Autism

A Unique Sensory, Emotional, and Social Development

Summary

1. Autism is manifested in three very inter-related areas:

Social interaction and communication;

Repetitive, non-functional behaviors;

Unique emotional development.

2. Corrections needed most often:

Correct verbal communication can be trained in many cases, to the point of meeting most or all social demands.

Emotional responses can be modified to become totally socially acceptable.

Repetitive and non-functional behaviors can be reduced, and sometimes completely eliminated through the creation of alternative, functional behaviors.

All these corrections take extremely intensive behavior programs aimed at the correct performance.

3. There are two major problems that often occur when trying to correct the autistic child’s emotional responses:

The discipline of the trainers is not consistent enough and may be aimed at pleasing adults more than fulfilling the developmental goals required for the child‘s benefit.

Correcting one emotional response triggers changes that affect many other behaviors, making it essential to correct the emotional responses in the right order.

    i) The order depends on the emotion being corrected.

    ii) The proper order has to be followed to avoid creating additional emotional problems.

4.  For an autistic child to grow up to be a happy, well-adjusted adult, treatment has to be effective in three major functional areas:

Treatment must adjust the autistic child’s social interactions and communications.

Treatment must reduce repetitive, non-functional behaviors.

Treatment must correct sensory-emotional stimulus perceptions.

5. Communication skills:

Often, autistic people repeat a portion of what is said to them (echolalia), talk nonsense, or don't talk almost at all.

Little or no  speech is caused by physical impairments of the vocal apparatus and or connection with the brain.

    i) Physical impairments preventing speech is usually not noticed until the child starts using more complex speech.

    ii) The tongue, the lips, the facial muscles, and/or the muscles that move the diaphragm may be somewhat atrophied.  

    iii) The problems tend to show as blurred speech, insufficient breath to support continuous sentences, low or uneven volume in speech (sustaining screams only without words), and getting stuck in the pronunciation of consonants, such as l,  r, k, and g.

    iv) The autistic child may not try to mentally plan out the movements needed to create sounds, and this lack of mental planning causes the speech problems to increase as sentences increase in length.

    v)  Slow verbal response leads other people to anticipate the child’s needs, eliminating the need for the child to speak.

    vi) Oral motor training by a speech therapist can reduce or even eliminate many of these speech problems.

6. The autistic child experiences sensations differently than the rest of us do.

This means the autistic child enjoys different sensations than we do.

The autistic child may fixate on one enjoyable sensation, so the adults caring for and teaching him must be sure find several sensations the autistic child enjoys to prevent his fixating on one.

Finding what the autistic child enjoys is key to finding rewards for the autistic child, but these rewards must be varied to prevent the autistic child from focusing all his attention one pleasurable sensation.

7. The autistic child’s unique sensory combinations produces a unique emotional development which affects his or her socialization.

Parental over-protection and the failure of adults to consistently require autistic children to interact correctly result in the autistic child seeking fewer and fewer interactions with others.

The autistic child has difficulty to learn to socialize from social referencing--seeing how others respond to stimuli and then responding the same way--because the stimuli does not affect him or her as it does others.

These problems of  adults’ inappropriate training of the autistic child and the autistic child’s unique emotional and social learning needs can be addressed by specifically teaching the autistic how to respond to each and every social custom or situation.

Teaching the autistic child how to respond properly to social situations includes sessions of manufacturing the social situation. For instance, the autistic child may need to be shown what a smile is, have several people model it for him, practice it himself,  be instructed to smile in a situation where a smile would be appropriate, and repeating the situation where a smile is an appropriate response several times in row as in a game-like or practice manner.

8. Using rewards the autistic child enjoys and taking the time needed to consistently train him to respond in specific ways to typical social situations does eventually enable him to socialize harmoniously with others.

9. Many autistic children do have normal and even better than average intelligence, and in this case they will readily respond to treatment.  

    In summary, while you need to have very well trained, intelligent, and empathetic specialists  working with you to help your child, you yourself do need to understand your child's problems. The better you understand your child problems and means of learning, the better you can help him or her. I do suggest all parents of special children go to their local college and take classes in developmental psychology, neurology, and behavior analysis. Just learn whatever you can. You can audit these classes for reduced fees and still learn a tremendous amount. If you think that it will take too long or it will be too difficult to learn about child development, think first that child is your child for the rest of your life.  And nothing is more difficult than dealing with a special adult who was not properly trained as a child.  The more you know, the more you will be able to help your special child. You will find what works to bring our world into your child’s world, and when you have done that, then you will be able to start bringing your child out into our world. And as you do that, you will create a very special and rewarding bond with your child.