How to teach Skills and Activities for Children with Autism?

REDUCING and ELIMINATING SELF-BITING

1. Instruct and say "NO BITING" immediately.
2. Sit and perform three minutes of exercise on the appropriate use of hands.

• hands on lap.
• hands on head
• hands on desk
• hands folded

1. Apply over stimulation by pushing the fingers or hand into his mouth
2. Hold the child's hands down firmly by his side for 30 seconds while saying "NO BITING".

What are the INDICATORS OF AUTISM?

Indicators of AUTISM

PHYSICAL HEALTH

• is generally healthy
• is generally good-looking
• is a picky-eater, tends to smell food/objects and put things in mouth 
• exhibits disturbed sleeping patterns
• does not seek attention when hurt, has high pain threshold, unable to localize pain

GROSS-NOTOR

• walks on tiptoe especially during early years
• is hyperactive, dysinhibited
• is fast and strong and does not tire easily
• is well-balanced, generally coordinated but lacks impulse control
• exhibits repetitive movements: body rocking, hand wiggling, whirling"ritual" of walking to and fro
• is eaither echopraxic or non-imitative of gestures

FINE MOTOR

• may either have good or poor perceptual-motor skills depending on level of attention span
• is absorbed by some objects with tendency to get attracted to spin round/whirling objects
• self-stimulates by touching surfaces, arranging objects precisely

PSYCHOSOCIAL

• exhibits limited/flecting eye contact
• is aloof, passive: prefers solitary activities to group activities
• manifests inappropriate emotional responses
• demonstrates unusual fear
• is socially immature and handicap
• is maladaptive to changes in food, clothes, routine, routes or arrangements of things
• tends to be self-injurious

LANGUAGE-COGNITIVE/INTELLECTUAL/ACHIEVEMENT

• shows deficit in the use of language
• unrreacts to language and visual
• underreacts or everreacts to sounds
• demonstrate rote learning
• exhibits pronoun reverseals, is echolalic
• exhibits inaappropriate recall of experiences
• is delayed in language-conceptual abilities: reasoning, inferential thinking, problem solving, deductive and inductive thinking, etc.
• is delayed in overall intellectual reponse

SELF-HELP

• is delayedin performing eating, dressing, and grooming tasks
• is unable to assume age-apprpriate responsibilities
• lags behind in discriminating and avoiding dangers

How to know if your child has AUTISM?

Nature of Autism

     Autism is regarded as one of the severe disorders arising in early childhood. Some of the features include: extreme aloofness, avoidance of eye contact, lack of appropriate emotional responses, lack of visual and auditory responses, failure to use speech for purposes of communicxation, an obsessive need for maintaining sameness in the environment and a marked facility with objects in contrast to underreaction to people and to language.

       Autism is a behaviorally-defined syndrome. It is characterized by developmental disturbances along four essential areas, namely:
a. the development of language concepts and the ability to communicate verbally or non-verbally,
b. the capacity to appropriately relate to people, events and objects.
c. responses to stimuli
d. developmental rates and sequences.
Consequent effects of these are the difficulties with:
a. appropriate communication either verbal or non-verbal
b. appropriate social interactions
c. judgment, reasoning, and interpretations
d. following directions, organizing, sequencing, and changing routines
e. generalizations, concept development and focusing on relevant information, aspects, attributes and characteristics
f. staying on the task and paying attention outside a particular area of interest
g. reinforcement as related to all areas.