What is Autism ?

Autism

Your world is a jigsaw puzzle of scattered pieces. You fid it hard to understand other people’s feelings, and other people find it hard to understand you.

Autistic children and adults try to cope in a number of ways.  It is usually parents who first notice “something strange” about their young child’s behaviour.  Some autistic children also behave in a challenging way, screaming or biting and kicking other people, perhaps because they are anxious and frightened.  One theory is that autistic children are supersensitive to certain sounds, which can make them irritable, frustrated and even hysterical.  For autism is far more than a problem of behaviour.  Research shows that a range of conditions – from maternal rubella (German measles) and lack of oxygen at birth, to complications of childhood illnesses – can affect brain development before, during or after birth.

There is also a school of thought that over-compression of the skull during birth has caused head pain, which autistic children may try to relieve by head banging.  From a bioenergetic or “healing” perspective, autism is the manifestation of a great imbalance of energies at a cellular level.  Whatever the cause, the result is a sensory-processing disorder, so that the autistic person receives information in a distorted and disorganized fashion, in turn disrupting their ability to communicate.  It’s vital to spot autism early in a child’s life if they are to be helped out of their isolation – and if their families are to receive the necessary support.

THE ORTHODOX APPROACH

Traditionally, autistic children have been put in residential schools and kept out of the community.

As yet there is no “cure” for autism, but these days orthodox health professionals aim to help autistic people develop their social and communication skills so that they can become more independent and live fuller lives.

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