Autism Spectrum Disorder: What you need to know to understand
I
have noticed that there are people in the world who know nothing about Autism
Spectrum Disorder. In writing this blog I hope to inform those people about
what the disorder is and help to explain some of the odd behaviors these people
may show in public places. In being able to understand where an autistic child
or adult comes from, it will be easier to accept them into society.
Stimming
In
working with children with Autism every day, I have learned a great deal about
how they behave, what makes them tick, and I can understand them on a whole
different level. For one thing, Autistic children all have different variations
of the same disorder. What I mean by
this is that although each child may be very different, they each share
similarities it what bothers them or in what sorts of behaviors stem from the
disorder. For example, it is very likely
that an Autistic child will "stim". The word "stim" for
Autistic children means to to fixate on a comforting or compelling thing or
action. There are several different types of stims. Some children may rock back
and forth, some may shake their hands, touch their ears, or run back and forth
in a room. A stim could be so many
different things and is often very different for each Autistic child.
Scripting
Another
thing that many misunderstand is that a stim can also be vocal. Some children
will "script" which means they will take sentences that people say
and repeat them over and over and over. They may have trouble coming up with
something to say, so instead they just say what other people say. When
scripting, it normally comes out of no where and does not usually make sense
with what is going on. Scripting can be considered a complaint or a comfort to
the child depending on the tone. One of the children that I work with has just
recently started scripting one of the games we play during run time. During snack one day he started saying
"Red rover, red rover, send Christopher right over". I have changed his name for the sake of
keeping his identity private. He continued
to script this sentence over and over during snack. This is one example of a "script"
from an autistic child. Parents of autistic children often have to be even more
careful about what they say around their autistic child because they never know
what they will choose to script. Vocal stims can also just be vocal noises or
clicks depending on the child.
High-Low Functioning
There
is a reason why the disorder is called Autism Spectrum Disorder rather than
just autism. The spectrum needs to be
included in the name to show that there are high-functioning and
low-functioning autistic children. Those that are higher functioning are often
able to talk, walk and more easily do normal activities, they may just have a
hard time fully communicating their emotions and making social connections.
Those that are lower functioning may only talk a little bit or not at all and
because of their inability to communicate they will often get upset more
often. There are also high-funtioning
Autistic individuals who are non-verbal and low-functioning Autistic
individuals who can speak. Autistic individuals will often have heightened
skills in things like writing, math, and sometimes art.
Behaviors
be·hav·ior/biˈhāvyər/
Noun:
The
way in which one acts or conducts oneself, esp. toward others: "his insulting behavior towards
me".
The
way in which an animal or person acts in response to a particular situation or
stimulus: "the feeding behavior of
predators".
Those
with autism often have negative behaviors that go along with their disorder.
They can vary from extremely aggressive like hitting, biting, throwing things,
pulling hair, or scratching, to simply tapping their finger. Negative behaviors
that might occur will be different for every child. At the center that I work
at we have children that will destroy their rooms and bite or scratch their
therapist when they are upset, or we have others that will just scream or
cry. There are also some children that
will urinate or deficate on the floor or the wall as a negative behavior. The reason for being upset usually comes from
not being able to communicate what they want or not getting what they want. We
have a child who will get angry and start pulling your hair and we have a child
who pinches your back until you pay attention to him. Some behaviors are attention seeking and some
are considered tantrums which means something happened to upset the child. At
the center, there is a younger child who does everything she can to get attention.
I remember one time, when her mother was around and I was talking to the
child's lead therapist. The child was so
angry that she was not getting attention that she grabbed my glasses off of my
face and threw them across the room. When a child is aggressive or has tantrums
in public places they are often put into a behavior program. The place I work at is one of these
programs. We work on lowering the occurrences
of negative behaviors.
Websites
and Videos for further information about Autism Specrum Disorder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfkscHt96R0(youtube video about father catching teachers mocking his autistic son)
http://autismawarenesspage.com/?p=137
(autistic girl wrote a song about heros and performs it in this video)
http://www.ont-autism.uoguelph.ca/books-by-ASD-authors.html (list of Autistic Authors and their books)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEj8QIlN_Lc&feature=g-all-u (Youtube video blog by a boy who has
asperger's syndrome which is considered someone who is very high-functioning)
If
you wish to view more videos by him, some of them are quite entertaining and heartwarming.
His username is daxflame. You will also notice that some of the people that
comment on his videos are just cruel. I really wish he would go and delete all
the inappropriate and cruel comments that people write. It breaks my heart to
think that people can be so mean.
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