism is something that I think should be labeled for my child. Right. And you have to be very careful here because autism is like very easily over labeled. Like generally after. Before it wasn't called like autism spectrum disorder. Right. And we did talk about this before, is that if you have the word spectrum in it, it makes it much easier to actually diagnose autism. It's easier to fall inside. And that is a good and a bad thing at the same time. And nowadays a lot of children, actually a lot of people are throwing the word autism around, especially in Indonesia where I am right now, they call it autism or something. They skip the autistic, I don't know, Indonesian language. So they call it autist and they like to label everyone autist. Right. I had a. Not a friend. He is a friend. My, my student, a little guy, 5. He's got like a genetic disorder labeled autism for no particular reason. Don't understand. Right. It's impossible that a child would like his characteristics with genetic disorder with like motor deficiencies call him autism. And what do you get from that? Nothing. Literally nothing. You get nothing from that other than, you know, the mom being very unhappy about it. Right. So now we have to answer the question, does your child have autism or not? Well, there are some telltale signs that I feel like I feel. Okay, so subjective, very subjective, not very objective here. If you want to see it, just go to like, you want to see something objective, go find someone who can talk about it. But since you're here and you're listening to me, you're going to have my subjective points. Okay? I'm going to disclaim, put a huge disclaimer to protect myself. I'm going to say I don't know much about autism. I've only worked with them for like how many years now? Seven years now. So I don't have like, I don't know how to diagnose. I'm not supposed to diagnose, but I'm going to tell you what I see is a huge problem. Okay? So number one sign, shall we say? And you know, I'm saying this because, you know, a lot of parents are very Interested in this. They're like, oh, what signs can I look out for? Right? Okay, so sign number one is obviously not responding to their names, right? This is like one of the most obvious signs, right? If they don't respond to your names, there's a part of it that's like autism, it might be. Or the other part is like really language delayed and they don't know why they should talk to you. Right? So if they don't respond in any way, then, you know, that might be a problem. All right, Second sign. Second sign is that they become very rigid towards a way of talking to you. Okay. And let me explain what that means. Okay, so, so like if your child, we were talking about like hand pulling, right? If your child is like over six, right? Or three to six or above, they're still hand pulling you. They're still trying to like get your attention by pulling your hand, even though they know how to talk, then you have to think about, hey, how come that's the case? If a child is like developing and understanding how the world works, they would have already stopped pulling your hand if they know how to talk. Because basically when you talk, it's much more efficient than pulling your hand, right? Because you just move like these small muscles. It's more efficient in terms of energy. That's why we just call someone from far away. We don't stand up and walk and go tag someone and pull them over just to tell them to do something for us. So therefore, the second sign is that even if your child knows how to vocalize, how to talk, they're not using it to communicate, they're using it for other purposes. When they want to talk to you, they still pull you. They still use physical means to get to you. The third sign is that, hey, man, if your child right now is using the sounds and the words for excessive. Excessive. I mean, like all the time they're talking about like different things that you're not interested in out of the context. They're not using language correctly. They're using language to entertain themselves. What we call verbal stimming, then it's also a huge sign, right? So these three, I think are the biggest, right? Because whereas length delayed children, they also cannot use language well, but it's not like they will use it incorrectly. They will use it correctly. And this is what we call language use or pragmatics, if you will. If you search about it, just search like language use or pragmatics. In autistic children, usually what this means is that they do not Use the correct way of talking to you. They, they don't have the functions of language. They don't care to communicate at all. Therefore, when they do, they use it inappropriately. And inappropriate is the, I think it's the best word to. Socially inappropriateness is the most, is the best way to describe autism. Right. You do something in the, in the, like, in the way that we, the society cannot accept it. Right. For instance, you can't get what they want. They start to throw a tantrum. Instead of, you know, you know, telling on someone, like complaining to a teacher, to a higher authority, instead they take it to their own hands and they flop on the floor. Right. And this is not only for children. There's also adults who are on the spectrum who are like that, Right. And they don't know a lot of things. They don't know if we're talking about higher level autism. They don't know the appropriate distance between a person talking. Like, let's say that if we're, we just met and like you just met someone and you're introducing yourself, autistic man or a woman would come up really close to you or be really far from you. They don't know how to assess what's the appropriate business. So the biggest thing about it is appropriateness. And you can only know if you have enough trials to actually talk to your child. Right. To actually have them socially interact with you. And a lot of parents ask me, actually loads. This is one of the most asked questions, like, oh, can my child actually interact with other children? You know, I've sent them to preschool, to kindergarten, to playgroup. They're not playing with other children. Does that mean they're autistic? No, because how a child like develops in terms of social is that first of all, they need to learn how to play with us first because we're adults. And then they will learn how to play with their peers. Right? Which is a huge shift, Right? Because when you have an adult, you shift towards a peer. They have to feel safe, right? So whenever they're with us, they're safe. Whenever they're outside with other people, they don't feel safe. And the situation is that a lot of parents skip the phase where they're okay with the play with the children, and then they throw them in the playgroup when they're two. Because nowadays it's crazy. The education system is crazy. If you don't do a playgroup by the time you're like one and a half, you're falling behind. I don't believe that I'm not a parent, obviously. Maybe when I have a kid, that'll be very different. How? I think maybe I'll throw them in the playgroup when they're like, six months or something. But what I mean to say is you're skipping some milestones here if you're thinking like that. Okay, so if they're like six or five and they're not interacting with, like, peers or even four, let's say four, then not interacting with peers. Yeah. Maybe you have to be concerned about the social ability. Right. So it's not always the case. Not always the case that being unable to socialize with peers means autism. All right? It's really about the appropriateness of how they, like, go to. Into these social situations. Okay? It's always about appropriateness. Are they doing it correctly? Even if they can talk in long sentences, they can still be very inappropriate. Right. You know, if you're watching this and you have a child on the spectrum, then you will know better than I do, you know? You know, sometimes they might start a conversation with someone totally, totally wrong. Right. And what I mean by wrong is, like, you know, starting with, like, reciting a phrase from Star wars, something like that. Okay. So there are some other signs that, you know, a lot of therapists around, I believe, do talk about, and I think it's not as prominent. And what I mean by prominent is, like, it's not as. It's not as, like, I see it, and I think, oh, no, it's autism. Right. So number one is hand flapping. You know, like this one. Babies do it a lot. Do you ask me why? I don't know. Something to do with sensory, I guess. But when a child. Hand flaps. Yeah. Obviously, this is like a very baby thing. Right. So when someone is delayed, they would, like, flap their hands until, like, they're three, which is still, like, delayed. So I don't. You know, I've seen it, like, once they know how to talk, that disappears sometimes. Most of the time, I would say I cannot give you any numbers because it's just impossible. Right. But hand flapping is not something you should be looking into. Okay. Number two is like tiptoeing. Tiptoeing. Is it only about autism? No. I mean, like, if someone has a sensory disorder, that will happen as well. And a lot in the case of, you know, children who are delayed, a lot of children who are delayed actually tiptoe. But autistic children, you know, go through it in a more crazy sense. They're extremists. Right. They do things to the extreme. So if you see them tiptoeing, they do it to extreme. They always try to do it. And that's because of their, like, the rigidity. It's not really because, like, it's not because they're autistic, therefore they tiptoe. It's because, you know, they already tiptoe because of sensory issues. And then because they're. They have some autistic tendencies, they take it to the extreme and they keep on doing it. Right. So that is something that you have to be aware of. Right. And then let me just open, like, Facebook on my computer so I can see if anyone's typing any questions, just in case. Just in case. Right. So other than that, what other telltale signs, like, other therapists say, right? Oh, yeah. Eye contact. Eye contact is a big one. Eye contact is something that the therapists always say. Right? They always say, hey, man, your child, I think he's autistic because he don't look or, like, there's a lack of focus. What do you even mean by a lack of focus? Right. And that is a word that is thrown around to me. They always say, like, I always keep on saying. Always keep on saying, oh, your child has a lack of focus. What do you mean by lack of focus? All children cannot focus at all. A lot of, you know, when you're talking about children who are two years old, you have their, like, you have their attention for, like, 10 minutes. That's very good already. So I always do not like when people say, oh, because your child cannot, like, have eye contact. Therefore. Therefore they are autistic. Or there's a. There's a. There's a risk for autism. But you have to understand, we did talk about, like, eye contact for a very long time. And this channel or this Facebook page, you can just go to my channel or the Facebook page and just search for eye contact. We did talk about that a lot. Okay. It's not something that. Again, it's not like, oh, your child doesn't have eye contact, therefore is autistic. It's not like a straight line kind of reasoning. It's not. All right. I've seen a lot of delay children who don't like to look at us for many reasons. And I've seen a lot of autistic children who love looking at me. All right? And their moms and everything. Okay. So it's not because of that. All right. Okay. So another characteristic that a lot of parents or therapists like to talk about. Oh, lining up stuff. Lining up certain toys, lining stuff up. Does that mean autism? No. Again, no, that's not true. To be honest, all children go through a phase of lining up toys. I mean, if you think about it, I've done it before as well. Huh. And why is it like. And a lot of toys actually teach you how to line up stuff as well. For instance, you know, if you've seen any toy to do with, like, Noah's Ark, right? All the animals are lining up because they're going on to the ark. And if you've ever played any toy that involves, like, Lego. Yeah. Gonna line them up and stack them up. Is that, like, autistic? Not really. It's just, again, if a child is autistic, they have, like, rigidity, and they have, like. They take things to the extreme. So if they line stuff up, they're gonna line up to the most perfect according to them. Okay? So that's the. That's the root cause. The root cause is not autism. Autism pushes them to the extreme. That's what I mean. Okay? And another sign that parents or therapists like to tell me is like, oh, yeah, this child likes to watch look at spinning things, therefore they have autistic tendencies. Come on. Don't say that. If you're a therapist, and you're saying that. If you hear a therapist stand there saying that, that's irresponsible. All right? They're not sticking to the rules. We have rules about talking, like, commenting about autism. Right. Obviously, I'm doing it rather freely because I gave a huge disclaimer where I'm stupid. I don't know things about autism. You're only hearing this as my personal view. So if you're okay with that, then keep on listening and take a huge grain of salt with it. This is from my experience. It's not from any book out there, okay? And if there's any therapist at all that is outside who is not a psychologist able to diagnose autism, tells you that. Oh. Because your child is, like, spinning stuff and looking at spinning things, therefore it's autism. Or if there's a teacher who says that to you, then, hey, man, don't listen. Do not listen to that person. Do not care to listen to that person because he or she is labeling your child based on a very small behavior, which is not cool. All right? Which is not cool at all. Everyone likes spinning things. Let me give you a reason why. Have you guys played the spinning top? Right? It's in the movie Inception. Right? It has been very popular within, like, toy stores. They even have like cartoon based on spinning top. It's called Beyblade. Does it mean that everyone that watches it and likes to play Beyblades buy the adult version of a spinning top. They're all autistic? No, of course not. Right, so don't do it. Everyone likes spinning stuff. To be honest, rather than that, you know, like when I was young, I would like to watch my yo yo. That spends a lot with like the lights and stuff. Does that mean I am autistic? No. Uh huh. Maybe I am. I mean, I don't know. I've never done an assessment, right? But yeah, don't think that because they like to line up stuff. They like to look at things spin, make things spin and it makes them autistic. It's not like that. They like it and therefore they're like. Because they are autistic. Autistic because they are on a spectrum, therefore they take it to the extreme again, right? So don't think that because of that, it makes it like, it becomes like a trait for autism. All right. What is a trait for autism is that they do it inappropriately. They do it inappropriately. Like they do it too much and you can't stop them, right? So if your child is one of those, you know, where, you know, you tell them to stop and you really want to touch the water in, in the, in the fountain in a mall and you're like, nope, you cannot. And then they just like keep, they have this like crazy laser like focus. They want to go in and touch that water and no matter what you do, they would just like. And then it will punch you and tell you to go away. Now that's some, that's some trait of autism right there, right? People will give up. But you know, children on the spectrum or people on the spectrum, they don't really give up that easily. And no amount of language like talking can make them like stop. Unless you do training. Right? So this is what we're talking about, talking about like autism like traits, right? Like autism like symptoms is that they don't give up. They have like a very strict rule. I must do this. No one can tell me this, how I do things, right? No one can tell me what I should do, what I cannot do. And I'm going to do it to the fullest, to the most extreme that I want to. Right. So these are the things that you have to look for in your child, right? Did they answer your name? Answer to their name? Yeah. Do they, do they stim verbally? Right. And the Third thing is, the biggest one is like, do they do things appropriately? Can you stop them? Can you make sure that they do not hurt themselves whilst doing something? Going to a crazy extreme, right? And obviously there are different degrees of autism. Some children are very, very obedient who are on the spectrum, which is cool, but at the same time they also are very rigid. So these are the traits that I would like to tell you about. Again, huge disclaimer. Not someone who does any type of diagnosis for autism. I am just the speech therapist. I'm just doing intervention, not into assessment of autism at all. Don't care for it as well. And you know, you can listen to me and think about it. If you don't like it, then, you know, just don't listen to me. And if it does make some sense to you, then you know, take, take it with a grain of salt, you know, don't take me literally. And then, you know, ask more people, have more second opinions, see more people. And when this pandemic is over, bring your child to someone who can help you do a full on assessment, all right? Preferably after three for reasons that are, for reasons that are easier for, you know, for your child to be diagnosis. And also what I've learned in the past month in July is that girls on the spectrum, girls on the spectrum are harder to identify for some reason. I don't know why that's what people are saying, okay? And therefore if you're doing an assessment and you're paying for it and your child's a girl, a female, try to find someone who is, who has been doing like ASD related work assessment for girls in particular, all right. Apparently it's a hit or a miss very easily for girls because now this is my, again my own observations, right? And don't take me for, you know what I say, don't quote me as well. But usually my clients, the ones who are on the spectrum for girls, they are much more severe or much or very, very, very mild. There's no in the middle for girls in my opinion. All right, from, from my sample size of working for seven years with autistic children. Okay, Is that girls, the, when they're on the spectrum, they're on either extremes. They're not never in the middle. They're not like a guy or a boy who comes to me who kinda is like, you know, aloft, you know, and don't talk a lot either. They're like over here or over there. So you know, be careful when you are asking, seeking for a person to help you with diagnosis, make sure that it's someone that has been doing female autism clients on a regular basis because apparently they miss a lot, that's what they say. And they are identified again in primary school or something. So that's the end of what I wanted to share. If you have any questions, feel free to actually just comment below and also send me an email. We can have a conversation, we can have a chat. It's mingagentsofspeech.com and if you've made it this far, I would also like to give you a gift. And if you've been, you know, on this channel or this Facebook page, you would know. You can go to agentsofspeech.com checklist to grab a bunch of toys and tools that I tell parents to get. And these are the things that I tell them to start off with if they're trying therapy at home. Okay, so go there and check it out. It's for free. You just need to put in your email address. I'll send it to you there. All right. And as always, stay safe. And I'll see you guys on Wednesday mornings. And if you have any questions related to these things. Yeah, just email me. And if you want me to go deep dive into your child's case, then be a little more specific. Tell me about like everything that you know. I don't mind reading long things. I can read pretty fast. So just tell me and then I will talk about it here. And if you're live here as well, we can just have, you can have a free consultation because I'm here anyways. Right? So that's it. Thank you very much. I'll see you guys on Wednesday. Bye.