Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, the founder of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders joins Shannon to answer questions written in by our viewers for a segment that we call Ask Dr. Doreen! On this episode, Dr. Doreen answers the following questions:

5:06 – My son is taking 1mg of Guanfacine at night, I haven't seen any difference in his anxiety or panic attacks and he is still harming himself. I've been trying very hard to make his days fun and positive but I just can't do it all day long, I have two other kids to attend to and I am the only one with him during the day because my husband has two jobs.

9:31 - From India. Sorry for the long question. My son just turned 4, was diagnosed with ASD at the age of 2.5 years. no siblings. We started 7.5 hours/week ABA, 2 hours/day neurotypical play school with a shadow and OT 2 hours/week. He was verbal at the time of diagnosis but it was mainly at tacting, low manding and low intraverbals. Since the COVID he is getting online ABA sessions 45min/day. 45min/day online class with neurotypicals from school and continuing the OT also RDI, once a week play therapy and I have also joined the skills developing software 2 months ago. His latest evaluation says-- ASD with no language impairment and intellectual impairment. However, his social skills especially with peers still is poor according to me. He also has obsession with animals which limits his conversational and social skills. Unless we are doing a structured activity like building legos--He always wants to talk about them, listen to animal sounds, do animal pretend plays, animal stories, type animal spellings etc. Please tell me how to work on this at home? will getting him into a 20-24 hours/week ABA program with one to one therapy help him in this and his deficits? We try to stimulate him as much as we can.. no intellectual impairment

24:25 – About Skills

34:12 - Good day to you. my son born with APGAR score of 9/10. he was normal child until 3 years old. all of sudden he has developed unusual behaviors like not sleeping, no appetite, hyperactive all happened in the same time. slowly he lost his speech. we were clueless. later he has been diagnosed with Autism with borderline. but within a year he got affected acutely. That period we put him in ABA 2.5 hours/week and OT 2.5 hours per week for 3 years. he has developed few behaviors in terms of OT. but his language skills which he had up to 3 years been totally lost.

51:10 – Hi are the any Apps that can help autistic child to talk?

54:41 – Hi I am in South Africa my question is do u have someone accessible here in South Africa we can talk to?

Episode 270: Smart Body Smart Mind w/ Irene Lyon