I’ve always loved the quote by Dr Stephen Shore, “If you’ve met a person with Autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” When I first started working in the field of disabilities, I had a very limited understanding of what autism was. I was able to let the young adults I worked with teach me everything that I needed to know: that they were individuals with skills, abilities and hardships that were all their own. This perspective is vital when working or parenting a child with Autism as it helps us to place the child’s needs and wants as the focus and not push our own agenda.
Bearing this in mind, I’d like to give a little detail around what helps us identify that our kids might need some additional support and understanding to get their needs met. First off, let’s talk definitions. The term Autism Spectrum Disorder is a diagnosable disorder within the DSM-V. To be diagnosed with Autism, your child would need to meet 2 criteria: first: deficits in social and communication skills and second: have restrictive repetitive behaviours (RRBs) which are usually repetitive behaviours, topics, etc. that may seem odd to others. These are the official diagnostic criteria, but how they show up for different individuals will vary from person to person. A diagnosis of ASD means that your child has a developmental disorder that will likely be persistent throughout their lifetime but will sometimes change in presentation.
Autism is counted in the family of neurodiversity which means “the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in different ways.” Here it’s all about promoting the view that there is no one “right” way of perceiving or experiencing the world.
In Australia, Doctors, psychologists or other qualified assessors diagnose Autism into 3 different levels. Level 1 means that a child requires support, Level 2 requires that the child would require substantial support, and Level 3 requires very substantial support. Difficulties can range from not being able to join a conversation to having no oral communication or other children that may have very specialised interests, like Thomas the Tank Engine, spinning toys repetitively, or asking questions that they already know the answer to, among others.
No matter what the diagnosis ends up being or if one is even made, any child that presents with features of autism will need you to educate yourself. Two things that are helpful to remember are:
1) The more you know, the more you can teach your child and help them meet their own needs.
2) Some things may be odd to you at first, like the way your child has made a routine for putting on clothes in an exact order or the way your child looks at an item with intensity but practicing non-judgement and accepting your child for who they are is the first step to making a genuine connection.
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