Common Symptoms of Autism
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Autism is on the rise simply because the numbers of diagnoses have been greater over the years. If you suspect your child may have a form of autism, there are several kinds, then a specialist will need to make the diagnosis because the symptoms could indicate other problems rather than autism. This article discusses three of the most commonly seen symptoms of autism.
One common symptom of autism is unusual facial expressions, postures and way of moving and walking. It is typical for autistic people to not respond in the way that others generally expect. A normal child, or even baby, will naturally smile at certain times, but that is not the case when autism is present in addition to lacking in general emotional expressions. You’ll find people who, for whatever reason, think and believe there are no emotions present in autistic children – not true. They do not, however, express their emotions the way others do, and you cannot necessarily tell what an autistic person is feeling by watching his or her face or body language. There are patterns of movement that seem unusual, and certain movements can be repeated for no apparent reason. In the area of communication, from lowest to highest functioning autistic people, there is the inability to understand vital communciation elements such as body language and even voice tones. What that means is there isn’t a means, apparently, for the an autistic person to know if you’re angry, sad, depressed, giddy, happy, etc. Also with communication, they do not understand language devices that are not literal. In general, to communicate effectively with autistic people, the message has to be given in a very direct and literal way. Those autistic people who are able to do more in society still have a hard time when talking to others, and that is especially true if the other people are not aware of the problem.
Additional symptoms are behaviors that could include: highly ritualistic behavior, repeating motions and movements, and certain kinds of personal rituals that do not appear to make sense. The kind of attachment can include something like staring at anything they choose for many hours at a time. Some of these symptoms could be like moving in a particular way, or walking in a particular way. Great caution needs to be taken because there could be an instance when self-injury can occur due to banging his head or hurting himself in some other way. For those reasons, the child needs something to help preven injury to self, and some of those approaches involve medicine and even physical restraint. However not all autistic children are like that, and it’s mainly those who are the worst cases of the disease.
These are a few of the more common symptons of autism that are usually observed in childhood. Since all autistic people are different, treatment plans have to be individualized based on the symptoms and severity of each case. A great deal of research is being done today so that autism can be better understood and more effective treatments developed.
