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.

Imaginative Play Therapy For Autism

“The Joker has stolen the world’s biggest diamond, and it’s up to Batman and Robin to get it back. On a video monitor, hands move toy action figures through the paces of the story, as an off-camera voice speaks the dialogue.”

John, age 6, watches the monitor with rapt attention. He is autistic, and this is a technique called “video modeling,” used by educators at the New England Center for Children (NECC) in Southborough, Mass., where John and some 200 other autistic kids attend school.

When the video ends, Jen, his teacher, affectionately ruffles his hair and directs him to a table that holds the same Batman toys seen in the video. He is supposed to play with them in exactly the same way, saying the same lines, as he has just been shown.

Normally developing children play by imagining scenarios and acting them out with toys. Kids with autism do not. They have to be taught how to play this way. The goal is for them to understand the concept well enough to expand on their play, using their own imaginations.

Learning New Behaviors, Changing Harmful Ones

Teaching play with video modeling is something new that the NECC is studying. On the staff working with the kids are not only educators, but also researchers, and they report on what happens at the NECC to the scientific community. Video modeling is just one small part of the NECC’s whole approach, called “applied behavioral analysis,” widely regarded as the gold standard in autism treatment.

In the simplest terms, applied behavior analysis offers carrots, with no stick. Children are engaged in learning new behaviors and helped to change disruptive or harmful ones, by constant positive reinforcement. The curriculum at the NECC ranges from the most basic language and social skills to academics and vocational training. “We plug them into that wherever they’re at,” says Rebecca MacDonald, PhD, director of the preschool program, which includes kids aged 3 to 7.

Another new area she is studying is what’s called “joint attention,” an important early step in relating to others. If you were to turn and look at something, a typical child observing you would probably turn to look at it, too. An autistic child would not notice. “It’s one of the hallmarks of autism,” MacDonald tells WebMD. “They tend not to care what you are looking at or thinking.”

To encourage them to care, she will make something interesting or rewarding happen if the child follows her gaze. For example, she’ll activate an electronic toy by remote control if the child looks at it when she does. Improving joint attention behavior won’t make all other social skills fall easily into place. Like video modeling, it’s just one tool used in the intensive work that the NECC does. Kids who attend the school go for 30 hours a week, all year long.

Starting Early
The earlier this kind of work can begin, the better the outcomes tend to be for autistic children. Autism can usually be diagnosed by 18 months of age, but some scientists hope that in the future, a blood test at birth might detect it.

In May 2005, researchers at the University of California, Davis MIND Institute announced that they had found remarkable differences in blood tests of autistic and nonautistic children. The children had different levels of certain proteins in the blood and more of some kinds of immune cells.

“The idea for early detection is not only that you can intervene early, which is beneficial, but there’s the notion that not all children who ultimately have autism are doomed to it at birth,” David Amaral, PhD, research director at the MIND Institute, tells WebMD.

Scientists have speculated that maybe something in the environment makes children who are susceptible to autism develop the disorder. If researchers could identify the trigger, avoiding it might prevent autism.

“In some cases the information might allow full-blown prevention, and in other cases more tailored treatment,” MIND Institute researcher Blythe Corbett, PhD, tells WebMD.

It’s too early, however, to say for sure what the differences seen in the study mean. “We don’t know whether our findings indicate a cause or an effect,” Amaral says.

It may be that the immune system plays a role in some children’s autism, but “there simply is not going to be a single cause,” he says. “In fact, we think of autism not as autism, but as autisms.”

What’s more, the differences may not be specific to autistic children. “You have to show, for example, that it differentiates kids with autism from kids with obsessive-compulsive disorder or attention deficit disorder,” says Eric Hollander, MD, director of the Seaver and New York Autism Center of Excellence at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

Hollander’s own research has shown that a particular trait in the immune systems of autistic kids relates to the severity of repetitive behaviors, a common autism symptom. This same trait has been linked to Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Emerging Treatments
Recently, Hollander studied the use of Prozac for treating repetitive behavior in children with autism. Those who took low doses of the drug in liquid form showed better improvement than those who took a placebo. But selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac are not stand-alone treatments for autism.

  • “The treatment of choice for most individuals is an integrated approach,” Hollander tells WebMD.

At the University of California San Francisco, professor Michael Merzenich, PhD, is working on a computer program to teach language skills to autistic kids through what is called “neural retraining.” It may sound like science fiction, but it’s not all that speculative.

Scientists have come to understand that the brain is not hardwired, but very flexible, or plastic. There are software programs, such as one called Fast ForWord, that can train the brains of kids with impaired language ability to process speech better.

  • “We have very strong documentation that this kind of brain-plasticity-based training can have an effect,” Merzenich tells WebMD.

But programs that exist now are too complex for many autistic kids to use. “The ways that these programs have been designed for nonautistic children just don’t apply to most autistic children,” Merzenich says.

Once Merzenich and his team finish building their program, they will have to put it through years of rigorous testing, which he says they hope to begin later in 2005.

Although its methods are state of the art, the New England Center for Children prides itself on only applying treatment that is backed up by solid research.

  • “People are faced with a raft of alternative treatments that have no merit,” Vincent Strully Jr., the NECC’s founder and executive director, tells WebMD. He counts special diets, secretin treatment, and mercury detoxification among those.
  • “We’re not claiming any cure,” he says, but the center’s approach makes a difference. “It’s advancing the lives of these kids dramatically.”

How to Accept That Your Child Is Mentally Challenged?

It is usually a shock to discover that your child is mentally challenged. Whether you found out at birth or it took some time to get a proper diagnosis, you still experience the same sense of hurt and grief. While those are normal emotions, you need to overcome them and accept your child’s mental challenges. Acceptance is essential to allow you to be the best parent possible and help your child reach his potential despite the challenges.

Instructions:

  • Don’t spend too much time feeling guilty or trying to place blame. When you find out that your child is mentally challenged, your first natural reaction might be to look for a cause in order to make some sense out of the situation. You might blame yourself, looking for things that you could have done differently during your pregnancy, or you might look for an external cause. While it’s normal to want answers, you should be careful not too put too much energy into this area because you need that energy for parenting.
  • Focus on your mentally challenged child’s abilities, not his limitations. When you have a mentally challenged child, it’s easy to focus on what he cannot do and the limitations of his potential. It’s much more productive to focus on what he may be capable of and how to nurture him so he can reach his full potential even with the challenges.
  • Discuss your child’s mental challenges openly. If you try to hide them and act as though they are shameful, others will respond in the same way. If you are open and discuss the subject frankly and factually, this will help to “normalize” it for other people.
  • Be an advocate for your child to make sure she receives all of the services to which she is entitled. Schools are required to provide accommodations for children with mental challenges, although some are reluctant to do so. Pushing for services for your child can help you accept her mental challenges by giving you some power over the situation.
  • Join a support group for parents and families of children with mental challenges. It can be difficult to accept your child’s challenges when no one around you understands the situation. Support groups give you contact with other parents who have faced similar situations. They will have empathy and may also have suggestions to help you accept and cope more effectively.
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