Mentally challenged and Autistic children

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:

What are my child’s strengths?
What are my child’s weaknesses?
What behaviors are causing the most problems?
What important skills is my child lacking?
How does my child learn best (through seeing, listening, or doing)?
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.

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.”