14 wrongly understood and wrongly used terms in autism

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*14 wrongly understood and wrongly used terms in autism*

In autism

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Whenever you visit an expert, u ask a question, expert uses some complicated terms which you take it to heart... Keep googling .  Keep worrying... Keep searching... Asking people.

Remember, there is nothing in a new name, as all of them are core features in spectrum kids and by new name we just add worries. Here is list of few names that i try to resolve in simple ways.

1. Genetic : it just means that there is a rare probability of recurrence in next child or having taken from any or both parents.

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2. epigenetic: it means genes are normal, and some unknown cause may be there.

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3. lets find out why this happened by EEG MRI TESTS: truly speaking none of these help in management unless child has fits or any other issue than autism.

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4. SPD: it just means child is not able to receive your signals or process them

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5. Sensory issues: means child basic and common sense is affected and thastwhy various non-sense issues are happening. Vision and listening are two prime senses for learning. 95% of learning is only through these two.  Only 5 % or less learning is through other senses like touch, proprioception etc . Sadly many therapists spend time only on these 5% neglecting 95%

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6. Apraxia: it just means child may know but cannot perform, doesn't add any more to the care plan

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7. Slow learner: it just should mean that child has potential to improve speed

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6. visual learner: it means we experts are neglecting the listening sense and have taken for granted that he will never use ears. Every autism kid has a right to learn from ears and experts should work for it 

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7. Special kid: all kids are special, we need to make them social. By special it means special needs are there for development of the kid.

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8. Hyperlexia: it just means that beyond some basic reading, writing skills , other skills are lacking, and should not be neglected 

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9. high functioning: this term is given up. It just means that in only some part of knowledge or a thread of a subject, the connections are intact and coordinating in brain and rest is not helping much. It doesn't mean a child is super boy.

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10. Low tone: it's normal to have low tone in autism kids. Low tone kids often sit in W fashion. Tone can be best managed by  exercises like statue, sitting properly, hands folded, finger on mouth etc to maintain tone in static  Posture.   Often experts confuse and make parents get confused tone as power. Tone and power are 2 different things. Tone adds to stability, power adds to strength of muscles. Here is what is biggest mistake most parents and experts do. To increase tone, they give physical exercises which helps in increasing strength, not stability. Yoga helps in tone and stability and not strength. We can not build intellectual and social development by increasing physical activities. We need physical stability for learning and posture of attention is needed for learning.

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11. Hyper / behaviour : often parents and many experts take this wrong and may call same. To make it simple, hyper means unnecessary and unusual  increased physical movements that may be due to and may cause both inattention and distractability.

Behaviour is just child's response to a given environment/ stimulus/person, the way the child may sense on his or her own as per level of understanding and iq. Immature brains give excited behaviour of global loud response, partly mature brains learn to trick and show manipulating behaviour. Fully mature and cultured and disciplined Brains will show disciplined behaviour. Unusual and unnecessary physical activity if neglected, will eventually get physically restrained by parents or other people which will make one person being needed all the time for holding the child ( thus making a jail for child and jail for jailor too) or is handled by physical means by hitting hurting punishing, if not by parents but any one around, which will strike aggression and violent behaviour. This is best tackled by medicines. Behaviour therapy and counselling was first line therapy for this 25 years ago. In present Century, medicines is key and first line care and cure for these issues.

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12. No cure, nothing can be done, hopes are miniscule: it just means the person you are dealing with is not optimistic. The person has not seen these kids developing and actually improving for the enablement of schooling and independent daily leaving or independent survival.

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13. Inclusive or mainstreaming: it's often used restricted in the context of schooling only. Remember, schooling is not the only important thing in life. What is most important is to have the child as inclusive or mainstream member of the family. Mainstreaming of behaviour and communication along with relationship development for family structure  is most important than mainstreaming or inclusive ness of education. There is no point in teaching academics - numbers and letters if we are not helping the child to be a cultured, mannered and disciplined family member.

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14. Mild moderate severe autism: remember this terminology is given up in 2013. Now we use the term 

level 1 independent autism, often doesn't reach dr

 level 2 dependent autism, can perform day to day basic living, often needs therapies and meds

 level 3 fully dependent autism, often needs institutional care

Now practically speaking, any child less than 7 year age is actually partly dependent, whether autism or not. So it doesn't matter what we call as and pacify ourselves. What is most imp to know that, these scores are based on how one answers questions and how the expert interprets it. What a parent should remember is that what ever it is... The ground rule is severity or dependency can be changed with medicines and therapies towards enablement and mainstreaming. So what a parent should better remember is

 what the child is doing what the child is not supposed to do?

What better child can do what we want to do?

How early we can plan, and how we can plan small goals towards next step of age appropriate development.

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