Autism Resources
What is Autism?
Autism is a very complicated disorder and there are several very good websites dedicated just to Autism. As such, we do not wish to duplicate those efforts here, but rather to give you some basic information and then point you in the direction that is most helpful to you. You can start with Autism Speaks or the Autism Society of America.
Autism was first identified in 1943 by Dr. Leo Kanner of Johns Hopkins Hospital. According to the 2007 report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Autism affects 1 in 150 children and is 4 times more prevalent in boys than girls. As of 2001, researchers have linked autism to 21 human chromosomes and it is thought that multiple locations on several genes are involved. It can generally be diagnosed in children by the age of 3, but recent advancements in research have made it possible to diagnose children as young as 6 months. If you have any concerns about your child’s development, speak to your pediatrician and have your child screened for Autism. Because Autism impacts a person’s entire lifetime, early intervention is the best line of defense. For some tips on early diagnosis, go to First Signs or the Centers for Disease Control.
Autism is a Spectrum Disorder, which means that children and adults on the spectrum can exhibit any combination of symptoms and in any degree of severity; two children with the same diagnosis can appear quite differently and have varying capabilities. The spectrum includes Autistic Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Rhett’s Disorder, and PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified). Each of these disorders has specific diagnostic criteria, which are outlined in the American Psychiatric Association/s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR).
Traditionally speaking, Autism has been described in the media in terms of its symptoms; poor language development, inability to understand facial gestures or idioms, unusual or repetitive preoccupations, a lack of social skills, poor emotional regulation, intense interest in one or two topics, and difficulty with changes or transitions. Because it has been described this way, the treatments have tended to center around symptoms, rather than targeting the core deficits of Autism. As a result, children and adults with Autism still grapple with obtaining a good quality of life.
What really went wrong?
Autism is an information processing disorder. There is not any one portion of the brain that is to blame, but the connections between them that present the problem. Specifically, the connections between the pre-frontal cortex (the brain's executive center) and the limbic system (the emotional center) tend to be more like a dirt road than a super highway, complete with over, under, and off ramps. The human brain begins developing before we are born and continues to develop well into our twenties. There is no magic age that marks the point at which you can stop all attempts to improve it. As soon as your child is conceived, he/she is exposed to the environment (both intra-uterine and the external environment of the mother) with all the positive and negative impacts these environments have to offer. A heightened probability of developing Autism is produced when a very complicated set of genetics is combined with an equally complicated set of environmental factors.
Once the child is born, a whole host of external environmental factors are introduced. The type of environment and the type of experiences the child is presented with impact the child’s development through his/her five senses. To complicate matters, many things are taking place out of sight and on a cellular level, where most of us can’t see it. There are thousands of causative and aggravating agents and we could not discuss all of them here, but for a variety of reasons, children/adults on the spectrum miss portions of the information being presented to them. Some of these are biological (such as being casein intolerant), some are environmental (such as sensory integration), and some are cognitive (they are using the dirt road instead of the superhighway).
The child does not know that something was missed and he/she incorporates this new information “as if” it were complete. In other words, he or she thinks the information, and the process he/she used to learn or obtain the information is correct. The next time an opportunity comes up to learn or do something new, he/she will use the same process again. It isn’t usually until the child is older that an adult notices that something is not quite right. But, the child has been interacting in this same way with his or her environment all along. He or she has found a way to adapt and survive in this environment by using the neural pathway that works best for him or her. Over time, the child comes to favor this over other processes or pathways and the problem gets worse, not better.
Consider a simple math example. For beginners, there are four basic operations; addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Imagine the problems you would have if you randomly missed 5 of the first 10 days in math class. You might know that you can add numbers in any order you wish and you will arrive at the same answer. But, if you missed the day on division, and tried to apply the same rule, you would fail because you don’t have all the information you need.
Not unlike the rest of us trying to change a habit, the Autistic child needs both time and practice to stop doing what he/she has been doing and begin to do something else.