Speech Therapy - Does It Really Work for an Autistic Child?

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And I remember that the insurance wrote it for one day a week for seven months.
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And I was like, "Okay.
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Seven months.
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All right.
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We'll be talking in seven months.
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In seven months, this'll be behind us." And that wasn't the case at all.
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I really, really thought that after a couple speech therapy sessions, that she would be talking.
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I thought that's how speech therapy worked.
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We're back.
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We're back.
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Autism Unwritten.
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We're back.
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Autism Rewritten.
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Rewritten.
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See, I do that every single time, Autism Unwritten, and it is Rewritten, and you think I would know the name of the show.
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Yeah.
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Apparently, I don't.
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Yeah, yeah.
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But it's okay, it's okay.
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Autism Rewritten.
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ADHD over here.
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And old.
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old post-menopausal ADHD.
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Nice That's what you get, and if you hear any background sounds, it's the cat, so.
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Oh yeah, we have a cat in here.
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Yeah, she's going to help us, and she's going to knock the camera over any second.
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Her name is Bubbles.
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She's a reincarnation of my mom.
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So she's a little… She also marches to her own beat.
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She also marches to her own beat.
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Yeah, she's a Taurus.
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I'm the mother of a beautiful little six, almost seven-year-old child, daughter with autism, named Zoe, and we talk about her a lot here.
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And we talk about our different things that we've experienced, things that we've tried, things that we've had success with, things that haven't been successful, and I like to share them with you.
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And it's time to talk about speech therapy.
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So first I want to talk about when I first realized that I need to maybe talk with a pediatrician a little bit more or get a referral to speech.
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She was saying a few little catchphrases, and singing.
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She would sing things.
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And but she wasn't… She, she could sing her ABCs, she could sing counting songs, she could sing … and, and she would use songs to describe things, or like when she would get mad, she would start going, "He-," no, "Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
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Head, shoulders, knees and toes." She would, like, sing it really, really fast.
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It was kind of comical almost a little bit because she would, it would be like, "Whoa, slow down." And I get it.
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All right.
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I'm, I'm opening it as fast as I can, you know, 'cause that's why she would get mad or be mad at things like that.
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Like I wasn't opening… But communicating through songs.
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But communicating through songs.
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Yeah.
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In fact I remember because she was born a year before COVID hit, so that's, I think also has to do with some of the delayed delay in her diagnosis is I, we were, we were like a lot of parents, in denial.
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So I was in denial because she wasn't talking by two or saying things by two or saying things by almost three.
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I, you know, we were in, we were kind of in denial, but I knew.
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I knew all along.
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And when we did get that referral… But remember, when we would see the doctor, we would see her on Zoom.
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So we would see the doctor on Zoom, and it's funny because to this day, she calls my phone doctor.
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Because I would say, "Here, talk to the, see the, look at the doctor." And it's weird because she only started calling it doctor, like, six months ago.
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And I was like, it's from when she was really little… She remembered……but she remembered.
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So that's why autism is just fascinating when it comes to things like that.
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And I could remember she wouldn't talk, but I would… She'd see the doctor on the phone, and then I'd hang up the phone, and she'd start singing, "Mama called the doctor, and the doctor said,"'cause that was the song she would sing.
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And she would just sing it, repeat it.
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And it's like, yes, Mama called the doctor, and we were just on the phone with the doctor.
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So she understands everything.
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Even though today she's, gone from being a non-verbal autistic person or having non-verbal autism to what we consider is a unreliable speaker.
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So she speaks a lot, and actually, she's, she's getting to the point where she's going to be a reliable speaker.
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And I think speech has played a big role in that.
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One thing with speech, though, is that it it feels like it's not going anywhere.
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I first took her to be evaluated by the speech therapist.
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I took her by myself to Kaiser, and I remember she wouldn't get in her stroller.
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And this is, this was kind of how it was for me.
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She would give me a hard time with everything.
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And, you know, she just couldn't communicate.
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And so it took me forever to get her out of the car seat into the stroller.
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And then we went in and she was she was just all over the place.
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And the, the lady was like,"Uh, have you had her evaluated for autism?" They made the referral to have her evaluated.
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And then, and she started… I don't remember.
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I think the speech therapist gave her you know, speech therapy one day a week.
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So we would take her one day a week.
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And, and I remember that the insurance wrote it for one day a week for seven months.
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And I was like, "Okay.
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Seven months.
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All right.
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We'll be talking in seven months.
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In seven months, this'll be behind us." And that wasn't the case at all.
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I really, really thought that after a couple speech therapy sessions, that she would be talking.
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I thought that's how speech therapy worked.
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I thought that that's what it, they were going to rewire the brain.
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But we're also overachievers.
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We're also overachievers.
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We're both Aries.
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And we're like, "Okay, let's get it done.
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Let's get this done, and then, and then let's, and then the, everything will be fine." But life doesn't work according to what, how we think it should work.
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Yeah.
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No, not at all.
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Not at all.
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Unfortunately, not at all.
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And I've learned that the hard way.
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We drove her an hour to speech therapy.
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This place that we went to was great.
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It was great.
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It was a giant room, giant room.
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They put her in this special room, and it was - they had a swing, a big swing that hung from the ceiling.
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They had a little slide.
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And this big, huge crash pad, which is for the kids.
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They could, like, jump on it and crash, crash out on it or whatever.
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And they had, like, they had a couple other things.
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It was really, really neat, and it's, it's kinda cool because the therapist just plays in there with the kid.
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And at first I didn't understand.
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I'm like, "Aren't you you know, are they going to be doing something with…" Like, are, are they going to be doing vocal exercises and, you know, like,"Bumblebee, bumblebee," you know?
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I don't know.
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And they, but they just follow the, follow her around, and they play, and then they just narrate everything.
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Week after week, no improvement.
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Like, no improvement at all.
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Like, I thought she would be talking a lot more, but I think it's just, that's just the hard reality But there are a lot of little things like speech therapy that you could do and over time you see the growth.
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Over time you see the changes.
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And at that time, I think my attitude was, "We're going to cure this." Like, "This is nothing. We're curing this, and By kindergarten, she'll start off kindergarten in a general population kindergarten class." I thought that's what was going to happen.
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And but it was fascinating 'cause I remember one day we were in there with the therapist, and we're, we're talking about how she hasn't really, she's not talking any more than she really was.
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And the therapist was like, "Just keep on it. Keep on it," and our daughter would have some meltdowns in there.
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They'd… And, but most, for the most part it was, it was fun for her.
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It was fun for her.
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And so we would sit there and watch her and this therapist just play for 30 minutes, or I think it was an hour actually back then we're getting ready to leave, and I think I'm putting her shoes back on her, I'm getting her shoes, and she stands in front of me and the therapist, and she looks up at the wall.
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And up at the wall in this big room, they had one of those old clocks.
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One of those clocks that you had, like, in every classroom in school.
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One of those.
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They had one of those clocks in there.
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And she looks up at it and she starts going, "Tick-tock, tick-tock." And it's from one of the tick-tock, the mouse ran up the clock.
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And, and then also from another one of her nursery rhymes, because that's what she would always sing is nursery rhymes.
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And we were like, "Wow, yes, that's a clock." And her therapist said something.
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She said, she goes, "It's in there.
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It's in there. We just have to figure out how to get it out." And that was so true, and I'm really glad that she said that to me at that time, because it was one of those, I always felt with her, she knows everything.
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She understands everything.
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But it's just getting it out has been so hard.
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But over time, like I said, speech therapy has been instrumental along with a lot of the other things that we've done, along with, and I'll just say it, along with the going to the Melillo Center, along with, occupational therapy, along with having a one-to-one, along with a therapy dog, along with traveling around world.
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We've taken her to Europe twice.
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We've taken her on airplanes.
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We've taken her to Alaska, to Montana, to New York.
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We'll talk about how she's able to do that, how we're able to do that and how we've had some not good situations when we've flown, but that's the price.
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What was interesting to me is, is like, it's almost like you're trying to find the key that unlocks the door.
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Yeah.
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And you're trying different keys.
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Yes.
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And there is a key that will unlock the door to a point.
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Yeah.
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But like, what key, what key, what key?
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And that's, and I know nothing about autism, going to say that up front.
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I'm like the… it's actually good that I don't know anything because I can ask the questions that maybe you're wondering.
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And so, like what key works and what key didn't work, and so that when you said that, it just spurred that in my mind, like it's, she said, "Bring it out." So let's find the key that unlocks that that's already in there.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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It's like you try different keys, and you take a little from this key and a little from this key and a little from this key, and you hope that you could put them together and it makes, and it makes a key that unlocks it.
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But you know what?
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It may never unlock it.
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And that's okay, and that is absolutely okay.
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We ended up changing speech, staying in the same company, but because we didn't want to travel so far.
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The room was much smaller.
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There were just toys in there.
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They did order her a swing because they knew that she liked to swing, and they knew she was coming, so they ordered her a swing.
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It was okay.
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It was definitely nothing like she had at the other place.
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But we've continued to go there.
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She's really close with the therapist.
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She has her good days and her bad days.
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It's like most of the time she goes there, she doesn't mind it.
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Sometimes she goes there and does really well and has, like, an excellent day.
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And then sometimes she goes there and she, she just, it's like,"Okay, we need to leave. We can't even be there for 15 minutes." Those used to happen more often.
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Those happen pretty few and far between nowadays.
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She requests things.
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She'll say, "I want," or actually she'll say it like you want.
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" You want swimsuit?" She'll say… She loves to swim.
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That's another thing that we've done, swimming.
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She loves to swim.
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She swims every day, even in the winter.
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We live somewhere where the winters don't get that cold.
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Yeah, but still the pool is cold.
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The pool is cold, and we have a jacuzzi, but she goes back and forth and never gets sick, so you know, hey, more power to her, I guess.
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But and then now that we have this therapy dog, she swims with the therapy dog, too.
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So that's been that's, that's how we get her energy out of her so she can sleep at night, because she doesn't sleep much at night.
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But she's just getting so much better and so much easier, and we could, we could do a lot more things.
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We could take her a lot more places.
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She's, she's really good a… She goes to restaurants.
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Nothing's ever going to be perfect, but you can really see the evolution.
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And you want her to be like the Army, the best that she can be.
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Absolutely.
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And the best that she can be.
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I was in the Army.
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Yeah, you were in the Army.
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Long time ago.
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And the best that she can be… Yeah… and who she is.
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Yeah.
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And I think people need to have realistic expectations, but have expectations, and then adjust them along the way.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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And always, always you know, approach all of these things, all of the mistakes that your kids are going to make, 'cause they're going to make them, you know, with love.
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Every kid is different.
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And as a parent, you've gotta figure out with you and what's right for you and your kid.
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Ever since she was a baby, I kind of had a feeling something was going on 'cause she wasn't making a lot of eye contact.
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And so I would always hold my eyes right up against her eyes and and we just stared into each other's eyes.
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And so she always made eye contact with me.
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She never didn't make eye contact with me.
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So when she was being diagnosed, it was that she doesn't make eye contact, and I was kind of like, "Well, that's kind of weird 'cause she makes eye contact with me all the time." I think she makes eye contact with a lot of people in our household, but I don't think she does it… Does she make eye contact with you?
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No.
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No.
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But then I don't also make eye contact with people either.
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Yeah.
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Cause I'm like, I don't want to look at people.
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I'm not that interested in what they're saying.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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That's why I can relate to Zoe in some ways.
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Oh, yeah.
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Like, you know, we just do whatever we do next to each other.
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It's all good.
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The one thing that does make it a blessing too is you watch your kid and there, I do get some joy seeing that she does not give a shit about the good opinion of others at all.
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Like, she does not… And, and some people would say, " Well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." She doesn't have very much empathy, and we're trying to work on that with her, but of course, you do need to care a little bit.
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Going through life without caring what people think about you is amazing.
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It's amazing.
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I heard this, though, that people in their 20s care a lot about what people think about them.
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They're really worried and, and, and care about what other people think about them.
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And then in your 40s, you no longer care about what people think about you.
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And then in your 60s, you realize that nobody was thinking about you.
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And I'm going to be 60, actually, so… and I, they, they don't even think about me.
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They don't know who I am.
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They don't care.
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Yeah, they don't care.
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They don't care.
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And so yeah.
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So I love that she just doesn't care.
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She just doesn't care.
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It's like she's in her 60s already.
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You know?
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I love it.
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I love it.
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She's an old soul.
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She's an old soul, for sure.
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So last episode, episode one, we also talked about Zoe's trip to the dentist.
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So if you have a child who has autism and needs to go to the dentist, just check that out, and also her origin story.
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And next episode, we're going to talk about… ABA, applied behavior analysis, which is always a fun topic to talk about, always stirs up a lot of emotion in people for some reason.
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So yeah, we'll talk about that.
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So I look forward to, to it, and until then, we'll… bye.
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Bye.
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Au revoir.
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Au revoir.
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Ha det.
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Ha det, or so long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu, adieu, adieu, to ya, and ya, and ya… Ya, and ya.
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Perfect.