Helping a Child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder

1. Don’t wait to seek treatment.
Early intervention is the most important key to autism treatment success. Seek help as soon as you suspect a problem in your child. Don’t wait for a diagnosis. You don’t need one to start treating your child’s symptoms.

2. Learn about autism.
The more you know about autism spectrum disorders, the better equipped you’ll be to make informed decisions for your child. Educate yourself about the treatment options, ask questions, and participate in all treatment decisions.

3. Become an expert on your child.
Figure out what triggers your kid’s “bad” or disruptive behaviors and what elicits a positive response. What does your autistic child find stressful? Calming? Uncomfortable? Enjoyable? If you understand what affects your child, you’ll be better at troubleshooting problems and preventing situations that cause difficulties.

4. Accept and love your child for who he or she is.
Rather than focusing on how your autistic child is different from other children and what he or she is “missing,” focus on what makes your child happy. Enjoy your kid’s special quirks, celebrate small successes, and stop comparing your child to others—developmentally-challenged or not.

5. Be patient and optimistic.
It’s impossible to predict the course of an autism spectrum disorder. Don’t jump to conclusions about what life is going to be like for your child. Like everyone else, people with autism have an entire lifetime to grow and develop their abilities.

6. Choosing treatments
With so many different autism treatments available, and it can be tough to figure out which approach is right for your child. Making things more complicated, you may hear different or even conflicting recommendations. When deciding on an autism treatment plan for your child, keep in mind that there is no single treatment that will work for everyone. Each person on the autism spectrum is unique, with different strengths and weaknesses.

Your child’s treatment should be tailored according to his or her individual needs. You know your child best, so it’s up to you to make sure those needs are being met. You can do that by taking the following important steps:

  • Put together a trusted autism treatment team. As a parent, you have the ultimate say when it comes to your child’s treatment. However, treatment planning is a lot easier if you have trusted professionals you can turn to for advice. Autistic children often have a range of treatment needs best served by a team of specialists. In addition to a pediatrician, your child may benefit from the expertise of other doctors, therapists, and teachers.
  • Develop a personalized treatment plan for your child. Build on what you know about your child’s unique needs and abilities, and work with your treatment team to build a plan that targets your son’s or daughter’s weakest areas while taking advantage of his or her strengths. Each team member can provide a unique perspective on autism, helping you come up with a comprehensive, well-rounded therapeutic approach.

As you design your child’s autism treatment plan, ask yourself the following questions:

  1. What are my child’s strengths?
  2. What are my child’s weaknesses?
  3. What behaviors are causing the most problems?
  4. What important skills is my child lacking?
  5. How does my child learn best (through seeing, listening, or doing)?
  6. What does my child enjoy and how can those activities be used in treatment?

1When looking into a specific treatment provider or an alternative therapy, it’s also smart to do your research. Learn what evidence there is for the therapy’s effectiveness, how safe it is, who will be working with your child, and how progress will be measured.

Finally, keep in mind that no matter what autism treatment plan is chosen, parental involvement is vital to success. You can help your child get the most out of treatment by working hand-in-hand with the autism treatment team and following through with the therapy at home.

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.

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.”

Early Signs of Autism Identified in Infants

Findings Could Lead to More Effective Treatment. Canadian researchers say they can recognize the early signs of  autism in children as young as 6 months old, and they hope their findings will lead to  better early treatments for the disorder.

In their ongoing study that now includes autism centers across 14 cities in Canada and the U.S., the researchers are following the progression of younger siblings of children with autism.

According to the National Alliance for Autism Research, a child born into a family in which an older child has been diagnosed with autism is 50 times more likely to develop the disorder than a child with no afflicted siblings.

In this study, researchers show that by age 1, siblings who are later diagnosed with autism may be distinguished from other siblings by early developmental behaviors.

“This is groundbreaking work that is pushing the frontier of what we know about the biological nature of autism, and why it emerges so early in life,” says researcher Lonnie Zwaigenbaum, MD, of Ontario’s McMaster University. “Our hope is that it will lead to the development of new and earlier treatments that could make a huge difference for these children.”
High-Risk Kids Followed From Birth

Autism is typically diagnosed in children around the age of 2 or 3 years, but parents often have concerns about developmental delays much earlier. There is strong evidence that autism has its origin in abnormal brain development early in prenatal life, write the authors.

In an effort to better understand the early signs of autism, Zwaigenbaum and colleagues have been observing more than 200 younger siblings of children with autism, many of whom have been followed from birth.

They developed a 16-point observational checklist called the Autism Observational Scale designed to map the development of infants as young as 6 months.

Specific markers include making infrequent eye contact, not smiling in response to smiles from others, and, in older children, exhibiting delayed language skills.

Even as early as 6 months of age, the researchers found that certain behaviors tended to distinguish siblings later diagnosed with autism from siblings who developed normally. These behaviors included passivity and a decreased activity level at 6 months of age, followed by extreme irritability, a tendency to fixate on objects, reduced social interaction, and lack of facial expression.

At 1 year, these same children also tended to have difficulty with language and communication, and they used fewer gestures. Zwaigenbaum noted that almost all of the children in the study who were diagnosed with autism by age 24 months had seven or more of these markers by the time they were a year old.

The findings are reported in the latest issue of the International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience. While the checklist may be useful for recognizing signs of autism in very high-risk children like the ones in the study, its relevance as an observational tool for other children is not yet known.

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