Ask Dr. Doreen

In this episode of Ask Dr. Doreen, the founder of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders discusses speech in children with autism, sound therapy, repetitive movements and more. Check it out! 06:06 - Good morning Shannon and Dr. Doreen. My question is: Why does my 7 year old son not spontaneously comment on anything or shows initiation to communicate? He only talks when He needs something. I feel defeated because I have seen kids around his age with years of therapy already having conversations and saying how they feel but my son is not there yet. 10:43 - Free Skills Lesson, How to get started training with ABA Services, for Educators, Free "Starting to Teach" Lesson 14:46 – What is your opinion on Tomatis Method ( sound therapy) ? 22:31 - What is your opinion of stem cells as a treatment for autism? 24:13 - How would Dr. Doreen treat repetitive movements. its automatically reinforcing and hard for him to be aware of his movements. could you please tell us how you would reduce hand flapping behavior? its affecting his academics and he also has ADHD. Can you talk about continuing to follow a whole food diet and continuing organic and eating healthy. 35:41 - Do you find children diagnosed ASD has temperature regulation issues. I work with several individuals overheat easily and are constantly drinking water. Is there a condition for this? Other medical diagnoses have been ruled out such as diabetes and thyroid. 36:32 - I just found out that UCSD has a video game that's been FDA approved for ADHD treatment. Also helps some with autism. 39:32 - Do herbal remedies help? 40:51 - My oldest daughter turned 10 last week. She asked for a book on archaeology so that is what she got. Not an easy-to-read one like children's archaeology books, but really an overview of archaeology in more complex terms. It was a gamble, but she has been reading from it and from what I hear, she understands it as well. I should add, she is autistic. In her case, it makes it pretty tough to make social connections, but she is extra interested in subjects like math, history, and physics. My daughter hates fictional stories and thus she had a lot of trouble reading that book, which made the teacher believe she did well by taking the archaeology book away. Now, this happened more often. The teacher has taken away her math book, a card game she uses to practice image forming in her head (based on the memory palace technique, for those familiar with it), and she called my daughter childish for playing pokemon go. All things she likes to do, and I don't mind her doing them because she doesn't harm anyone with them. We had a talk about that with the school director as well, and it went fine for a while. But now with the archaeology book incident, the teacher decided that it was my fault. She came with all sorts of arguments aimed at how I should have pushed her to do things for her own age rather than let her find her own way. I have to say, it hurt me. She is my first daughter and I really try hard to do well, but I know that I make mistakes. Is this one of them? Am I really leaving her too free by letting her choose what she wants and likes? 47:44 - My son is 5 and I'm at a loss on how to change a particular behavior. He bangs his right hand on tables constantly and also claps his hands very hard, they sound like clap toys. It literally hurts my ears. The function is automatic. I've tried to replace the banging on the table with giving him bongs to bang on and he will only use it for a few seconds then goes right back to banging the table. Even worse than that is the clapping. I'm at a loss. I don't know what to do and I'm going crazy. I'm so overwhelmed with all the noise and the pitch of the noise. I know automatic function is the hardest behavior to change. Any ideas? Thank you very much. 54:52 - How can I stop my child 10 from watching weird videos like kids tantruming when I ask him he says I want to see how they react so I don't do that but that's exactly what he does.