Expert: James Michael Roan - 7/28/2006

Question
my 3 year old daughter is deaf and has a cochlear implant.she has alot of strange behaviors and explosive tantrums over any little thing. her teacher is very concerned so we are taking her to a neurologist.her teacher wrote me an evaluation of her. she said she has little or no eye contact with her at school,which i have also noticed at home. she will watch movies literally 5 times in a row and have total meltdowns if i refuse.her teacher says that will do art for over an hour and scream when she has to stop.she also wakes up at least twice a night and destroys our house or will cry to watch movies.she hardly ever plays with her toys and never sits still.even whne she is sitting she moves her legs around. her teacher is concerned she might have adhd. i thought her behavior was because she is deaf,but i am finding that her other classmates do not behave this way.i also have difficulty taking her to stores.she runs away and used to knock things off of shelves. she gets totally obsessed over batteries,her dads poker chips,and she licks things alot.because she is deaf, her speech is not good either.i guess these behaviors started around 15 months old.i can hardly handle my child at this point. do you think she could have some other disorder that the doctors could have overlooked since she's deaf? thank you

Answer
Hi Lisa;

Based on what you describe, she does have sensory and possibly attention issues. They could be related autism, but I don't have enough information to really develop an opinion at this point. In autism we are primarily looking at social delays or even social aversion in some cases.

I suggest you first download the M-CHAT from here:
http://www.firstsigns.org/downloads/m-chat.PDF

Then get the scoring guide here:
http://www.firstsigns.org/downloads/m-chat_scoring.PDF

If there is any risk noted, you can contact me again to discuss the results.

Kind Regards,
James