Support for Autistic Children

There are many things parents can do to help autistic children overcome their challenges and get the most of life. From learning all you can about the disorder to getting your child into therapy right away, you can make a big difference.

This article will teach you where to find government and educational services, how to choose effective treatments for your child, and where to look for support. Plus, you’ll also find parenting tips to help make daily home life with an autistic kid easier.

Helping an Autistic Child

If you’ve recently learned that your child has an autism spectrum disorder, you’re probably wondering and worrying about what comes next. No parent is ever prepared to hear that a child is anything other than happy and healthy, and a diagnosis of autism can be particularly frightening. You may be unsure about how to best help your child. You may be confused by conflicting treatment advice. Or you may have been told that autism is an incurable, lifelong condition, leaving you concerned that nothing you do will make a difference.

While it is true that autism is not something a person simply “grows out of,” there are many treatments that can help children learn new skills and overcome a wide variety of developmental challenges. From free government services to in-home behavioral therapy and school-based programs, assistance is available to meet your child’s special needs. With the right treatment plan, and a lot of love and support, your child can learn, grow, and thrive.

As the parent of a child with autism or related developmental delays, the best thing you can do is to get your kid in treatment right away. Don’t wait to see if your child will catch up later or outgrow the problem. Don’t even wait for an official diagnosis. The earlier children with autism spectrum disorders get help, the greater their chance of treatment success. Early intervention is the most effective way to speed up your child’s development and reduce the symptoms of autism.

With the right treatment plan, and a lot of love and support, your child can learn, grow, and thrive.

What Is Music Therapy

Few people understand the significance and importance that music therapy and music therapists contribute to our society. Music therapists help the needy in many ways. To some people, the phrase music therapy holds little significance. While we all recognize the influence that music has on our society it seems much more difficult to associate this influence with anything more than a recreational diversion. In truth, since its modern founding in 1944 at Michigan State University, the study and practice of music therapy has brought about a number of changes in the way we can help individuals with various conditions.

Music Therapy and Personal Wellness
The most widely used and most noticeable application of music therapy is the personal reduction of stress levels. Just as intense, driving music can increase a person’s awareness and anxiety levels, calming, soothing music can reverse it. Music therapists use such music along with other relaxation methods to get troubled individuals past their immediate issues and teach them to better control their anxiety in the future.

Music therapists work with a wide range of people from all social groups and ethnic backgrounds. Many hospitals now commonly utilize the services of music therapists to promote wellness, positive mental attitudes, and healing with the understanding that a happy, stress-free person will often get better more quickly than one that is depressed over his or her medical condition.
Music Therapy and the Mentally Disabled

In increasing frequency, music therapy is being used as a method to aid and educate those challenged by autism and other mental disabilities. Autistic children often have difficulty focusing due to an overloading of their senses. Music therapists will very often create individualized songs, motor activities, and verbal activities to help an autistic child work toward reaching an educational or social goal.

In older individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, music therapy is used quite often to help patients retrieve lost memories. Playing or singing along with personally significant music can help these individuals to remember memories that have been lost to the disease.

For Mothers of Children With Autism, the Caregiving Life Proves Stressful

This isn’t the most uplifting pre-Thanksgiving entry, but this new study really resonated with me. Holidays can be particularly challenging for children with autism and their moms. To help Paige (my 13-year-old daughter with autism) enjoy her five-day break from school, I’m going to keep her busy and spend as much time as possible outside.

If you know a child with autism, I know his or her mom would appreciate any moral support you can give. I give thanks daily for the many people in my life who help us in so many ways. The following is a news release concerns research originating out of the University of Wisconsin, Madison:

FOR MOTHERS OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM, THE CAREGIVING LIFE PROVES STRESSFUL

Common wisdom tells us that to be the mother of a child with autism is to assume a heavier caregiving burden in life.

Now, in companion studies, the daily physiological and psychological toll on mothers of adolescents and adults with autism is documented, revealing patterns of chronic stress, fatigue, work interruptions and a significantly greater investment of time in caregiving than mothers of children without disabilities.

“On a day-to-day basis, the mothers in our study experience more stressful events and have less time for themselves compared to the average American mother,” says Leann Smith, a developmental psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Waisman Center who was involved with both studies.

The new studies, which currently (November 2009) appear online in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, probe the daily experiences of mothers of adolescent and adult children with autism over a period of eight successive days. On four of those days, the researchers measured levels of maternal cortisol, a hormone released by the adrenal gland in response to stress. Cortisol levels were found to be significantly lower than normal, a condition that occurs under chronic stress, yielding profiles similar to those of combat soldiers and others who experience constant psychological stress.

“This is the physiological residue of daily stress,” says Marsha Mailick Seltzer, director of UW-Madison’s Waisman Center, an authority on families of children with developmental disabilities, and the leader of an ongoing longitudinal study of families of individuals with autism. “The mothers of children with high levels of behavior problems have the most pronounced physiological profile of chronic stress, but the long-term effect on their physical health is not yet known.”

Changes in the pattern of cortisol expression in the general population have been shown to be associated with chronic health problems and can influence such things as glucose regulation, immune function and mental activity. Autism is a widespread condition in the United States, affecting an estimated 1 in 100 children. It occurs on a spectrum of severity and is characterized by deficits in communication and social skills, and the presence of rigid, repetitive behaviors. Many with the condition require lifelong care.

For the “daily diary” study, mothers were contacted at the end of each day and asked a series of questions about time use, episodes of fatigue, leisure activities and stressful events. The data were compared with a nationally representative sample of mothers of children without disabilities drawn from a study known as MIDUS (Study of Midlife in the U.S.), directed by Carol D. Ryff, a UW-Madison professor of psychology.

For a mother of a child with autism, daily life includes at least two more hours of childcare than mothers of children without disabilities. These mothers were also more than twice as likely to be fatigued and three times as likely to experience a stressful event each day. Importantly, nearly a quarter of their days included work interruptions versus fewer than 10 percent of days in the comparison group, suggesting a potential economic impact.

The new findings also reveal a thread of resilience. Compared to mothers of children without a developmental disability, mothers of children with autism were just as likely to have daily positive interactions, serve as volunteers and lend support to others within their social networks. Together, argue Seltzer and Smith, the research results demonstrate the need to develop programs and networks of support for families of people with autism throughout life.

“We need to find more ways to be supportive of these families,” says Smith, noting that the added caregiving burden and potential health problems associated with chronic stress can be a devastating combination. More and better programs of respite for parents and flexible policies on the part of employers, she says, are good places to start. In addition, Seltzer notes that interventions that reduce behavior problems can improve the health and quality of life of both the child and the caregiving mother.

Both studies were funded by the National Institute of Aging, with additional support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. In addition to Smith and Seltzer, co-authors of the daily-diary study include Jan S. Greenberg, Jinkuk Hong and Somer L. Bishop, all of UW-Madison, and David M. Almeida of Pennsylvania State University. Co-authors of the cortisol study include Greenberg, Hong and Almeida, as well as Christopher Coe of UW-Madison and Robert S. Stawski of Pennsylvania State University.

Childhood Rise in Autism Cases Real

Since the 1990s, there’s been a dramatic increase in autism (search) among school-age children. The data are from the U.S. Department of Education, and the report hints that the increases seen with time are real.

Research has suggested that the rise in autism could be largely explained by changes in diagnosis, with children who might have been classified as mentally retarded or speech impaired before the 1990s now being classified as autistic. Lead researcher Craig J. Newschaffer, PhD, says the Department of Education figures do not show this, but he adds that the increase in autism may never be fully understood.

“I don’t know if we are ever going to be in a position to explain what has gone on over the last decade,” he says. “The hope is that with the surveillance programs that are now in place we will be in a better position to understand future trends.” Earlier findings from the CDC and others have suggested as much as a tenfold increase in autism and related disorders during the last decade of the 20th century.

The study does not answer the question as to why autism is increasing. But the national data don’t show a decrease in other learning disabilities. Trends for mental retardation (search) and speech and language impairment remained unchanged. This suggests the increase in autism is not the result of an across-the-board increase in special education classification, say the researchers.

Trend May Be Leveling Off
Newschaffer and colleagues from an autism tracking center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analyzed national special education data collected from 1992 to 2001. The findings are reported in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics. The research offers intriguing early evidence that the upward trend in autism cases may be beginning to level off. But Newschaffer cautions that the finding may be misleading.

He says a change in 1997 that allowed children up to the age of 9 to be classified as “developmentally delayed” may explain the apparent leveling of autism cases. Before 1997 the diagnosis was used only for children 5 and under. It is possible, Newschaffer explains, that children with this label who would have been reclassified as autistic after age 5 are now being diagnosed when they are older.

“We will need a few more years of data to determine if the rise in autism is really leveling off,” he says.

Early Diagnosis Is Key
The most recent figures indicate that as many as one in 166 children in the U.S. is autistic or has an autism-related disorder, such as Asperger syndrome. Despite a growing awareness of the importance of early diagnosis, the new report suggests that many children are still being diagnosed at older ages.

Last month, the CDC launched a major public health initiative to promote early diagnosis by raising awareness about child development milestones. “By recognizing the signs of developmental disabilities early, parents can seek effective treatments which can dramatically improve their child’s future,” CDC Director Julie Gerberding, MD, says in a news release.

The focus of the campaign is to get parents to keep track of important developmental milestones such as when their child learns to smile, when they recognize the word “no,” when they learn to speak and play, and how they interact with others. Pediatrician and epidemiologist Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp, MD, says the hope is that parents will learn to identify developmental delays as early as possible. Yeargin-Allsopp is conducting an ongoing study of autism prevalence trends for the CDC.

“Parents need to know the signs and bring those signs to the attention of their health care provider,” she says. “After all, parents know their children better than anyone. And providers can’t take a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude. They have to refer a child quickly for diagnostic assessment even if they just suspect a developmental delay so that a child can get intervention services as early as possible, if necessary.”

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