Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it

Sunday, September 4, 2016

Autistim ..the good, the bad and the ugly

Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder is a brain based disorder which makes the brain function in a different way compared to the rest of the wold.

 Autism affect three major area's of a person;

  1. Social Interaction - Autistic people do not like to socialise, and they tend to be in their own world, they find it very hard to keep eye contact, and rarely shows empathy or compassion towards other human beings.

  2. Communication - Most kids on the spectrum has delayed speech or non verbal (40% of autistic kids are non verbal), this can be an early sign for you to identify who has autism. Kids with autism has trouble with speech and communication and they find it hard to express what they need also they find it hard to understand what you are talking to them. This can be because they find it hard to focus on you as they are mostly distracted by their surroundings.

  3. Behaviours and Interest - Behaviours and interest of autistic people can differ from person to person. Most children or grownups with Autism have repetitive movements with objects, repeated body movements such as rocking and hand flapping.

These are few of the characteristics of autism
  • Difficulty with verbal communication, including problems using and understanding language
  • Inability to participate in a conversation, even when the child has the ability to speak
  • Difficulty with non-verbal communication, such as gestures and facial expressions
  • Difficulty with social interaction, including relating to people and to his or her surroundings
  • Difficulty making friends and preferring to play alone
  • Unusual ways of playing with toys and other objects, such as only lining them up a certain way
  • Difficulty adjusting to changes in routine or familiar surroundings, or an unreasonable insistence on following routines in detail
  • Repetitive body movements, or patterns of behavior, such as hand flapping, spinning, and head banging
  • Preoccupation with unusual objects or parts of objects
However, autism is a spectrum disorder, therefore, children/people with autism behave very uniquely and challenges they go via differs from person to person. furthermore, the severity of the autism may change from time to time.


Autism can be a problem if it's not identified at child's early ages, autism can be identified within 18 months from child birth or even earlier. Infants with autism have no big smiles or other warm, joyful expressions by six months or later and no no back-and forth gestures such as pointing,showing reaching or waving by 12 months. Some kids with autism has no speech, babbling or social skills at any age. These are very few early signs of autism, if you see these red flags, its better not delay in asking your pediatrician or family doctor for an evaluation.

It's always good to identify autism at very early age so you can get the necessary help, with communication, language development, emotional skills and education.  Autism kid's will have a hard time dealing with social interaction and traditional approaches of learning, however, they can be very smart, knowledgable and gifted children. If they were given the right set of tools for their learning, and if educators can help them  understand how they can learn, they can do wonders.

Autistic Children are gifted and special, they have a really good focus on things and they see what most people miss. Due to this they have incredible skills in areas of mathematics arts music and many more. They see the world in a different manner and can help improve the world greatly.  Here are few of the famous autistic people.


Albert Einstein - Very intelligent physician   with many inventions
Amadeus Mozart - Talented musician
Sir Isaac Newton - Scientist with many inventions
Charles Darwin - Naturalist and geologist
Thomas Jefferson - President of United States
Michelangelo - Artist

As mention above, autistic people have un imaginable talents, and they make our world a better place.

The ugly part of autism is not the autistic people, its the society and how they look at autistic people. Due to lack of social skills, there are many instances autistic children get bullied and misunderstood. And most of them cannot understand sarcasm or phrasal words,  and they only understand the literal meanings of words. Their behaviour, and how they perceive things are different compared to majority of people,  due to that society tend to make autistic people feel less important or weird. According to Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 68 people have autism. This means there is a large population of autistic people in the world today, if we can be more patient and understanding when dealing with them, we can make a better world for them as well as us.





No comments:

Post a Comment