Autism And Literacy – Learning And Living With Autism

They say ignorance is bliss, but I beg to differ. They say what you don’t know cannot kill you, but I insist that what people do not know is killing thousands of human beings all over the world today.

There isn’t that much in fact that is known about autism today, save that we don’t know precisely what causes the developmental disorder, or how it can be cured. But we do know that the disease itself is not characteristically a killer disease. Save for Rett’s syndrome, a kind of low functioning pervasive developmental disorder on the autism spectrum, which sometimes kills the female patients suffering from it due to respiratory complications, autism generally does not kill.

However, living in a shell of your own, unable to communicate with the entire world, and being unable to be communicated with is a fate that I would personally consider to be worse than death.

Autism strips you of your ability to learn, to communicate, to make friends, or grow in any manner besides physically. Those who are suffering from it do not know how bad their condition is, but they have to live with it. However, the condition is perhaps worse for the loved ones and family members of autistic patients. They have to live with the sufferers and clean up after them when they mess things up, not that this happens very often.

Of course, living with autism in any manner – as the sufferer, or as a loved one – is a very difficult life indeed. But living ignorant of the consequences of autism is even worse. When you don’t know what the symptoms are or what they mean, when you don’t know how to care for the sufferer of the disease, or for your own self, the clock is just ticking until the time that you will eventually make a mistake that will either hurt you or the person suffering from the disease in a way that is unchangeable.

So what, ignorance is bliss? Absolutely not! But knowledge is indeed power.

If you will hit the internet to read up on autism and how to care for autistic patients, if you will take your suffering loved one out one day to see the doctor or some specialist that will put you through how you can care for the high autistic patient whether they are suffering from high or low functioning autism, then you would have armed yourself with power. You would then have the power to live with a devastating disorder, the power to thrive in the face of overwhelming and demoralizing odds.

You are better off learning about autism than playing the fool. Start to gather more knowledge today about how you will win over the disorder that will make a mess of your life.

Immuniziations Cause Autism – Research Theories On Vaccines, Nutrition And Abnormal Brain Development

If your child is autistic then you might be frustrated with the whole situation in taking care of child. This reality is made worse by the fact that the cure for autism is still eluding autism research. Many autism researchers have agreed that several factors like environmental and genetic factors are the causes of autism. These are however, considered more as risk factors than the exact causes. The following paragraphs will reveal to you some popular autism causes that autism researches have identified.

Do you know that one of the common autism causes that have been identified is the presence of mercury in the body? The exact mercury is common in vaccines used on people. A patient is said to be allergic to certain dairy and gluten products. These are said to cause autism in the patients.

If you have not been giving your child the right nutritional requirements then autism will not be far in the life of the child with autism. According to the autism research papers delivered by the Late Dr. Bernard Rimland from the Autism Research Institute, it was discovered that poor vitamins and minerals are risk factors for autism symptoms in children with autism. The recommendations provided to treat this condition or reverse the situation includes providing the autism patient with supplements of multivitamins.

Many autism research works have diagnosed children with autism and found out that their brains are usually bigger than those of the normal child. What causes this abnormality is yet to be discovered. Thus, abnormal brain development is a core risk factor and cause of autism in children.

On a final note, it has been observed that the chance of a child being afflicted with autism is higher if one or both of the parents were autistic. Thus, having a family history of those with autism is a risk factor and cause of autism in many people. This is true and the result of many years of autism studies have shown that the genes can be transferred.

The above factors form some of the theories about what causes autism. However, they can just be regarded as risk factors because autism cannot be treated.

Autism And Symptoms – Understanding The Warning signs Of The Condition

The symptoms of autism are becoming clearer and easier to define as more is being learnt about the disorder. Being able to identify the warning signs and indicators of the set of symptoms will help you in no little way to seek and get help for those who need it. You should learn to lookout for them anywhere that you find yourself.

Social symptoms: People with autism often display several social symptoms or difficulties in relating to others such as:

- They don’t laugh or smile in response to gestures from people around them
- They make poor eye contact with others
- They don’t imitate or repeat caregiver sounds or gesticulations
- They do not share their own enjoyment with others and do not share those of others as well
- They do not often respond to toys in their neighborhood
- They do not make their own gestures
- They never make friends with other children, and
- They are immune to the feelings of other people around them.

Communication Symptoms: autistic patients also have problems with communication which involve the following:

- The lack of gestures or speech – most times they don’t learn to speak early enough, and when they do, they don’t speak the same way other kids do. In some cases, the patient never learns to speak at all.
- They repeat word you say to them right back at you
- They misuse pronouns in conversation, sometimes saying ‘you’ when they mean to say ‘I’
- They prefer to line up toys then to play with them, and
- They refuse to play make-believe with anyone at all.

Symptoms of unusual behaviors: the above symptoms of autism also include other symptoms worthy of note, namely:

- They have restricted interests or repetitive behaviors
- When focused on any one thing, they lose interest in everything else
- They cannot be interrupted in anything that they are doing, otherwise they would throw a fit or tantrum, and would likely end up hurting themselves
- They play with their toys in of ways, lining them up or spinning the wheels of a car rather than trying to drive it
- They insist on doing things the same way all the time, and if you interrupt them in this process, they throw a fit – for instance, they can insist on the same meal every day, the same road to church, same clothes, etc.
- They tend to repeat body movements like rocking back and forth, flailing their arms, and spinning

It is common to have an autistic child complain of belly pain or constipation from time to time, or even diarrhea. Also, they tend to be highly sensitive to certain stimuli like sounds and touch and may react violently if disturbed by rain, a car driving by, or a loud noise around them. Then, although the patient may look like they are retarded, they may demonstrate particular preserved or enhanced in some areas like math, sciences, or the arts. These are called savant skills from the savant syndrome.

Next Page »