When autism is a "gift" (Part 1)

Autism - the disorder of HIGH intelligence

What is wrong with James?

James, aged nine years old, was studying in a mainstream school. He often used single words to express himself and was otherwise echolalic (keep repeating verbatim what others have said). He might scream loudly sometimes for no reason and loves running around. At a birthday party of a school friend, James came up with a small box of a doll as a gift and said: “Your birthday… a special doll…my mum says every girl wants…she chose it,…battery inside… You like batteries?… I do…I have 256 batteries…” And then he continued talking about the batteries for the next 5 minutes. He rarely looked at other people or picked up their facial expressions. Although physically, he looks like a normally healthy kid; everyone can realize there was something wrong while communicating and observing his behaviors. He might not have a language disorder as he can still string the sentences together in correct grammar. However, it does not mean he can express meaningful communication. This is one of many former signs of detecting autistic children.

What is “autism”?

Autism was first described by a psychiatrist, Leo Kanner, in 1943 as a psychiatric disorder. He defined this as a life-long disability with biological roots, especially from the mothers. This hypothesis still has not been proved until today. However, when they study twins, autism is heritable, and there is some genetic component related to it. In 2013, with the publication of the 5th edition of the DSM - the main book for the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders in the United States - autism has been found to be a spectrum. This means that some autistic people have different symptoms to others. For example, some might have excellent spoken language skills, while some cannot express a full sentence at all.

According to DSM-5, autism is a “pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder”. “Pervasive” means it will affect all aspects of the person’s life. “Neuro-” means it is related to the neurological basis. “Developmental” means this will affect the children’s development since birth. In fact, the term “autism” was only used to describe those with severe symptoms. For those more on the lower end of the spectrum, they are often referred to as having “Asperger’s syndrome”.

How to diagnose autism?

According to DSM-5, some autistic features for diagnosis include deficits in social communication and social interactions. This can be seen clearly in the case of James, the kid in the story above when he experienced difficulties in expressing himself and interacting with others by neglecting their facial expressions and reactions. To non-autistic people, picking up the “signal” from others’ responses or facial expressions is the “unspoken rules” of social interaction. However, autistic people might be just unable to recognize the “point” of following these rules. This makes them experience difficulties in social communication and “fit in” the community.

Additionally, they might also have some restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities. For instance, they often engage in “stimming” - the repetitive but unusual movements or noises such as hand clapping or bashing the head, which seem to help them manage the anxiety.

Within social communication, autistic people might have deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, non-verbal communication and understanding relationships. This means they might have abnormal social approaches with no interests, emotions, eye contact, body language, facial expressions, or empathy. They might also have difficulties in sharing imaginative play and have no sense of personal space, which means they can just unpredictably go straight to strangers and hug.

In fact, the symptoms are not necessarily presented from birth but around the age of 3, when the children enter the school environment, which can trigger their symptoms. Therefore, many parents of autistic children choose to provide them with homeschooling. This might help them reduce their behaviours and learn to manage their anxiety gradually.

However, autism might exist at the same time with many other impairments, such as intellectual disability, language impairment, and mental and behavioural disorders. In fact, around 70% of autistic people have one other mental illness. This makes the diagnosis more complicated, and individuals might need different levels of support. Moreover, some autistic people, especially females, can even “camouflage”. They might learn strategies to “master” the symptoms by trying to appear less autistic in social interactions and fake their laughter to join the community. This leads to a significant delay in the diagnosis of autistic females…

---

So, how does autism impact these children? Can they be cured? How can we help them? How can autism be a “gift”?… Stay tuned for the next part…

---

#wotn4 

Bài viết thuộc thử thách viết 30 ngày của khóa học Writing On The Net.