Autism

“A parent with a diagnosed autistic child might be reluctant to teach practical, social skills that are outside the child’s comfort zone, such as ordering food at a lunch counter. “It hurts because they don’t have enough expectations for the kids. I see too many kids who are smart who’ve graduated, but they’re not getting a job because when they were young they didn’t learn any work skills,” Grandin said. “They’ve got no life skills. The parent thinks, ‘Oh, poor Tommy, he has autism so he doesn’t have to learn things like shopping.””

– Dr Temple Grandin, The Way I See It

The diagnosis of autism focuses on social interaction, on language acquisition and learning skills which are hard to diagnose before 24 months.

The earliest signs of autism involve the absence of normal behaviors—

Your doctor may recommend more developmental tests if your child:

• Doesn’t respond with a smile or happy expression by 6 months
• Doesn’t mimic sounds or facial expressions by 9 months
• Doesn’t babble or coo by 12 months
• Doesn’t gesture — such as point or wave — by 12 months
• Doesn’t say single words by 16 months
• Doesn’t say two-word phrases by 24 months
• Loses previously acquired language or social skills at any age

Neurosensory Dysfunction in Autism Spectrum Disorder

One of the main core root-causes for the repetitive patterns of behavior and the deficit in social communication in autistic individuals is the inefficient neurosensory integration. These individuals are either hyper-sensitive or hypo-sensitive as a result of confuse processing of information that cannot be interpreted well by the brain.

Our neurodevelopmental approach addresses the need for the regularisation of the brain sensory functions.

Tactile Pathway

• Very high pain tolerance (hypo-sensitive) for deep sense of touch: craving for deep pressure, banging into things, hitting themselves
• Hyper-sensitive to surface touch: resists being held, irritated by textures, annoyed by light touch
• Over-sensitive to temperature changes but not able to perceive either hot or cold well
• Toe walking: the child is in a “flight” response from a non-integrated primary reflex originating in the brainstem
• Smell distortions: either seeks strong smells, engages in disturbing behaviours when in contact with certain smells
• Mouth sensitivity: resists food based on texture and temperature, leading to limited food choices which affects their health
• Low muscle tone
• Lack of coordination

Auditory Pathway

• Hyper-sensitive to sounds: audiogram shows very good hearing but these children interpret sounds as a painful and shut down to auditory stimulation
• Not a lack of hearing BUT tonal distortion in the interpretation of auditory information
• Certain sounds may be painful
• Their hands are covering their ears or they act as if deaf
• Lack expressive communicative language
• Weak auditory sequencial processing and short term memory

Visual Pathway

• Little to no eye contact
• Fascination with spinning wheels or mirror
• Engage in visual sensory-play by dangling objects in their peripheral visual field or does odd finger play
• Over-use their peripheral-vision (hyper-perception of edges and motion), attending to irrelevant information BUT
• Under-use their central-detail-vision

The diagnosis of autism is usually done by a physician or by a psychologist who use the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) which is the 2013 update to the American Psychiatric Association’s classification and diagnostic tool.

The 2 main deficits must be present:

1. Social/communication deficits
2. Fixated interests and repetitive patterns of behavior
3. These symptoms must be present in early childhood (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities).
4. Symptoms together limit and impair everyday functioning.

A Revolutionary Theory: Detecting the Earliest Signs of Autism

The Teitelbaum Tilt Test

When a normal six-month-old infant is held in the air and slowly tilted about 45 degrees from the vertical, she responds by keeping her head vertical, as the first 2 pictures show.

However, In many cases, an infant who is later diagnosed as autistic does not show this ability. When tilted to the side, an autistic-to-be six-month-old infant tends to carry her head along passively with her body, so that both her body and her head end up at a 45-degree angle from the vertical.

“This book enables parents to detect signs of autism or other developmental problems in young babies before they start talking. Starting autism therapy at a very early age greatly benefits the child.” Temple Grandin

(CBS NEWS, May 2012) Dr. Rebecca Landa, the study’s author and director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, says certain disruptions in a child’s motor development may provide important clues.

For the study, researchers assessed infants in a simple “pull-to-sit” task that measures posture control by firmly – yet carefully – pulling a child’s arms from a position of lying flat on his/her side back into a sitting position (as seen in the videos below). Typically infants achieve this type of posture control by the time they are four months old.

Our clinical experience support that an intensive neurodevelopmental program and other treatments may help to rewire the brain and reverse the symptoms.

WARNING: The following symptoms are only descriptive of categories of behaviors. They should never be used to self-diagnose but rather to guide you toward the need for proper professional assessment.