What you should know about autism: an ASD primer

By Rachel Zuckerman | Manor Ink

Livingston Manor, NY – Autism impacts a lot more people than is commonly realized. It is an important subject for me because I have a little brother who has autism spectrum disorder (ASD). His name is Michael, or Mikey for short. He is one of the most important people in my life and I care about him very much. He needs significant support in his life and he has his own perspective, skills and challenges, like other ASD kids.

ASD includes a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication. According to the Centers for Disease Control, autism affects an estimated one in 44 children in the United States today. Research shows that early intervention leads to positive outcomes later in life for people with autism.

The ways in which people with autism learn, think and problem-solve can range from highly skilled to severely challenged. ASD occurs in all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups. It is more than four times more common among boys than among girls. About a third of people with ASD also have intellectual disabilities.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders places autism symptoms under two main categories, the first being patterns of communication and social interaction, and the other patterns in behavior and interests. Here are descriptions of characteristics represented by those categories, using my brother as an example.

Communication patterns

Mikey and other ASD people may show a variety of different communication patterns. These may involve verbal or spoken communication as well as nonverbal communication like facial expressions and body language. My brother often tries to communicate with body language, and also tries to mumble and jumble the words that he knows in his limited vocabulary.

Social skills and interaction

Hand gestures during a conversation and figures of speech can be hard to decode for some autistic people, like my brother. While many autistic people speak in full sentences, others might be nonverbal — meaning they tend not to speak out loud — and communicate in other ways.

Autistic people might also have difficulty with eye contact and understanding facial expressions. I notice that Mikey has problems with these when we use different expressions in an effort to make things easier for him while teaching him.

Relationships and social connections

Autistic folks may find it difficult to connect emotionally with other people, especially non-autistic people.

This happens a lot with Mikey because he gets very overwhelmed when he is in a crowded space and when things are too loud. This causes him to have tantrums and he screams, “I don’t want to be here!”

Behavioral patterns

Other autism symptoms involve behavioral differences. These symptoms may include repetitive behaviors, rigid routines and dislike of change.

I can relate this to Mikey because he likes to be quiet and be in places where he can breathe easily. As I said, he dislikes loud noises and gets upset around crowds.

Stereotyped behaviors

These are behaviors that are repeated over and over, but don’t seem to have a clear purpose. They can involve hand flapping, finger flicking, coin spinning or lining up objects. Despite their apparent pointlessness, they are actually are soothing for the ASD person.

Autistic people might also tend to repeat the speech of other people. This is called echolalia. Mikey does this all the time, but sometimes it’s bad because he also repeats curse words, which leads to problems.

It is my goal that more people understand autism. I don’t want my brother to be viewed as weird or as an outcast. He belongs and is an important part of a family. Next time you meet a person with ASD don’t neglect them, care and help them.

Support levels for ASD

These are support levels associated with individuals afflicted with autism.

Level one: Requiring support

This level is the mildest, or “highest functioning” form of autism. Individuals may have difficulty understanding social cues and may struggle to form and maintain personal relationships. A child with level one autism may understand and speak in complete sentences, but have difficulty engaging back-and-forth conversations. Kids or children with ASD level one experience some inflexibility of behavior, like difficulty transferring between tasks, staying organized and planning.

Level two: Requiring substantial support

Social communication and repetitive behaviors present themselves more obviously in children with ASD level two. Children on this level have challenges in verbal and nonverbal communication, as well as reduced or abnormal responses to social cues. Children with level two autism may have difficulty coping with changes in routine, which can cause challenging behavior.

Level three: Requiring very substantial support

ASD level three is characterized by severe challenges in social communication as well as extremely inflexible behavior. Children will be nonverbal or have the use of only a few words of intelligible speech. Initiation of social interaction and response is very limited. At this level, restrictive or repetitive behaviors interfere with the individual’s ability to function. Changing focus from one activity to another may come at great difficulty and cause significant distress.

From theplaceforchildrenwithautism.com