Archive for August, 2007
The moment you know that your child is having autism, then a gloom will descend over you and you will start wondering what to do. The big list of vague symptoms will further confuse you as you may find few of them exhibited by your child and many of them are not at all displayed. Such a situation can also make you to suspect some other related disorder and you may even start praying for absence of autism in your child.
Autism is considered as a spectrum disorder meaning that your child may or may not have all the related symptoms and the behavioural traits also seems to be very unique. Based on the symptoms your child may be in need of treatment in specific areas only and you can safely leave other symptoms untreated
Choosing an autism treatment itself is a big job and the very success mainly depends on your choosing the correct and apt treatment for your child based on the symptoms exhibited. There is no one single treatment schedule that can accommodate all autistic children irrespective of the symptoms.
Therapies for Behavioural Disorder
Your child may exhibit behavioural maladies either due to the impaired communication skills, or due to malfunctioning sensory capabilities, or even both. While deciding the autism treatment for management of behavioural maladies caused by impairment, care should be taken to make an assessment based on the individual case basis.
Autistic children do not learn corrective behaviours on their own and hence it is a must for you to choose an appropriate behavioural therapy based on your child’s symptoms.
Few children may be in need of one-to-one training and the same should get administered through an expert teacher. An expert in administering such therapies will be able to show good progress in your child’s learning curve.
The autism treatment is aimed at making the child to learn within an environment rather than making to adjust to the environment. Hence, any autism treatment taken up for treating behavioural maladies should be tailor made for correctly addressing the specific behavior of each child.
Therapies for Physical Coordination
Autistic children have impaired learning abilities and hence may need specialised treatment for correcting the learning disorder. You can find communication disorder in almost all the autism spectrums and this can be well addressed through speech therapy. In an autism treatment, physical therapies are also made use for correcting the impaired motor abilities and such treatment can improve physical coordination in the autistic child.
The difficulty faced by the autistic children is mainly due to their misunderstanding the external stimulus and their brain “sees” things differently. The occupational therapy in an autism treatment can help in integrating all the messages for proper coordination.
Therapies Involving Medications
Under normal circumstances medications are not prescribed in an autism treatment, but in few exceptional cases medicines are used for correcting and diverting certain of the body and brain chemical compositions.
Some autistic children, who have difficulties in behavioural patterns and find it difficult to socialise freely, are prescribed with anti-depressants like Prozac, Celexa, or Zoloft. For children who are aggressive and suffer from tantrums, anti-psychotic medications can help in decreasing such incidence effectively.
Only after knowing and understanding your child’s symptoms fully, you should choose the autism treatment for your child. Note to take adequate precautions while selecting the autism treatment as the treatment is the only available lifeline for your child.
[tags]Autism, Autism Treatment[/tags]
Teaching a child with autism is a very formidable task when you take into account the abnormal symptoms of autism. The behaviour pattern of autistic persons are always different and they differ from person to person and due to which you cannot just apply one single treatment commonly for all autistic persons.
The main symptoms or the behaviour of autistic persons will be that they will be very sensitive to loud noise, show interests in unusual topics and get fascinated towards relatively inconspicuous movements such as finger movement of others.
It has been proved beyond doubt that an early treatment schedule can in fact assist autistic children regain their lost attributes and help them to lead a near normal life. As the symptoms of autism can never be the same, the treatment methods also can never be same.
Due to the uniqueness of autism there is no standard or standardised treatment method that can be applied on autistic people. When it comes to types of treatment, there are three methods of teaching a child with autism and they are physical therapy, verbal communication therapy, and applied behavioural analysis.
Physical Therapy
Teaching a child with autism is a demanding job due to the complexity involved in making the autistic child understanding the techniques and in making them to follow. The main aim is to make the autistic children learn to live within the environment instead of changing the entire behaviour.
One more barrier that one could face in educating the autistic children is in the area of making them to overcome their physical difficulties experienced. As majority of the autistic children will have malfunctioning motor abilities in one way or other, physical therapy sessions should be so designed so as to assist the child to get back their coordination skills and better physical movement.
Verbal Communication Therapy
The verbal communication technique used in teaching a child with autism is to instill confidence in the autistic child’s mind for better communication. Normally any autistic child will have great difficulty in communication and hence they fall silent and never express their desires or their thoughts.
Technicians teaching verbal communication techniques use novel methods so as to evince interests in the minds of the autistic children and kindle their awareness and tongue usage. Children learn to use the movements of tongue towards understanding the meaning of a word and start using the technique for putting forth their thoughts.
Applied Behaviour Analysis
The third method that is used in teaching a child with autism is applied behavioural analysis. This particular educational technique was evolved based on the foundation that autism is a neurological disorder. The technique aims in customisation of instruction sets based on the case by case analysis as the autism disorder symptoms are unique and are not similar for any two persons.
This customised or individualised technique helps the autistic child to accomplish the task accurately and they will be in a position to repeat with accuracy and start enjoying the rewards. This technique will instill a positive outlook in the minds of the autistic children and help them to overcome their communication disability.
Teaching a child with autism by resorting to applied behavioural analysis has resulted in success and the autistic children have started to show their flexibility in the place of rigidity and friendliness in the place of perpetual hostility.
[tags]Autism, Physical Therapy, Communication Therapy [/tags]
Autism is a neurological disorder that results in impairment of social skills and changed patterns of behaviour and interests in a person. The word ‘autism’ has its origin from a Greek word meaning “self”.
As of now there is no cure for autism and the medical world is also not likely to find one in the near future. Further, the cause of autism is also yet to be cracked by the researchers. Despite the various thoughts and beliefs, scientists and researchers commonly agree on the genetic reason as the cause of autism.
With the research getting much deeper as days rolling by, scientists still debate on genetics as a possible angle for cause of autism in people. The reason for putting the blame on genetics for the possible cause of autism is due to the finding that identical twins who share the same DNA also shares the disorder more than the non-identical twins.
Though the scientists have pinpointed the role of genes for the possible cause of autism, they have not yet concluded whether it is a single gene or a collection of genes.
Is it Acquired or Inherited
Again there are two school of thoughts, one claiming the cause of autism due to inheritance and the other arguing on that the presence of particular set of gene or genes in an autistic person as a coincidence.
Few other experts and specialists argue that environmental factors can also be a cause of autism and as days roll by it is becoming difficult to zero-in on the cause of autism and all the findings are becoming only hypothetical.
Other Possible Presumption
When it comes to the cause of autism, there are more theories but not even a single theory has been proved beyond doubt. Few strange theories such as yeast infections, leaky gut syndrome, allergic or intolerance to certain specific food items, lack of beneficial digestive bacteria – all these theories also make their rounds.
Under the weird theory of leaky gut syndrome, people assume that the undigested food components enter into the blood stream and eventually enter into the brain resulting autistic condition.
Many people opine that such yeast infection or other materials cause immunodeficiency problems that may start mimicking neurotransmitters and scrambles the inward stimulus making the autistic person to misinterpret things.
Actually under this circumstance the person may be showing a right response for a wrong stimulus or impulse. Few other opinions suggest that a brain injury, or administered vaccines, or few viruses, or even the environmental factors may trigger autism in people.
The stark truth is that nobody is aware of the real cause of autism as of now and autism continues its journey of affliction without any hindrance. Though there is no cure for autism, still people afflicted with autism can lead a meaningful and productive life with a right kind of treatment.
Let us hope that one day we will know the exact cause of autism and the precise cure for autism. Until then, we can learn to be more aware of the disorder and help autistic people in all possible ways for making their life easier.
[tags]Autism, Autism Spectrum, ADHD [/tags]
