Healthy Living - Autism - A Personal View

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Autism - A Personal View

Article submitted by Healthy Living member "Bobster", father to Timothy

A crowd of relatives and friends surrounds Timothy, a four-year-old child. The occasion is his fourth birthday. By all outward appearances, he is the picture of health: his height and weight top both charts for his age, he enjoys running and climbing and other forms of play, such as trains and puzzles. The evening passes, amid many well-wishers who greet him and try to interact with him. A relative stoops to wish Timothy a happy birthday, and Timothy's eyes gaze over, around, and sometimes through his momentary companion…but seldom does he look at anyone, except when he chooses to.

Is this from shyness? Aloofness? Anti-social feelings? Or doesn't he like the person looking at him? Neither of these is true; Timothy's glances and gazes stem from a neurological condition that affects a growing number of children each generation, and even now, no one is sure what causes it. The condition is autism.

"Autism is characterized by a peculiar emotional and intellectual detachment from other people and the common human world. In autistic children, an impaired capacity for communication and human relationships and a severely restricted range of activities and interests become evident before the age of three. Although the symptoms vary in nature and severity, language and the capacity for a normal social life are always seriously affected. Two to four out of 10,000 children are autistic; 75% of them are boys.

"The earliest signs may appear in the first months of life. Autistic infants often shrink from touch. Instead of cuddling when picked up, they may go limp or stiffen, and they do not cling to parents who return after an absence. Normally, children will smile at the sound of their mother’s voice when they are two or three months old. Later in the first year they begin to reach with their hands, carry on wordless "conversations," and eventually progress to syllables like "ma" and "pa." Before the end of the first year they are pointing out objects to others’ attention and looking sad when someone else looks sad or anxious. Many autistic children never reach these stages or pass through them at a later age.

"In infancy, the symptoms may be subtle and almost unnoticeable or optimistically disregarded by parents, but it is usually clear by age two or three that something is wrong. Autistic children have little interest in others or understanding of their needs and feelings. They do not maintain eye contact and seem barely able to distinguish their parents from strangers. They ignore other children and prefer repetitious, solitary play, such as staring at revolving objects or arranging things in meaningless patterns. They may repeatedly lay out objects in lines, sit silently watching sand dribble through their hands for hours, or spin in an apparently trance like state."

Many autistic persons are also mentally retarded, but this isn't always the case. Some possess high degrees of intelligence. "A few unusually intelligent and articulate autistic adults have been able to speak about their lives as children. They speak of a chaotic world in which everything seemed inconstant and unpredictable. Noises were too loud, smells overpowering, and the touch of other people unbearable. Other children frightened them, and complex feelings confused them. Because they could not find words, they felt they had to scream and kick to make their needs understood. Their excruciatingly heightened sensations sometimes provoked violent rage. Because they lacked an intuitive understanding of human relations and social conventions, they had to infer the feelings and intentions of other people laboriously. Their apparent withdrawal and rigidity had the purpose of simplifying experience to reduce the terrifying confusion."

Since there are no specific findings about what causes autism, there is no agreement that it can be cured. Behavioral therapies have varying degrees of success in preparing autistic children to function within their environment and limitations.

The month of April is Autism Awareness Month; devoted to making the world at large aware of autism and other related developmental disorders. Through ongoing research, education, and political awareness, the goal is to obtain the resources and legal accommodations necessary to assist autistic persons in becoming self-sufficient and self-reliant in their daily lives. With the help of a loving psychologist, autism consultant, therapists and other professionals, Timothy has blossomed since we began his behavioral therapy in October 2000, even displaying a non-verbal IQ of 138. Eventually, other children so afflicted will receive the care they need to also flourish, thus adding to the landscape of our society.

Quoted paragraphs are taken from The Harvard Mental Health Letter, Vol.13, Nos. 9, 10, March and April, 1997, as published to the website Families for Effective Autism Treatment (FEAT), http://www.feat.org