AUTISM
Autism is a developmental disorder that typically develops during the first three years of life. Autistic children do not reach on time the developmental milestones of a normal healthy baby, like crawling, walking, saying the first word etc. Autistic children are not slow learners or of a lesser IQ or suffer from mental retardations. Instead these are very special children who have difficulty in communication and social interaction. They often come across as those who remain engrossed with restricted and repetitive behavior patterns.
WHAT IS ASD:
A very minor form of autistic disorder is called Asperger syndrome. Other forms of the autistic disorders are those that mostly affect girls such as Rett Syndrome, where the child may suddenly withdraw from all social contacts. Another very rare form of the disease is childhood disintegrative disorder in which the child rapidly loses all learned communications and regresses into a socially isolated individual. Because of the varied kind of disorders that may be brought under the broad umbrella of autism, this disorder is also called as autistic spectrum disorder (ASD).
SIGNS TO IDENTIFY AUTISM:
Some possible ways to identify autism in children may be the following symptoms:
1.Children do not babble or baby talk.
2. Children do not point out things by the end of first year.
3. Children do not utter a word by middle of second year.
4. Children are not able to speak two word sentences by the end of two years.
5. Children do not respond to their own names.
6. Children do not absorb the social skills and thus stay away from people.
7. Children also make poor eye contacts.
8. Children who are not interested in toys.
9. Children do not laugh or smile and may seem to be hard of hearing as well.
SYMPTOMS:
Children suffering from autism spectrum disorder are affected in three ways.
1. All of them have communication problem with their parents and people around them.
2. They not interested in contact with the outside world or any social milieu,
3. They are engrossed in doing repetitive behavior for hours.
Problems in communication are one of the key symptoms of autistic children. Autistic children talks very less throughout their lives. Even this level of communication varies with each child. Some children remain mute for life. Others may be extreme slow in picking up language skills as late as 5 or 6 years of age. They may speak using only a word or two to form a sentence, or be monosyllabic. At times they may simply repeat the words that are being said to them.
Autistic children finds it difficult to understand the cues of the conversation, the nuances of how the communication bounces back to and fro from a set of participants.Repetitive behavior is also an integral part of the world of autistic children. As children they may spend hours in lining up cars or objects, or being engrossed in a particular type of behavior involving any object. They get upset if anyone disturbs their work, accidentally or otherwise. Their world moves in a set pattern and anything that disturbs the pattern upset them. Even their daily routines need to be followed in exactly the same manner everyday of their lives.
Some other symptoms of autistic children can be mental retardation, seizures, fragile x chromosomes, and tuberous sclerosis or formation of benign tumors on some organs like brain etc.
