Amazing what kids can remember

[stenickar]

My 11yo DD has autism. If you ask her what she had for breakfast this morning she probably couldn't tell you . BUT for the last 54 days she has been able to remember exactly how many days before Disney world. I got a calendar for $.50 and marked down the days from 65 to 1. Each morning when she gets up I give her a sticker and she puts in on the previous days number and tells me what the new number is. By the way we are down to 11 When she goes to daycare the kids there always ask her how many more days-and she always tells them the right number. My main reason for doing it was that she was obsessing about Disney (don't know where she gets that). So I thought instead of telling her later, or not now, I would just say go check your calendar. This has worked really well. Now that I have rambled on- is there something that your child remembers that amazes you?

 

[mom3sonstt]

My boy has no official diagnosis - every special ed teacher he's had has tried to "diagnose" him with something different - but my guess is some form of Asperger's. He is 17 now - but when he was little he had learned the alphabet.......backwards. He could say either way just as fast - most kids kind of do the little song to stay on track - he would get this distant look in his eye and just say it - it was like he could see it written somewhere and was just reading it - either direction. Now he is obsessed with wrestling (I know - bad!!) We watched it back in the 80's when it was Hulk Hogan and Macho Man and some of those wrestlers were still wrestling when we started having the boys. Well, Ryne can tell you everything about all of them - there are some matches that 30 of them come in one at a time and get eliminated and he can tell you what order they came in, who eliminated who - back several years. He can tell you who a particular wrestler used to be in a different wrestling venue (TNA or WWE). And on a slightly less disturbing note he is the same way with American Idol. We didn't watch the first year, and only a few episodes of the 2nd year - but 3rd year on he knows what order they were eliminated. And when he hears a song on the radio he will say that "so-and-so sang that " If a song is used more than once he'll say "hmmm - I didn't know "mary" could sing that one too - "Sally" sang that last year". He's very high functioning - can learn anything that can be memorized (multiplication, spelling...) but can't apply concepts. He also has poor social skills - very friendly - but thinks everyone wants to hear him recite the entire previous nights wrestling matches blow by blow.

 

[stenickar]

I worked with a man (he had HF autism)once who had similar abilities. He could tell you the name of almost any song, who sang it(even multiple artist), year it was released, and the record label it was released on. It was so amazing to hear him rattle of the information. If you had a song stuck in your head you could hum it to him and he could tell you the name of it. In the time I worked with him though I never heard him sing.

 

[bookwormde]

It is always wonderful, no mater where they are on the spectrum, what our children can do when given input in their native format (visual) in an area of their interest. Things as simple calendar and WDW and magical things happen. MY DS9 Aspergers is now creating a correlated future theory of the world in 1000 million year. I got him a correlated history of the world chart/graphic (tectonics, impact structures, life forms etc.) about a year ago because of his interest in dinosaurs. He has studied this and with some inspiration from the cartoon The Future is Wild he has postulated the future conditions of the earth at this time. He calls it Pangea 3 and has about 20 sub ecosystems proposed and 50 evolved life forms. You never know what is going to trigger their amazing minds.

We are heading back to WDW in August for some more “input” and social adventures. He will be counting down also.

bookwormde

 

[mrsbert]

I "test" my DS7 all the time. He went on a field trip on Tuesday and I asked him a question I knew he would know. How many children went on the trip? He said Ummmmm and thought a minute and said 13; and two teachers. He counts some things but not all things. He's good with rounding up too. It may take him a few seconds but he can tell me that if it is 6:43 pm that it's 17 minutes before 7:00pm. He played basketball for one season and he loved that he could see the time clock easily and would be able to see how much time was left. My DS9 just could care less about math, numbers, time. Typical boy of 9.

I need to sit down and list the things he's good at and broaden that by using those skills on a hobby. The only hobby he has now is Sponge Bob and Nintendo DS. I'm signing him up for football in the fall for the social aspect and because he's built like a linebacker!

 

[AJKMOM]

My DS, autistic, now 19, can remember every vacation we have been on since 1994-when he was 6!

He even remembered the room number, 5526, of a trip we made in 1996. Thanks to him, I made a list, including several trips I had forgotten about.

 

[Schmeck]

I've worked with some pretty amazing students - one knew the VIN of every car in the staff parking lot, the license #, and who owned the car.

Another student knows all of the call letters for every TV news station across the country, the affiliates, etc.