Understanding Autism
Crochet artist who is an avid reader, who contemplates & scribbles her thoughts to share.....
There are innumerable stimuli that a normal brain processes that help in development & enhancing new synapses to be formed among the nerves cells.
Either due to enhanced synapses of nerve cells or improper synapses (not proved yet scientifically) there happens to be sensory overload in individuals with Autism.
Say for example you stop to smell a rose. You are triggering your memory, sense of smell, sense of sight & movement of muscles to bend down & smell it. But for an autistic kid it's tsunami of triggers through the brain that act as agitators.
The reason they are sleepless or are up at odd hours in the night is due to hyper stimulation of the brain.
Staying aloof, no eye contact, repetitive actions, echolalia are a solace from such triggers. This hampers their learning curve. Infant learns to talk by observing, lip syncing of words, their first phonics or word sounds from adults but with autistic kids that observation is absent to prevent sensory over-stimulation. This hinders their speech, social interaction & complex social cue is hard to decipher.
There are no grey shades for kids with autism it's either black or white. That hinders development of friendship bonds & in turn it further obstructs their social growth.
Their disconnect from senses & aloofness in few cases gives them a meditative composure wherein the individual with Asperger autism are focused & highly uni-functional in arts, sciences or mathematics.
Bringing up & tackling an autistic kid requires a lot of patience. It's like writing on an empty slate. Unlike we see with kids that bring up their personality as they grow. With Autistic kid you start from scratch. The mundane activities of processing and applying that are taken for granted by an average individual are a task for an Autistic. Instead of using just visual or audio or sensory cues or all of them together they have to be combined as audio-visual or visual-sensory or audio-sensory mediums of learning.
Kids usually have basic idea of sounds, words, cause-effect or action-consequence before they start school. As they start school they enhance on these requirements & get better to be successful part of the society.
But .......
With autistic kids learning is difficult as it demands processing of too many complex stimuli. imagine yourself reading a complex manual without pictures and assembling a state of art machinery.
So teaching phonics is a repetitive activity that starts with incorporating music & sounds, writing is done on sand or with use of colors. Sometimes feeling of toy alphabets in their hands, helps them learn. Cause and effect is taught through stories & rewards or cue cards. As they grow up they need to be taught social cues through dramatization of everyday events or through showing forth a social situation & explaining what someone feels & how to respond or reciprocate. They have no clue as to what a person feels in a particular situation or how they are supposed to feel and how they are supposed to act or react in a particular situation. It has to be taught.
And in spite of all the learning & efforts put into making them understand everyday situations you see them struggling in impromptu situations wherein people can be crafty & creative as they struggle to apply the theoretical study of behavior in classroom into real life situations.
Unfortunately their lack of tact, sensory hypersensitivity leading to monotony makes them a misfit. Just like anti-depressants or stimulants are like rain of new snow on the acquired snow sled path by a depressed or a addicted brain for making new pathways, there are no such drugs available for Autism. It is a genetic anomaly.
There are innumerable stimuli that a normal brain processes that help in development & enhancing new synapses to be formed among the nerves cells.
Either due to enhanced synapses of nerve cells or improper synapses (not proved yet scientifically) there happens to be sensory overload in individuals with Autism.
Say for example you stop to smell a rose. You are triggering your memory, sense of smell, sense of sight & movement of muscles to bend down & smell it. But for an autistic kid it's tsunami of triggers through the brain that act as agitators.
The reason they are sleepless or are up at odd hours in the night is due to hyper stimulation of the brain.
Staying aloof, no eye contact, repetitive actions, echolalia are a solace from such triggers. This hampers their learning curve. Infant learns to talk by observing, lip syncing of words, their first phonics or word sounds from adults but with autistic kids that observation is absent to prevent sensory over-stimulation. This hinders their speech, social interaction & complex social cue is hard to decipher.
There are no grey shades for kids with autism it's either black or white. That hinders development of friendship bonds & in turn it further obstructs their social growth.
Their disconnect from senses & aloofness in few cases gives them a meditative composure wherein the individual with Asperger autism are focused & highly uni-functional in arts, sciences or mathematics.
Bringing up & tackling an autistic kid requires a lot of patience. It's like writing on an empty slate. Unlike we see with kids that bring up their personality as they grow. With Autistic kid you start from scratch. The mundane activities of processing and applying that are taken for granted by an average individual are a task for an Autistic. Instead of using just visual or audio or sensory cues or all of them together they have to be combined as audio-visual or visual-sensory or audio-sensory mediums of learning.
Kids usually have basic idea of sounds, words, cause-effect or action-consequence before they start school. As they start school they enhance on these requirements & get better to be successful part of the society.
But .......
With autistic kids learning is difficult as it demands processing of too many complex stimuli. imagine yourself reading a complex manual without pictures and assembling a state of art machinery.
So teaching phonics is a repetitive activity that starts with incorporating music & sounds, writing is done on sand or with use of colors. Sometimes feeling of toy alphabets in their hands, helps them learn. Cause and effect is taught through stories & rewards or cue cards. As they grow up they need to be taught social cues through dramatization of everyday events or through showing forth a social situation & explaining what someone feels & how to respond or reciprocate. They have no clue as to what a person feels in a particular situation or how they are supposed to feel and how they are supposed to act or react in a particular situation. It has to be taught.
And in spite of all the learning & efforts put into making them understand everyday situations you see them struggling in impromptu situations wherein people can be crafty & creative as they struggle to apply the theoretical study of behavior in classroom into real life situations.
Unfortunately their lack of tact, sensory hypersensitivity leading to monotony makes them a misfit. Just like anti-depressants or stimulants are like rain of new snow on the acquired snow sled path by a depressed or a addicted brain for making new pathways, there are no such drugs available for Autism. It is a genetic anomaly.
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