Childhood autism is a pervasive development disorder, called childhood autism not because it affects only children and passes in adulthood, but because the first symptoms appear before the age of three, up to four times more often in boys than in girls.
People so-called “normal” (the quotation marks should be much larger, would also use a footnote that they are called so willingly by themselves) take it for granted that everyone thinks as they do. Otherwise, it is most normal in the world to be abnormal. When approaching the issue of the reception of reality statistically, it can be assumed that most of them watch the film and read it roughly in the manner planned by the director, conduct a conversation containing a certain amount of understatement, jokes and suggestions, and realize that when someone says: ” No, nothing happened, ”he might mean the exact opposite. People with autism have serious problems with such activities.
Some sources say that the number of autistic children is increasing dramatically, and autism is almost a modern epidemic – so far it was believed that it affects several children per 10 births, at the moment, e.g. in the United States, autism is diagnosed in one in 160 children. Doctor Alicja Rutkowska-Suchorska, a specialist psychiatrist of children and adolescents, explains that there are not more cases of autism, but the diagnostic requirements are different, because modern research covers the percentage of children who meet the criteria of the so-called pervasive developmental disorders, including not only autism, but also Asperger’s syndrome and a number of other, rarer syndromes. He adds, however, that the awareness of parents is actually growing and autistic children more often than ever reach a doctor and are properly diagnosed and treated.
What is Autism?
The name “pervasive disorder” is not accidental. Autism affects the ability to communicate, verbal and non-verbal, the ability and need to establish interpersonal relationships, and significantly reduces the scope of interests. In practice, it looks like autistic children are as if locked in their own world, they do not feel the need to contact other people, even their parents, sometimes, for example, they do not allow themselves to be hugged, they are not interested in the world they live in, toys, books, television. , they do not need to speak, learn or gain knowledge. They live among the schematic behaviors they initiate, incomprehensible to the environment. However, this is not their conscious decision or evidence of extreme mental limitation.
Infinite number of doubles
People with autism perceive reality in their own way, which is partly due to the functioning of the brain. Disturbances in his work make something that is trouble-free for us, for them it turns out to be unpleasant or illegible, and therefore they avoid it. They may have too acute or, on the contrary, insufficiently sensitive senses. This one piece of information is enough to understand the strange behavior of autistic people: staring at or hiding from the light, rubbing your body with your fingers, making objects move in a certain way. Some people are very dazzled by the light, so they run away from it, others don’t get too far, so they look for it. Some people do not feel the touch of average intensity, so they have to stimulate themselves more, for others the hug is supposed to be pleasant, sometimes incomprehensible, because they have a problem with the interpretation of gestures, and two, very painful, because their skin is hypersensitive. Still others like to rotate objects because it is convenient for them to follow it, so they focus on spinning and thus create a situation in which they feel comfortable. This is also the purpose of the so-called stereotypical behavior, such as putting objects in equal rows, always in the same order. Autists share an attachment to rituals, the desire to maintain maximum stability and immutability of the environment. Living on Groundhog Day, they would be delighted. It happens that they react hysterically or aggressively to even the smallest change, even a new tablecloth, because it destroys their safe and predictable world order. Immutability helps to organize and bear stimuli which, due to their intensity, may be tiring. It allows you to adapt to your own needs a reality whose rules are incomprehensible. It’s a bit as if one day we landed on a strange planet where everything is different from Earth: different colors, different light, different sounds, different material structures, different language, and the natives have completely unreadable facial expressions for us. The desire to create even a microscopic substitute for a home, a world that is understandable and known, would be completely natural for us, and probably also the desire to isolate. And would our ability to perceive reality be worse? Not. Exactly. Just different.
From word to word or wordless
The first disturbing signal your baby gives is communication disorder, even when it comes to babbling. If the babble does not start by the age of 16 months or it stops at some point, do not ignore it.
There are autistic people who never speak, and some who use sign or picture language. In other cases, children have an enormous amount of words, yet communicating with them is impossible or very difficult. This is because most of them do not use speech to communicate, make contact, communicate their thoughts or feelings, and do not try to get this information from others. The context of the statement, emotional color, subtext, irony, facial expressions and gestures are not available to them. Therefore, the words spoken to them are like an unopened letter that returns to the sender – autistic people lack the tools to read the signals that are obvious to us. They take everything literally, they cannot lie, manipulate, or make up. The phenomenon of echolalia, i.e. the automatic repetition of words spoken by someone or heard on television or on the radio, is characteristic. It happens that autistic people give long monologues, recite, for example, a detailed city map with all street names, streets and roundabouts, or describe in detail the construction of a machine. Also in the vocal layer, speech deviates from the generally accepted norm, utterances may be dispassionate and monotonous, too fast or slow, or uttered in an unnaturally high tone. All this is due to the fact that the words are not intended for any purpose, they have no effect, and are not taken into account as a factor that has power, e.g. in the melody or in the volume of the voice. Of course, there is the phenomenon of high functioning autism in which speech is used for actual communication.
It is by no means, however, that since people with autism don’t talk, don’t think, or if they don’t care what the other person feels, they don’t feel themselves! We come across the notion of “norm” again. It seems to us that emotions should be interpreted in a certain way and expressed equally predictably. Failure to clearly communicate emotions on the spot disqualifies the ability to feel them, and this is a big mistake in reasoning!
Autism is subject to therapy, primarily behavioral. The kids practice with their guardians behaviors that are adequate to the situations they may encounter in everyday life. Comfortable conditions are created for them so that the transition from the inner world to the surrounding reality is gentle and painless. You work on shifting their attention from ritualistic behaviors that sometimes last many hours, such as spinning a ball, to activities that require interaction.
Find out what autism is all about and why autistic people behave the way they do. Also in general terms, it will be useful for each of us, as an individual coexisting with six billion other individuals, to know that people are not the same, they do not think and feel the same way, do not react the same way, and do not always understand the reactions of others . Sometimes you have to stop dragging someone into your world and look into their own unique globe instead.