PLEASE UNDERSTAND THEM THEYRE NOT NAUGHTY (Autism)

Member Name: doodley

Product:	Autism
Date:	04/02/09 (116 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: NONE

Disadvantages: DISTRESSING FOR THE AUTISTIC PERSON AND THEIR FAMILY

Autism like many other people my only knowledge of this disorder was the film Rain man. , which portrays a serverly autistic man who is also a savant. whist this film helped to inform the public about autism it unfortunatley gave out the idea that all Autistic people had savant skills , such as a computer like memory for dates figures and facts . when in actual fact savants are very rare.
So when i had my son eleven years ago, the thought that he could have autism never crossed my mind. When he had his two year assessment and was well below the expected level of development worries started to set in .
He was referred for checks on his sight , hearing and to see the speech therapist and peadiatrican . Whilst his hearing was fine and he needed glasses i was told there was a shortage of speech therapists so was put on a long long list. In the meantime we saw the paedeatricain who said he had GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT DELAY , which to me meant oh he's delayed in his development he'll catch up.
How niave i was , he didnt catch up because in fact he was Autistic , i found this out when at last the speech therapy appointment came up she did an assessment and said i think your childs Autistic. Soon after a phychologist confirmed this
Looking back he was displaying classic symptom hand flapping , avoiding eye contact , disliking loud noises , liking routine , his behavior really showed it self in full when he attended part time nursery and could not cope with the noise, amount of people and the envoronment , this resulted in him being given a one to one support to help him . He didnt stay ther long and soon after started attending a Autistic unit which suited him perfectly high levels of steff and only a hand full of staff.
I didnt realise that Autism was a spectrum disorder ranging from the most serverly affected with no speech and needing lots of personal care, to the other end of the spectrum where people are very verbal and can appear normal but have lots of trouble adjusting to changes in their routine, and coping with busy noisy places.
What all Autistic people have in common is what the phsycologist said is called the triad of impairment which is made up of difficuties with - social skills ,
immagination
and communication
most also suffer sensory overload ,this is why you very often see an autistic person having a "meltdown" in a public place this is because there is literally an overload of colours ,noises smells they cant process all this information like the rest of us and because they can lack the verbal skills to express their anxiety to their environment they can start shouting throwing themseves on the floor and getting agressive to those around them.

Ive been in these circumstances very often with my son and sadly members of the public think he's spoilt naughty etc which is due to their lack of knowledge of autism , i would only wish instead of glaring tutting or gossiping about my son and others with autism ,dont assume theres a naughty child i wish theyd go about their own bussiness and leave the parent to deal /remove them from the source of stress instead of adding to the parent/childs stress by turning them into a side show
If only the media put as much energy into informing the public about mental health disorders instead of the endless conveyorbelt of reality shows we might have a more well informed tolerant society
Ive become a stronger person through my experiences raising my son and wouldnt change him for the world he is lovely he's towords the milder end of autism and attends a special school daily and is progressing well
whilst theirs no cure for Autism with the right intervention and atitude of those around you it can be made as tolerable as possible
My main advice to anyone worried about their childs development trust your own instincts ,dont let people tell you your an over anxious mother no one knows you child as well as you , the problem is many health proffessionals do not know much abourt Autism either
Autistic people like routine routine routine as much as possible as it keeps their anxiety levels low ,as once heightened thats when themeltdowns happen.whilst this isnt always possible keeping to routine helpskeep them calm.
Ive had to change my life considerably to minimise the stress for both of us in our day to day life thanks for reading if youve got this far

Summary: A CRUEL DISORDER