Parents of autistic children?

Question

Are there parents of autistic children?What exactly is autism and how does it affect the child?If you ask them something,they just look at you and don't answer or what?

Answer 1

I am not a parent of an autistic child, nor am I autistic myself, but I have become fascinated in the topic over the last several years through my own research for purposes of my own. What I write below, therefore, should not be considered an "expert" opinion, but it should be considered one founded on lots of interest and research of my own.

Autism, and other conditions on the autistic spectrum, is a very complicated and frequently misunderstood condition. To give a basic primer on the subject, there are two basic things one needs to know:

Many people on the autistic spectrum can not be "socialized", or at least not in the usual ways. Their interpretations of the social world are muddled by the very notion that they can not grasp how or why the actions of other people have to do with anything other than themself. They lack what Simon Baron-Cohen refers to in his work "Mindblind" as Theory of Mind (ToM). The classic example of a situation involving this mechanism involves the following story:

There is one ball and two boxes on a table in a room. One box is blue, and the second box is red. Both boxes are constructed with lids which can be closed so that the contents inside the boxes can not be seen. Sally walks into the room, takes the ball, opens the lid on the blue box, places the ball in the blue box, closes the lid to the blue box, and then walks out of the room. A few minutes later, Anne walks into the room, opens up the lid to the blue box, removes the ball, replaces the lid on the blue box, opens up the lid on the red box, places the ball in the red box, and closes the lid on the red box. Anne walks out of the room. A few minutes later, Sally returns to the room. Where does she look for the ball?

Many autistics will say that Sally looks in the red box. To their way of thinking, "because I know where the ball is, Sally knows too", but they fail to realize that their knowledge of a situation is different from that of Sally. They saw where the ball really wound up. Sally did not.

As a result, one of the challenges of being a parent to an autistic child is that you will need to do a lot of explaining to them about emotions and reasons for things. Do not attempt to give an autistic child a simplistic answer because for them to grow up to be successful adults, they NEED to learn everything they possibly can about the social world. See the website I cite below for Hubert Cross for a really good in depth discussion of this situation.

To answer your question about asking them something, the native language of many autistics is not a spoken language. Temple Grandin, both esteemed and maligned in different parts of the autistic community, wrote a book which she titled "Thinking in Pictures." Many autistics are extremely visual thinkers and have a very difficult time learning to understand the spoken language. (This may be further complicated if they have a hearing difficulty like Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) which, as I understand it, is sort of like having the world of sound piped into your ear through a megaphone. Sure, you'll hear everything, but it would be very difficult to distinguish one sound from another.) Ultimately, most learn to do so successfully, but I've read from many that they rarely feel like it is a "native language" to them.

I hope this has been helpful.

Answer 2

My 6 year old son was diagnosed mild PDD (pervasive Developmental disorder) which is in the autism spectrum. There are many varying degrees of autism which makes it very misunderstood and misdiagnosed. My child was delayed in speech and received speech therapy as a toddler but now we can't shut him up! If he is not talking then he is humming, whistling, animal noises, etc. so it doesn't necessarily mean a child can't talk at all. The spectrum is very large. My son's symptoms mirror ADHD symptoms as well. He is very hyper, can't focus, lack of concentration, overly excitable therefore he is on Ritalin to help him in school. He is in mainstream school and gets As and Bs. However, he does lack in social skills which he is seeing a counselor at school for. He's 6 but acts like a 3 or 4 year old in social settings. More info on PDD can be found at:

http://www.childbrain.com/pddq1.shtml

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/pdd/pdd.htm

Answer 3

Try watching this video, which attempts to show autism in the perception of the child.

http://vimeo.com/103697707