This week a reader asked about a disorder called ODD and its relationship to sociopathy. ODD or oppositional defiant disorder is a childhood disorder. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists:
In children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), there is an ongoing pattern of uncooperative, defiant, and hostile behavior toward authority figures that seriously interferes with the youngster’s day to day functioning. Symptoms of ODD may include:
• Frequent temper tantrums
• Excessive arguing with adults
• Often questioning rules
• Active defiance and refusal to comply with adult requests and rules
• Deliberate attempts to annoy or upset people
• Blaming others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
• Often being touchy or easily annoyed by others
• Frequent anger and resentment
• Mean and hateful talking when upset
• Spiteful attitude and revenge seeking
I interpret these symptoms as evidence for excessive social dominance motives combined with problems with ability to love in a child/teen. Social dominance motives cause these children to dislike authority and to attempt to control others (both children and adults) by annoying and upsetting them (teasing too). Recent studies have shown that hormones connected to social dominance motives may play a role in ODD (higher androgens and lower cortisol)*.
A major developmental task for humans is to learn to love. That learning begins immediately at birth. A very elegant series of studies by Patricia Hawley Ph.D. and others has demonstrated that Social Dominance motives begin later, in the toddler years.
During childhood the social motives for love and power have to integrate and balance each other. A loving peaceful family life is central to this integration. Also the power motive must be shaped. This shaping of the power motive has two aspects to it. First children learn the best prosocial ways to enjoy power. They learn to restrain their aggressive and sadistic impulses. In children with ODD and CD (the precursors to antisocial personality in adulthood) this learning doesn’t happen.
Children also learn to channel some of their power motives in to achievement motivation. Disinterest for achievement and disinterest in school are linked to antisocial behavior in children and teens because absent achievement dominance motives lack appropriate channels for expression.
ODD is often connected to CD (conduct disorder) and ADHD, but may also occur without these other disorders. Many studies have examined the extent to which ODD is genetic and environmentally determined. Both genes and environment interact to cause ODD.
In a paper that is now 11 years old Distinct Contributions of Conduct and Oppositional Defiant Symptoms to Adult Antisocial Behavior : Evidence From an Adoption Study Douglas R. Langbehn, MD, PhD and colleagues presented their study of 197 adopted children a quarter of whom had a biologic parent with sociopathy. They concluded:
It seems plausible that a genetically transmitted liability to sociopathy might manifest earlier in life as the personality-like symptoms of ODD rather than the behaviorally oriented criteria for conduct disorder. After all, it is difficult to conceive of a gene for stealing cars. On the other hand, genetic influences on temperament leading to typical ODD features do not seem so far-fetched.
They also stated that independent of the antisocial behavior seen in CD, the behavior that manifests as ODD is an independent risk factor for adult sociopathy:
STUDIES SUCH as that by Loeber et al, which found that severe childhood conduct disorder is often preceded by ODD, suggest the hypothesis that ODD may only be a risk factor for sociopathy if it is a predecessor to a conduct syndrome. This idea is not supported by our data, because the ODD component was found to be an independent risk factor. Furthermore, examination of the joint distribution of estimated component scores in males (not shown) demonstrated that many adoptees had elevations in the ODD component only.
It is important for parents to realize that not every child with ODD or even CD becomes an adult sociopath. Parenting can make a difference for a substantial percentage of children. Even the most loving and devoted parents should get professional help with their ODD/CD kids.
Professional help is needed because these kids are so hard on parents and the development of parental resentment and negativity is linked to a bad prognosis for these kids (though the chicken and egg here have not been determined). Parents should be realistic, protect themselves and yet try to stay hopeful and positive. They should be loving and yet set firm limits. They should also spend lots of quality time with their kids and supervise them closely. These are exceedingly difficult tasks to accomplish!
You might be wondering why I haven’t commented on the proposed DSM V revision of antisocial personality. Since we want everyone to give us their unbiased, independent reactions, I am not going to comment until we close the survey. Please complete the survey so we can send the strongest possible message to the DSM committee. These criteria will be very important in legal procedings and in public education.
* I have posted the summaries of articles about Antisocial Disorders, ASPD, ODD and CD on a new web site My Psychology Professor*. This web site is intended to help students of psychology find articles and write term papers. I hope it will also be a source for people who want detailed information about topics in psychology. There is also a complete collection of papers about social dominance on this site.
Hi Kim,
How are you doing? nice to see you here posting!
Hi, Witty. I found I missed the companionship here on LF, so decided to start posting again after giving myself a time-out.
How are you doing? How are things with your son?
Kim,
I am glad that you are back…I have missed you.
Well my son moved out right after his birthday. I guess it is giving me some time to reflect back and to try and catch my breath. Alot of emotional stuff to deal with. Alot of conflicted feelings. Trying to sort it all out.
Hi folks, this is Mike, hope all is well for you guys. Sorry I missed Valentines, it’s been a real upsetting week which i can’t even rehash through, i just filed it away as i brainstorm on other things like this article!!!
But before that: Happy Belated Valentines day, here is a video des and dolphin danced too yesterday. (i don’t call what i do dancing)Michael Franti’s: Say Hey, I love You:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehu3wy4WkHs
Ok now about this article couldn’t come at a better time, to where light bulbs kept flashing in my head. if i keep seeing patterns everywhere i’m gonna start thinking i’m schizophrenic…
this article just hits me more and more about how early intervention is a must. not just for ‘at risk’ kids because how do we really know about which kids are ‘at risk’?
(watch “Too Young to Kill: 15 Shocking Crimes on E!: Jailhouse confessions and court testimony help psychologists probe the minds of children who have committed murder.) How much of these could have been prevented? How many lives so completely devasted could have been stopped t some point?
Dr. Leedam, this article was so great. i needed this push. in no way does genetics equal destiny. if that were the case parents of autisics would have just accepted the life sentence of autism and we would not be where we are today.
Sure we have a long way to go yet. But we’ve come so far. Folks that feel overwhelmed today with the newly diagnosed in autism should have seen what the reality was thirty or so years ago when there was little to nothing out there. Hopefully we can bring the issue of CD, ODD and kids at risk for ASPD into the same kind of awareness and action.
Now sure maybe autistic kids are still autistic no matter what someone does, but their whole prognosis in living with autism can look so much better than first believed with intervention.
There is so much out there now that makes autism more manageable, and easier to live with than before, making the condition more functional, social and productive.
My child is severely autistic, in fact the words used were ‘profoundly and severely autistic’ she was in that unreachable place no one could get to. Locked up tight, obvious to all that set eyes on her.
And yes she is still autistic but with early intervention we got through to her, she became more responsive, more aware and INTERESTED in her surroundings AND the people in them.
She is also a way more sociable and loving while still being completely and non verbal the classic look of autism. better than des and i, who are far less affected with the condition than she is.
These days many with autism have progressed or ‘upgraded’ into a higher functioning or social autistic, even some very severely autistic folks pulled through with vigilince although still remaining severely autistic, see Sue Rubin, severely autistic woman much like mine dolphin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47aXdOa_Tnk&feature=related
or Tito the writer and our friend Dov: http://www.strangeson.com/playNewsVideo.php?id=27
I was on the Son Rise program, and we do Floortime/DIR by Stanley Greenspan who wrote: Engaging Autism an example seen here: http://www.youtube.com/dirfloortime
Nothing is written in stone, people have more interactive responsive functional autistics now than ever. even if the genetics is written, the outcome does not have to be.
I’ve been connected into this Whole Child learning concept and will be going to some conferences in regards to this new interest. http://www.educationrevolution.org
I truly feel we need to shake up education and take our responsibility as a society to do more for our kids. parents can not do this alone. They work all day, they are single parenting, they are managing way too much and many can not dedicate hours on end throughout the day with their kids. Kids for the most part are in school.
So a lot of work and responsibility has to go to the schools. Seeing that many kids spend from 6 hours to 9 hours outside of the home in schools it only makes sense. We need to see to it that we start educating the whole child.
Whole Child Education… Society needs to become interested and invest in whole kids, not just the superficial care and education of kids but the entire whole child. it’s working in my mind forgive my repetitiveness….
Invest in the education of the Whole Child, meaning their social education, their emotional education, their moral education… not just their academic education. we are not doing what we can do for them if our only responsibility is that we ensure that they can memorize facts and figures, and circle the right slot on a standardized test. that’s just not good enough. Heck we’re not even getting that part done right either. Ignore all facets of the child and even that superficial area of ‘academic education’ is going to suffer as well.
So we have an epidemic of columbines, and all such issues, kids setting other kids on fire, kids on death row, messed up kids that are growing up to be messed up adults… Children are stressed and depressed and it is an ignored issue. Kids are bullied and that’s ignored, kids are abused and it’s ignored. we need to have more of a vested time in our children and that means putting social education, emotional education, and moral education, family support into the curriculum…
We are teaching a lot of nonsense to kids while ignoring whether we are teaching them to be good people, we are not teaching them to be happy, we are not teaching them to be responsible, we are not teaching them to think, or to be moral. We are not making school an environment where they can feel safe, or stable so they can become well adjusted kids and then well adjusted adults.
We as a society has to start caring for the whole child. not over crowded classrooms with teachers who still can’t get the names right even after three months. it means teachers required to get to know the child to be able to bond with with the kids, that schools become responsible for what kind of people they can become if they give them half a chance. Not just making sure they know a certain subject well enough or that they can test properly so the teacher and the school is rewarded only as well as their kids can mindlessly be able to take a test.
Who cares if a kid can read or write or manage algebra if he has ignored issues? if we are only educating fragments of a child?
I feel we need to socialize the children properly, to give them social, emotional and moral education, to have smaller classrooms and teachers working in tandem, and structure and stability. we learned this with autistic kids. they need time to bond in a stable environment. My nurses and therapists have had to commit themselves to my child. when i went through training so did my child’s nurses and therapists so we were all inline of what we were doing together.
Teachers should grow with a child, like Montessori or Waldorf style, grow and bond with a child. have a child learn to trust the environment because that environment is stable.
Society has to learn to coparent.
If we don’t learn to treat these kids as ALL our kids we as society will suffer it all in the end. There will be more kids growing up to become adults in prison, or leeching off others or more columbines. we won’t even need terrorists attacks THEY can just watch us continue to neglect our kids. No one is self sufficient. Parents of autistic kids figured this out already. They grouped together and banded together, became a huge powerhouse and made changes, opened up their own schools, supported their own researchers, funded their own therapies, pushed for legislative measures to bring about changes.
So we (the autistic population) have a better chance now than we ever had before. Right now in Broward County there is a lawsuit against the public school to force them to provide services already proven in private settings. the argument being that an autistic child’s chance for progress shouldn’t depend on if your dad is Dan Marino.
Many kids have pulled through with parents who searched through the education, had the means and the time to do what they could. Not all parents had that though, some just couldn’t, as they clipped coupons, made the rent and worked all day to support a single parent household.
Turned out the disparity of autistic kids who received the attention to those that did not was pretty extreme. to the extent that public schools now have the responsibility in many states to either provide those services or pay for private schools that do. Because a non functioning autistic adult is going to cost more money than one’s pushed into functioning enough that some sell their paintings, or write books or do what they can to become part of society no matter even if they may still be just as autistic.
Right now not investing in ALL kids is costing us more as a society. we can not continue to ignore these issues. or place all responisibilty on the individual or the parents. Our Society has got to get a wake up call. I just saw the shocking numbers of ADHD individuals in jail, or the rise in depressed or violent kids. it’s not a question of whether our society can not afford to change how we are educating our kids. But we simply can not afford NOT to look into doing things differently.
Whole Child Education, folks, can you see it? i used to think i needed to focus on a certain group of kids but that’s not it at all. ALL kids. because ALL kids are at risk kids.
Maria Montessori first started her educational approach with special needs kids, until it was realized that her apporoach was also very well formed to work with non disabled typical kids.
Why can’t we do the same type of intensive socialization we do with autistic kids to the rest of the seemingly non disabled population?
My child was a shock to people, yes, she is still non verbal, still extremely autistic, but she is a loving, social autistic. she was/is more severe than Des and I both ever were and yet she responded to people and was drawn out much earlier than we were. she is interacting with people in a way that ‘profoundly and severely autistic’ people weren’t supposed to because we had the education, the means, the time, and THE TEAM, to do what we needed to do for her. So that the doctor’s prognosis was waved away with a simple: “Well she will write the ending to her own book, doctor, and we will ensure that she’ll have the means at her disposal to prove in time that some if not most of what you say as wrong…”
and we did just that, genetics be damned.
Genetics had a great hand in her workings but it was not able to seal her fate. i’m not saying all kids can be saved but we have to at least try. we have to put that safety net out there and catch as many as we can.
And school is the one place that most all kids spend nearly all their waking hours in, their entire social lives in, 75% of their entire childhood in, it is the place to start to make changes.
Of course we have to make iniatives. private initiatives, that prove results, that would in time have to force public schools to make a reform. That’s how we did it with autism, there were ABA schools, Floortime schools, extensive early intervention projects to the point that we showed different positive results. we were once told that ABA would never happen in public schools. it’s happening. the hold out states like mine have stated it’s never going to happen here. but parents rose up and ganged together and have forced the issue… and the lawsuit…
The public school have become no longer a monoply. it is no secret that Montessori kids, Waldorf kids and other kids in other alternative educational settings are leaving public school kids behind in the dust. They are well rounded, well adjusted kids out there that are knocking the socks off the depressed prisoners with their work duty prisonlike school chores of standardized tests and overworked stressed out teachers in overcrowded clasrooms that seems to make up way too many of our public schools today. I think prison just makes for an easy transition in many cases.
Hey Obama isn’t risking his kids in the public school system. he wants well rounded kids. he can only do so much at home and rightly so he considers the education of his kids important.
We’ve got to make our schools work for our kids. and just focusing on a small superficial aspect of a child isn’t just going to make it. Our responsibility in our schools should be to help mold and nurture and support productive, responsible, educated, positively socialized moral individuals not just to hand them an academic education and say that’s all we are here for and all we’re responsible for.
because we’re just going to pay for it in the end.
Sh*t, we are, as a society ALREADY paying for it.
I have now an ‘at risk’ toddler, who’s mother was murdered this past week by her father. She lived her entire short life in view of domestic violence, istability and uncertainty. and now we have to wonder how much of her father makes up who she is genetically?
Our nurse commited to us at least four years in working with my child, she trained with us, reinforced all that the therapists and psychologists and we were doing. We had a team of people working with my child.
And now this child, this child is not going to fall through the cracks. she is not autistic, no. she may never develop those ASPD traits. but why even give it a chance? Why even toss the coin? Her social and emotional education in a stable environment with a team commited in the same way they were commited to pull my child out of her autism starts now.
i couldn’t save her mom, god we tried. the least i can do is give her child a fighting chance.
i’ve talked to others about this issue. We have reviewed the statistics, the overwhelming evidence that something has to be done now. Awareness into these issues need to begin, parents must demand that they can not do it all and demand that society share in it’s responsibility to their/OUR children.
Thankfully many teachers have started their school start ups after being pushed out of our public schools, forcing them to wonder how to teach kids now that they ARE allowed to do so. there is so much freedom i guess once they’ve gotten out of the “Do it this way only..” method handed down to them. they can now be more creative, use their imagination, try different ways of doing things, bond with their students in a smaller setting. there has to be some comfort to level out the lack of health insurance and other public school perks they lost.
But hey, around here many teachers forced out of PS have become the Public schools biggest competitors in the private sector. gosh those Psychopaths should have not been so aggresive in teacher destruction, now it’s bitting them in the a**. So while i may not be so well recieved in one avenue, there are other educational arenas where this can be heard out and addressed.
There have been numerous folks out there already sending this whole school refrom thing in motion. I’m joining them. and while in PS i will most certainly find no audience, free thinking teachers in new school start ups and initatives may be more prone to listen.
We did it with autism. It can be done with all our kids. We can give all kids a fighting chance. But we will be forced to make society, the medical community and schools to be actively part of the solution. And to do that we must shake them out of this denial phase they are still in.
Mike
One-Step,
I just read your post about being mugged… there was no other posts I could find about what happened to you. I couldnt believe my eyes… thats just awful…
I hope you are ok and that youre feeling better.
Hey witsend, i had reread some of my wife’s postings on the imperturbility post and what i have to remark is:
1. let’s not throw the baby with the bathwater out. (smile)
2. I also belieive my wife is a Klingon (smile) seriously though. just ’cause she has that sense of truth, justice, and honor doesn’t make her any less dangerous. take a 135 lb girl running on pure adrenalin, 0% fear, high pain threshold coming right at you it can pretty much feel like you’ve been hit by a truck.
she sees things in starkly black and white, people are no different. i did too at one point, but had to readjust over the years.
we have always had some issue with the whole ‘maybe they are not loved enough’ aspect, or that ‘inability to give or recieve love’ aspect as their reason of being the way they are. You see, being autistic that WAS true for us at some point and for quite some time, years even. We wouldn’t have been diagnosed back when we were if we didn’t reflect that. we reflected it because it was pretty much our reality.
i can safely say that my parents were nothing more than a food source to me for much of my young years. i didn’t realize they existed until i was about four, and even then they mattered to me about as much as my doorknobs did. only i noticed and liked my doorknobs better.
i was about six when i started to get to know them, and i think i was around eight when i realized i’ve come to have the means to be capable of loving them.
With my wife that whole process took a lot longer and she was nearly in her teens when her parents stopped being anything more to her other than part of her routine.
we were able to receive and give love about as much as a household appliance could. We just had so much other issues going on we barely noticed them or other people much, as such we rarely felt anything concrete or with much substance towards them.
but we also didn’t do what sociopaths or psychopaths do. we weren’t cruel. we weren’t malicious. we didn’t set out to harm others. we had a sense of right and wrong however simple it was and we adhered to it. regardless of the fact that i loved my mother about as much as i loved the other food source, the refrigerator.
The refrigerator and my mom. same thing to me for very many years. actually the refrigerator was more consistent, and dependable, and stayed in the same place. it hummed really steady while my mothers voice would change and shift making things uncertain for me. i was actually more partial and affectionate towards the refrigerator…
Which brings to mind why we(autists/socios) can have such similar deficits and yet behave so differently?
I don’t rightly know. but something else has got to be missing or something else IS there in them that would make more sense as to why…
Now, as LTL has thought maybe they didn’t love themselves or don’t love themselves? des and i mulled this over. we didn’t love ourselves, we didn’t trust the environment, or our place in it, we’ve suffered pain and abuse and for the most part we(and most autistics) still don’t do what they(socio/psychos) do.
Our aggresions are usually reactionary not born out of malice or intent. Some of those cases we’ve heard about are so rare that some other issue is thought to be involved in those autistics.
my wife suffers great aggressions, when she realized that she hurt people and hurting people was bad she would internalize her aggressions towards herself so as not to harm others, like ripping her hair out in bloody clumps, biting into her hands, smashing her arms through a glass window, dislocating her thumb, popping it back into place and then dislocating them again.(autism is no picnic) she would run out of the way from her younger siblings because she didn’t want to hurt them.
One time someone startled her and she wheeled into her mother holding her baby brother she heard her brother drop, she realized somehow that something had been hurt, realized that she was the cause. after that she didn’t care what she did to herself as long as she didn’t hurt folks in her meltdowns. It was years before she would find some relief.
After some biomedical work up from a DAN(defeat autism now!) doctor they figured it out she was highly deficient in some essential things she needed and also was intolerant to certain foods. Supplementing her diet was done, like nice amounts of magnesium keeps her aggressions in place as well as being on a gluten and casein free and yeast free diet.
Other issues have a factor like don’t even give her Hawaiian Punch, we figured out the red dye sends her into an epileptic fit. stress, and other issues do too but it’s manageable with enough attention to things. coca cola and red dyes throws her off. she starts twitching and jerking, starts pacing and i have to keep the sedative nearby.
i grew up on a waldorfy setting so i ate alot of natural grainy squirrel food. much less to react to than this american diet with so much potential to turn our lives upside down.
Perhaps socio/psychopaths have a very well defined sense of self? maybe that’s it. i couldn’t really love myself if i didn’t know ‘myself’ existed. same goes for some others (autistics) we spoke to. we had a poor sense of self, many interests maybe, many other things but we often forgot or were unaware we existed, (the more evolved an autistic became the more prone he was to resentment and other intense emotions, however the moral caliber seems to also become more pronounced… hhhmmmn…)
Once Des was told to count everyone in the room including herself and she counted everyone in the room including the cat but did not include herself. “Include yourself.” she was told, “Who?” she asked, “You, J.” and she answered “Oh is J here?”
So maybe that’s the difference. we can be egocentric, consumed by isolated interests and obsessions, but sometimes we forget the individual behind those interests or obsessions. it’s strange. so if my wife seems a little inflexible and unforgiving when it comes to the socio/psychopath it is because like me we just don’t get them enough. because we have many of their deficits but for the most part we are nothing like them.
the inability to give or receive love makes you a machine. we had thoughts, yes, but complex feelings developed much later. we were about as dangerous as a household appliance. If that were just the issue we would expect them(socios/pyschos) to be more like us (autistics) and to be only as dangerous as a toaster would be maybe only just popping when there’s a short somewhere… But never likely to go after people with intent, unless of course we just ended up in a Stephen King novel. or a Terminator movie…
But we’ll figure it out. Awareness, research, education, throwing ourselves into seeking out the answers and we’ll be on our way. let’s look at it as being where autism was twenty years ago…
regards
Mike
kim and witty – thanks for your concern. I am not running a fever – i have been quite sick for the last couple of weeks and am past the fever state – the chills were a direct somatic response to being mugged.
i am already taking all the meds I can for my allergies/cough that might make me sleeping (anti histamines,etc.) but i was trying to figure out how to deal with the cold in my extremities cause i couldn’t sleep regardless of the medication i took. and i feel so sick i need to.
i ended up taking an atavan…not my preferred course of events but i could n’t figure out a herbal/vitamin mix that would help to move whatever was stagnating in my body because of the adrenaline response to being mugged.
all this being said, i am keeping a close watch on my lungs and may go get checked for pneumonia.
the muggers are like other predatory species – they took advantage of a person who they could. i was targeted because i was sick and moving slow, and weighed down, and not paying attention. stupid predatory fucks. nothing more, nothing less.
oxy mentioned oven cleaner as a good spray to carry. maybe we can manufacturer it in pocket sized samples. : )
the tone about protection is diff outside of the US – carrying guns is illegal in some places and many people would consider me an all out gangster if i carried a gun. but really, don’t we have to get serious at some point, about protecting ourselves?
i grew up in a rural community. you never heard anyone mouthing off about how a farmer shouldn’t have a gun to protect his livestock. i know part of this for me – i wouldn’t have been o the street is i had a vehicle. but i don’t and that doesn’t mean the street is safe. just me. these guys didn’t need a weapon. they were just 2 big guys, and i was sick. end of story. now if they HAD tried to harm my physically, or HAD tried to rape me, then it would have been a dif story – then maybe all that close quarters training i did years ago would have risn, and there would have been no compunction about digging fucker #1 ‘s eyes out. thing is, one needs to think about the aftermath and what may be worth it in the long term. and every situation shifts as you go through it.
i handled it right. i am not harmed. in another situation would i defend myself physically? yes. would i maim? yes. would i kill…now this gets more difficult…to kill someone to protect yourself, still leaves their death on your hands. to be raped at this time – it could blow me out of life in a very significant and painful way. when i weigh that against what it would do to my spirit to kill another…if i had no choice – if i was going to die if i didn’t kill – i would kill. i think i would kill if i was going to be tortured in a way i might not recover from…either mentally of physically. life is painful enough.
they – the muggers are on my mind. it is not such a big city. i may find their van or them sometime. when i am an not so sick. not so alone. people get what’s coming to them sometimes. I carry a cell. the police are programmed in. if i ever get a vehicle again, i ‘ll be back to carrying a crow bar. and no, i am not f*cking kidding.
LTL – i am okay. i wasn’t hurt. and didn’t lose much beyond bus fare – would have been worse if they’d taken my groceries.
i am angry. and just so tired.
and it’s another damn thing to deal with. like there isn’t fucking enough already.
i haven’t been out and about since – so i’ll see how i am once i am on the street again. i walk everywhere. i walk at night often as this crap town has a crap transit system. I walk home – takes me an hour – through that area. have done it for the last few years.
I need to become a bit more aware of my surroundings again. i was just so sick and out of it. it’s not like i can take cabs or something. and the buses stop early. the thing is, I won’t let it stop me…my life is collapsed enough as it is.
i do need to work this out on a physical level though – process the chemicals that came surging. and if anyone has ideas on how to do that i’d be appreciative of hearing from them.
best,
one step
hey One Step, take care of yourself. Keep Safe. try staying in for a bit.
Mike
Hey, folks,
Just dropping a note. our OT and another teacher is going to start considering taking regular kids that may be at risk. They are taking 22 month old L during the day form 9am to 1pm. We’ll have to buy some books and the such. We’ll all be doing modified Floortime with her.
the name of their Place is “Little Flowers of Hope.” another place i contacted was “Angels Reach” : http://www.angelsreach.org/
and “Building Reciprocity” ;
http://www.ilovemychildwithautism.org to see if they would consider other non autistic kids into their programs…
LFOH said they hear me although at first they said they believe something should be done but that it did not mean they were gonna, they didn’t think they knew they were volunteering for the position. i said i voluntered you, i can’t do this alone. so they smiled and requested more information, those are some great gals… the other two places i’m meeting with soon…
they are the best in socialization programs here…
I can just see it now…
Mike