Signs, symptoms and treatment of autism in children. Autism in children: signs of the disease and causes of the onset Disorders of psychomotor functions

There are more and more kids diagnosed with autism every day. This prevalence of the disease is associated primarily with improved diagnosis. Often talented and gifted kids in Russia miss the diagnosis of autism. Such children require special attention and must be socialized in society.

What it is?

In simple terms "Autism" is a mental disorder or disease characterized by changes in the psyche, loss of social adaptation in society and altered behavior. Usually, a child has a persistent violation of interaction within society.

Often, autism is not diagnosed for a long time, since parents attribute changes in behavior to the characteristics of the baby's character.

The disease can indeed be mild. In this case, identifying the first characteristic signs and recognizing the disease is a very difficult task not only for parents, but also for doctors.

In Europe and the US, the diagnosis of autism is much more common. This is due to the presence of excellent diagnostic criteria, which allow the commission of doctors to accurately diagnose even with a mild severity of the disease or in complex clinical cases.

In autistic children, various changes occur in the cerebral cortex. They appear immediately after birth. However, they may appear much later, after many years. The disease proceeds without periods of stable remission. With a long course of the disease and the use of various psychotherapeutic techniques that improve the behavior of an autistic child, parents may see some improvements.

To date, no specific treatment has been developed. This means that a complete cure of the disease, unfortunately, is impossible.

Prevalence

The statistics on the incidence of autism in the US and Europe differ markedly from Russian data. This is primarily due to the high detection rate of sick children abroad. Foreign doctors and psychologists use numerous questionnaires and diagnostic behavioral tests, which allow them to make a fairly accurate diagnosis in children of any age.

In Russia, the statistics are quite different. Often, not all babies show the first symptoms of the disease on time and at an early age. Russian children who suffer from autism often remain just withdrawn kids.

Symptoms of the disease are "written off" on the characteristics of the character and temperament of the child, which leads to serious consequences. Such children subsequently do not integrate well into society, cannot find themselves in a profession, or they fail to create a good and happy family.

The prevalence of the disease is no more than 3%. Boys are most commonly affected by autism. Usually this ratio is 4:1. Girls from families where there are many cases of autism in relatives can also suffer from this mental illness.

Most often, the first vivid symptoms of the disease are detected only by the age of three. The disease, as a rule, manifests itself even at an earlier age, but up to 3-5 years it remains unrecognized in most cases.

Why are children born with autism spectrum disorder?

To date, scientists have not decided on a consensus on this issue. In the development of autism, many experts consider several genes to be guilty, which cause a violation in the work of some parts of the cerebral cortex. Often, when analyzing cases, it becomes apparent strongly pronounced heredity.

Another theory of the disease is considered mutational. Scientists believe that a variety of mutations and breakdowns in the genetic apparatus of a particular individual can become the cause of the disease.

Various factors can lead to this:

• exposure to ionizing radiation on the fetus during the mother's pregnancy;
• infection with bacterial or viral infections of the fetus during fetal development;
• exposure to hazardous chemicals that have a teratogenic effect on the unborn child;
• chronic diseases of the nervous system in the mother, in which she took various symptomatic psychotropic drugs for a long time.

Such mutagenic effects, according to American experts, quite often led to various disorders characteristic of autism.

Such an effect on the fetus is especially dangerous during the first 8-10 weeks from the moment of conception. At this time, the laying of all vital organs takes place, including the zones of the cerebral cortex responsible for the behavior begin to form.

Gene or mutational disorders that underlie the disease ultimately lead to the appearance of specific damage to certain parts of the central nervous system. As a result, the coordinated work between the various neurons responsible for social integration is disrupted.

There is also a change in the functions of the mirror cells of the brain, which leads to the appearance of specific symptoms of autism, when the baby can repeatedly perform any of the same type of action and pronounce individual phrases several times.

Kinds

Currently, there are many different classifications of the disease in use. All of them are divided according to the course of the disease, the severity of manifestations, and also taking into account the stage of the disease.

There is no single working classification that would be used in Russia. In our country, the development and streamlining of specific criteria for the disease, which will underlie the diagnosis of the disease, is currently underway.

Autism can usually occur in several forms or variants:

1. Typical. With this variant, the signs of the disease appear quite clearly already in childhood. Toddlers are distinguished by more withdrawn behavior, lack of involvement in games with other children, they do not make good contacts even with close relatives and parents. To improve social integration, it is necessary to carry out a whole range of various psychotherapeutic procedures and the help of a child psychologist who is well versed in this problem.
2. Atypical. This atypical variant of the disease occurs at a much later age. As a rule, after 3-4 years. This form of the disease is characterized by the manifestation of not all the specific signs of autism, but only some. Atypical autism is diagnosed quite late. Often, a diagnosis that has not been made in time and a delay in making a diagnosis leads to the development of more persistent symptoms in the child, which are much less amenable to therapy.
3. Hidden. Accurate statistics on the number of babies with this diagnosis are not available. With this form of the disease, the manifestation of the main clinical symptoms is extremely rare. Very often, babies are considered simply excessively closed or introverted. Such children practically do not allow strangers into their own inner world. Establishing communication with a child diagnosed with autism is very difficult.

What is the difference between mild and severe?

Autism can occur in several forms according to severity. The mildest form occurs in most cases. It is characterized by violations of social adaptation, when the baby does not want to make contacts or communicate with other people.

It is important to understand that he does this not because of modesty or excessive isolation, but simply because of the manifestations of the disease. Such children, as a rule, start talking late.

Violations of the self with a mild form of the disease are practically not found. Toddlers can make contact with the people closest to them. Usually the child chooses several family members who, in his opinion, treat him with more care and attention. Autistic children do not perceive physical contact well. Usually the child tries to deviate from the hug or does not like kissing.

Children with more severe illness try their best to avoid contact with other people. Even touches or hugs from close relatives can cause them severe mental trauma. Only the closest, in the opinion of the child, people can touch him. This is a very important clinical sign of the disease. A child with autism is very sensitive to any interference in his personal space from a very young age.

Some severe variants of the disease are characterized by mental inclinations to harm themselves. Such babies may even bite themselves or attempt to inflict various injuries at an older age.

Such a manifestation occurs infrequently, however, it requires an urgent consultation with a psychiatrist and the appointment of special medications that reduce the manifestations of aggression towards one's own personality.

The mild form of the disease often remains undiagnosed, especially in Russia. The manifestations of the disease are simply attributed to the peculiarities of the development of the child or the uniqueness of his character. Such children can grow up and carry the disease into adulthood. The course of the disease can change at different ages. However, the classic violation of social integration is observed almost constantly, without remission.

Severe forms of the disease, which are often manifested by the complete forced isolation of the baby from the outside world, are much easier to determine.

The behavior of a child with severe autism is manifested by a pronounced unwillingness to communicate with any people. These kids are more likely to be alone. This brings them peace and does not disturb their usual way of life.

Failure to provide therapeutic psychotherapy can lead to deterioration and complete social maladaptation of the child.

Symptoms and first signs

Manifestations of the disease can be checked already in the first years of a child's life. With a careful and careful analysis of the behavior of the baby, even at a very young age, the first characteristic signs of autism syndrome can be identified. For this disease, there are special psychological traits and features.

The main characteristics of the disease can be divided into several main categories:

• Unwillingness to create new social contacts.
• Infringed interests or use of special games.
• Repetition of typical actions repeatedly.
• Violation of speech behavior.
• Changes in intelligence and different levels of mental development.
• Changing your own sense of identity.
• Violation of psychomotor functions.

The unwillingness to create new social contacts is manifested in babies from birth. At first, children are reluctant to respond to any touch from the closest people. Even hugs or kisses from parents do not cause positive emotions in kids with autism. From the outside, such children seem excessively calm and even “cold”.

Babies practically do not respond to smiles and do not notice the “grimaces” that parents or close relatives make to them. They often fix their eyes on some object that is of great interest to them.

Newborn babies with autism syndrome for hours they can consider a toy or stare intently at one point.

Children practically do not experience expressed joy from new gifts. Children of the first year of life can be absolutely neutral to any new toys. Most often, it is difficult to get even a smile from such kids in response to a gift. At best, an autistic kid will simply turn the toy in his hands for a few minutes, after which he will postpone it indefinitely.

Children older than a year are very selective in choosing people close to them. Usually they choose no more than two people. This is due to the reluctance to create close contacts, as this leads to severe discomfort for the baby.

They usually choose one of their parents as their "friend". It can be either dad or mom. In some cases, a grandmother or grandfather.

Children with autism have practically no contact with their peers or kids of a different age. Any attempt to disturb their own comfortable world can bring such children severe discomfort.

They try in every possible way to avoid any traumatic situation for their psyche. Children with autism practically do not have friends. They experience difficulties with the acquisition of new acquaintances throughout their lives.

The first serious problems in such babies appear at the age of 2-3 years. Usually at this time, children are sent to kindergarten. As a rule, the disease is detected there, since it becomes simply impossible not to notice the characteristic manifestations of the disease.

When visiting kindergarten, the behavior of autistic children stands out sharply. They seem to be more withdrawn than other children, they can stay away, they play for hours with the same toy, performing some kind of stereotypical repetitive movements.

Children with autism are more aloof. Most babies don't ask for much. If they need something, they prefer to take it on their own without outside help.

Toddlers under three years of age may not be potty trained well.

If you ask a child to give you a toy or some object, then most often he will not give it into his hands, but simply throw it on the floor. This is a manifestation of the disturbed perception of any communication.

Autistic kids are not always completely passive in a new unfamiliar team. Often, when trying to introduce a sick child into a new society, he may experience bright negative outbursts of anger or aggression towards others. This is a manifestation of a violation or intrusion into the boundaries of one's own and so cozy, and most importantly, safe inner world for kids with autism. Expansion of any contacts can lead to strong outbreaks of aggression and a deterioration in mental well-being.

Infringed interests or use of special games

Very often, kids with autism remain indifferent to any active recreational activities. They seem to be in their own inner world. The entrance to this personal space for other people is usually closed. Any attempts to teach a child to play very often lead to a complete failure of this venture.

Toddlers with autism choose 1-2 favorite toys, with whom they spend a lot of time. Even with a large selection of different toys, they are completely indifferent to them.

If you carefully observe the game of a child with autism, you can notice a strict repetition of the sequence of actions that he performs. If a boy plays with boats, then very often he lines up all the ships he has in one line. The child can sort them by size, by color, or by some special features for him. This action he performs every time before the game.

Strict orderliness often manifests itself in babies with autism in everything. This is a manifestation of a world that is comfortable for them, in which all objects are in their places and the absence of chaos.

All new objects that appear in the life of an autistic kid cause him severe mental trauma. Even a rearrangement of furniture or toys can cause a strong attack of aggression in a baby or, conversely, lead a child into a state of complete apathy. It is better that all items stand in their places at all times. In this case, the baby will feel more comfortable and calm.

For girls who are sick with autism, a change in the form of the game is also characteristic. Pay attention to how the baby plays with her doll. During such a lesson, every day she will perform all movements and actions according to the established algorithm. For example, she will first comb her hair, then wash the doll, then change clothes. And never vice versa! Everything is in a strictly established sequence.

Such a systematic action in children with autism is due to the peculiarity of the disturbed mental behavior, and not the character. If you try to clarify with the baby why he does the same actions every time, you will not get an answer. The child simply does not notice what actions he performs. For the perception of his own psyche, this is absolutely normal.

Multiple repetition of typical actions

Not always the behavior of a child with autism is very different from the manner of communication of a healthy child. Such children from the outside look absolutely normal, since the appearance of the kids practically does not change.

Children with autism often do not lag behind in physical development and do not differ at all in appearance from their peers. However, a closer observation of the child's behavior can reveal several actions that differ from the usual behavior.

Often, children with autism can repeat different words or combinations of several letters or syllables. These disorders can occur in both boys and girls.

This symptom can manifest itself in different ways:

• Repetition of the count or sequential naming of numbers. Autistic children often count multiple times throughout the day. Such an activity gives the child comfort and even positive emotions.
• The repetition of previously spoken words. For example, after the question “how old are you?”, the baby can repeat “I am 5 years old, 5 years old, 5 years old” several dozen times. Very often, such babies repeat one phrase or word at least 10-20 times.

In other cases, children with autism may perform the same activity for a long time. For example, they repeatedly turn off and turn on the light. Some babies open or close water taps frequently.

Another feature may be the constant wringing of fingers or the same type of movement with legs and arms. Such typical actions, repeated many times, bring peace and tranquility to the kids.

In more rare cases, babies can perform other similar actions, such as sniffing various objects. Many scientists attribute this to the fact that disturbances occur in those areas of the cerebral cortex that are active for the perception of smells. Smell, touch, vision and taste perception - these areas of sensory perception in a child with autism are also often damaged, and various manifestations appear.

Speech behavior disorders

Speech disorders occur in children with autism quite often. The severity of manifestations varies. In a milder form of the disease, as a rule, speech disorders are not significantly expressed. In more severe cases, there may be a complete delay in speech development and the acquisition of persistent defects.

The disease can manifest itself in different ways. Children with autism often start talking late. As a rule, after the child says the first few words, he can be silent for a long time. The baby's vocabulary consists of only a few words. Often he repeats them many times throughout the day.

Children with autism do not expand their vocabulary well. Even when memorizing words, they try not to use a large number of different combinations in their speech.

A feature of speech behavior in a child older than two years is the mention of objects in the third person. Most often, the child will call himself by name or will say, for example, "girl Olya." The pronoun "I" is almost never heard from a child with autism.

If you ask the baby if he wants to swim, then the child can answer "he wants to swim" or call himself by the name "Kostya wants to swim."

Very often, children with autism do not answer direct questions that are addressed to them. They may remain silent or avoid answering, move the conversation to other topics, or simply ignore. This behavior is associated with a painful perception of new contacts and an attempt to invade personal space.

If the baby is pestered with questions or too many questions are asked in a short time, then the child may even react very violently, showing aggression.

The speech of older children often includes many interesting combinations and phrases. They perfectly memorize various fairy tales and proverbs.

A child with autism can easily recite a passage from Pushkin's poem by heart as early as the age of five or declare a complex poem.

These children often have a tendency to rhyme. At a younger age, kids take great pleasure in repeating various rhymes many times.

The combination of words may seem completely meaningless, and in some cases even delusional. However, for kids with autism, the repetition of such rhymes brings joy and positive emotions.

Changes in intelligence and different levels of mental development

For a long time it was thought that children with autism were mentally retarded. But this is a huge misconception! A large number of autistic children have the highest level of IQ.

With proper communication with the child, you can notice that he has a high level of intelligence. However, he will not show it to everyone.

A feature of the mental development of an autist is that it is very difficult for him to concentrate and be purposeful in achieving specific goals.

The memory of such babies has the property of selectivity. Not all events the child will remember with equal ease, but only those that, according to his personal perception, will be closer to the inner world.

Some kids have defects in logical perception. They perform poorly tasks for building an associative series.

The baby perceives ordinary abstract events well, can easily repeat a sequence or chain of events even after a long time. There are no long-term memory impairments in children with autism.

Toddlers with a higher level of intelligence are very poorly integrated in school. Often such a child becomes an outcast or a black sheep.

The impaired ability to socialize contributes to the fact that autistic children are even more distant from the outside world. As a rule, such kids have a penchant for various sciences. They can become real geniuses if the right approach is applied to the child.

Different variants of the disease can proceed in different ways. In some cases, children have a decrease in intellectual abilities. They study poorly at school, do not answer questions from teachers, and do not solve difficult geometric tasks that require good spatial and logical abilities.

Very often, such children need special education using special pedagogical programs that are designed specifically for kids with autism.

It is important to note that any deterioration in the condition can occur in a child suddenly when exposed to any provocative cause. Often they can be severe stressful influences or attacks from peers.

Toddlers with autism endure such provocative events very hard. This can even lead to severe apathy or, conversely, cause violent aggression.

For more information on teaching children with autism spectrum disorder, see the following video.

Changing sense of self

In case of violation of any contact with other people, autistic people often project any negative events onto themselves. This is called autoaggressiveness. Such a manifestation of the disease in varying degrees of severity is quite common. Almost every third child with autism suffers from this adverse manifestation of the disease.

Psychotherapists believe that this negative symptom arises as a result of a disturbed perception of the boundaries of one's own inner world. Any threat to personal safety is perceived by a sick child excessively sharply. Toddlers can inflict various injuries on themselves: bite themselves or even cut themselves on purpose.

Even in childhood, the child's sense of limited space is disturbed. Such babies often fall out of the playpen, swaying heavily beforehand. Some children may unfasten themselves from the stroller and fall to the ground.

Usually such a negative and painful experience will cause a healthy baby not to do such actions in the future. A kid with autism, even despite the resulting pain syndrome, will still repeat this action again and again.

Rarely enough, the baby shows aggression towards others. In 99% of cases, the manifestation of such a reaction is self-defense. As a rule, kids are very sensitive to any attempts to invade their personal world.

Inept actions towards a child with autism or even a simple desire to make contact can cause a fit of aggression in a child, which provokes inner fear.

Psychomotor disorders

Quite often, children with autism have an altered gait. They try to walk on tiptoe. Some babies may bounce when they walk. This symptom occurs daily.

All attempts to make remarks to the baby that he walks incorrectly and needs to walk differently do not evoke a response from him. The child remains true to his gait for quite a long time.

Toddlers with autism do not notice the changes that appear in his daily life. Older children try to choose the routes familiar to him. A child with autism will almost always choose the same path to school without changing their own habits.

Toddlers often stay true to their taste preferences. Such children should not be accustomed to a certain regimen of meals. All the same, a child with autism will have his own idea and even a whole system in his head about what and when he should eat.

It will be almost impossible to force a baby to eat an unfamiliar product. They remain true to their taste preferences throughout their lives.

Main characteristics by age

Up to a year

Toddlers with manifestations of autism react poorly to any attempts to address them, especially by name. Children do not babble for a long time and do not pronounce their first words.

The child's emotions are quite depleted. Gesticulation is also significantly reduced. A kid who is sick with autism gives the impression of a very calm child who cries little and practically does not ask to be held. Any contacts with parents and even mother do not deliver strong positive emotions to the child.

Newborn babies and babies practically do not express various emotions on their faces. Such children even seem somewhat renounced. Often, when trying to make the baby smile, he does not change his face or perceives this attempt rather coldly. These kids are very fond of looking at various objects. Their gaze rests on some object for a very long time.

Toddlers often try to choose one or two toys that they can spend most of the day with. For games, they absolutely do not need any of the outsiders. They feel great alone with themselves. Sometimes attempts to invade their game can trigger a panic attack or aggression.

Children of the first year of life with autism practically do not call adults for help. If they need something, they try to take this item on their own.

Impairment of intelligence at this age, as a rule, does not happen. Most kids do not lag behind their peers in terms of physical or mental development.

Up to 3 years

Before the age of 3 years, the symptoms of limiting one's own space begin to manifest themselves to a greater extent.

Playing on the street, kids categorically refuse to play in the same sandbox with other children. All objects and toys that belong to a child with autism belong only to him.

From the outside, such children seem very closed and “on their own minds”. Most often, by the age of one and a half, they can only pronounce a few words. However, this is not the case for all babies. Often they repeat various verbal combinations that do not carry a large semantic load.

After the child has spoken the first word, he may suddenly become silent and practically not talk for quite a long time.

Toddlers with autism almost never answer questions asked of them. Only with the people closest to them can they say a few words or answer in the third person a question addressed to them.

Very often, such children try to look away and do not look at the interlocutor. Even if the child answers the question, he will never use the word "I". Toddlers with autism define themselves as "he" or "she". Many kids just call themselves by their first name.

For some kids, manifestations of stereotypical actions are characteristic. They can sway a lot in a chair. Parents' remarks that it is wrong or ugly to do this do not evoke any response from the child. This is not due to the desire to demonstrate one's character, but simply to a violation of the perception of one's own behavior. The kid really does not notice and does not see anything wrong in his action.

Some babies may have problems with fine motor skills. When trying to take any small objects from the table or floor, the child does it very clumsily.

Often, babies can't clench their hands well. Such a violation of fine motor skills necessarily requires special classes that are aimed at improving this skill.

If the correction is not carried out in time, the child may experience writing disorders, as well as the appearance of gestures that are unusual for an ordinary baby.

Autistic kids love to play with faucets or switches. They also really enjoy opening and closing doors. Any movement of the same type evokes great emotions in the child. He can perform such actions for as long as he likes, until the parents intervene. When performing these movements, the baby absolutely does not notice that he performs them repeatedly.

Autistic kids eat only the foods they like, play on their own, and barely get to know other kids. Many people around mistakenly consider such babies to be too spoiled. This is a huge misconception!

A child with autism, under the age of three, absolutely does not see any differences in his behavior relative to the behavior of others. He simply tries to limit the boundaries of his inner world from any outside interference.

It used to be that children with autism had certain facial features. Often such features were called aristocratic forms. It was believed that autistic people have a thinner and elongated nose. However, this is not at all the case.

To date, the relationship between facial features and the presence of autism in a child has not been reliably established. Such judgments are just conjectures and cannot be scientifically proven.

3 to 6 years old

At this age, there is a peak incidence of autism. Children begin to be taken to kindergarten, where violations in social adaptation become noticeable.

Toddlers with autism perceive morning trips to a preschool educational institution without expressed enthusiasm. They would rather stay at home than leave their usual safe home.

A child with autism rarely makes new friends. At best, he has one new acquaintance who becomes his best friend.

A sick child will never accept a large number of people in his inner world. Very often, such children try to close themselves even more, to get away from the traumatic situation.

The child tries to come up with some kind of magical story or fairy tale explaining why he should go to this kindergarten. Then he becomes the protagonist of this action. However, attending kindergarten does not give the baby any pleasure. He does not get along well with his peers and practically does not obey his teachers.

All things in the baby's personal locker are usually stacked by him in a strict order. It becomes clearly visible from the outside. Such children cannot stand any chaos and scattered things. Any violation of the ordering of the structure can cause them to have an attack of apathy, and in some cases, aggressive behavior.

Trying to force a child to meet new kids in a group can cause him great stress.

Toddlers with autism should not be scolded for doing the same type of behavior for a long period of time. You just need to pick up the "key" to such a child.

Often, kindergarten teachers simply cannot cope with a “special” kid. Pedagogical workers perceive many features of disturbed behavior as excessive pampering and character traits. In these cases, the obligatory work of a medical psychologist is required, who will work daily with the child in a preschool institution.

Over 6 years old

Kids with autism in Russia attend regular schools. There are no specialized educational programs for such children in our country. Children with autism usually do well in school. They have a penchant for different disciplines. Many guys even show the highest level of mastery of the subject.

Such children often focus on one subject. In other disciplines that do not resonate in the inner world of the child, they can have very mediocre performance.

Toddlers with autism concentrate quite poorly, and also differ in insufficient concentration of attention on several objects at once.

Often in such children, if the disease was detected at an early stage and there were no strong defects in fine motor skills, brilliant abilities for music or creativity are found.

Toddlers can play various musical instruments for hours. Some children even compose various works on their own.

Children, as a rule, try to lead a rather closed life. They have few friends. They practically do not attend various entertainment events, which can be attended by a huge number of people. Being at home is more comfortable for them.

Very often, babies have a commitment to certain foods. In most cases, it occurs in early childhood. Toddlers with autism eat at strictly allotted time according to their own schedule. All meals are accompanied by a certain ritual.

They often eat only from their usual plates, try to avoid dishes of new colors. All cutlery is usually laid out by the child on the table in a strictly defined sequence.

Toddlers with manifestations of autism can graduate very well from school, showing excellent knowledge in any one discipline.

Only in 30% of cases, babies suffering from this disease lag behind the school curriculum and have poor academic performance. As a rule, such children were diagnosed with autism rather late or a good rehabilitation program was not carried out to reduce the adverse symptoms of the disease and improve social adaptation.

Problems

Very often in children with autism there are not only behavioral disorders, but also various pathological manifestations of the internal organs.

Gastrointestinal Disorders

Manifested in the form of possible diarrhea or constipation, which are practically independent of the food that the child receives. Children with autism have special taste preferences. To normalize adverse manifestations and stool disorders, a gluten-free diet is effectively used. This diet, which is limited in gluten, promotes the smooth functioning of the organs of the gastrointestinal tract and reduces the negative symptoms of indigestion.

You can learn more about the diet for autism by watching the following video.

Sleep disorders

Toddlers have almost the same activity day and night. These children are very difficult to put to sleep. Even if they fall asleep, they can oversleep for only a few hours. Babies often wake up very early in the morning. During the daytime, they may refuse to sleep. In some cases, when exposed to strong psychotraumatic situations, insomnia may increase or nightmares appear, which further contribute to the violation of the child's general well-being.

When is a psychiatric consultation needed?

You should seek the help of a doctor immediately if the parents suspected the first signs of the disease in their baby. Only a psychiatrist can accurately diagnose and recommend the necessary therapeutic treatment.

As a general rule, all children diagnosed with autism should be seen periodically by a doctor. Don't be afraid of this doctor! This does not mean that the child has severe mental disorders. Such observation is important, first of all, for the prevention of the development of undesirable long-term symptoms of the disease.

In our country, children diagnosed with autism practically do not go through any specialized rehabilitation programs. European specialists and doctors from the United States use a whole range of different psychotherapeutic techniques that can greatly improve the quality of life of a child with autism.

Medical psychologists, professional physical therapy instructors, defectologists and speech therapists work with kids from a very early age. Throughout his life, such a patient is necessarily observed by a psychiatrist.

At what age is the disease most often diagnosed?

Statistically, the largest number of cases of newly registered disease occurs at the age of 3-4 years. It is at this time that the symptoms of social maladaptation of the baby begin to manifest themselves clearly.

There are scientific assumptions that suggest that with the development of more advanced diagnostic criteria, it will be much easier to identify cases of autism in children at an earlier age.

To determine the first manifestations of the disease in newborns is a very difficult task even for an experienced pediatrician. To conduct a full-fledged examination and establish a diagnosis, it is necessary to organize a full-fledged medical examination, which usually involves at least 5-6 different specialists with skills and knowledge in the treatment of autism in children.

Diagnostics

Diagnosing the disease is quite difficult. In Russia, the diagnosis of autism will most often be made upon detection of the following psychological disorders:

• social maladaptation of the child in the environment;
• pronounced difficulties in establishing new communications and contacts with other people;
• repeated repetition of typical actions or words over a long period of time.

If the course of the disease proceeds in a typical or classic variant, then the above signs occur in 100% of cases. Such kids require a mandatory consultation with a psychiatrist, and, if necessary, a detailed consultation with the involvement of specialists in related specialties who work with autistic children.

During a more detailed examination, doctors try to determine the presence or absence of not only the main signs, but also additional ones. To do this, they use several classifications of diseases.

For autism use:

• ICD-X is the main working document for Russian specialists.
• The DSM-5 or Diagnostic Statistical Manual of mental disorders is used by psychiatrists around the world, including in Europe and the United States.

According to these medical handbooks, a child with autism must have at least six of the symptoms presented in it. To determine them, doctors resort to various questionnaires, according to which they assess the condition of the baby in a playful way. Such a study is carried out in the most gentle way so as not to injure the disturbed child's psyche.

Parents are also required to be interviewed. This study allows you to clarify the presence and nature of violations in the behavior of the child, which cause them concern.

Parents are interviewed by several psychiatrists at once, as well as a medical psychologist. Such diagnostic methods are mainly used only in Europe and the USA. In Russia, unfortunately, the diagnosis of autism is in an extremely deplorable state.

Babies with this disease remain unexamined for a long time.

Over time, their negative manifestations of social maladaptation intensify, apathy and inability to establish contacts with people around them may increase. In our country, working diagnostic criteria have not yet been developed, according to which such a diagnosis would be easily established. In this regard, there are few cases of establishing a correct and timely diagnosis.

Is it possible to test at home?

It is almost impossible to conduct a full inspection of the house. During such testing, only an approximate answer can be obtained. Autism can only be diagnosed by a psychiatrist. To do this, he uses several different tests that are used to diagnose the disease, as well as various other methods to clarify the degree and level of damage.

When testing at home, parents can often get a false result. Very often, the information system automatically analyzes the responses without applying a differentiated treatment to a particular child.

To make a diagnosis, a multi-stage medical examination is required to determine if the baby has autism.

How to treat?

Currently, there is no specific treatment for autism. Unfortunately, there is no special pill or magic vaccine that would reliably protect the baby from the possible development of the disease. A single cause of the disease has not been established.

The lack of understanding about the primary source of the disease does not allow scientists to create a unique medicine that would completely cure children with autism.

The treatment of this mental illness is carried out in a complex, taking into account the symptoms that have arisen. Such psychotropic drugs are prescribed only by a psychiatrist. They are written out on special prescription forms and are issued according to strict records in pharmacies. The appointment of such drugs is carried out in courses or for the entire period of deterioration.

All methods of treatment can be divided into several groups:

• Medical treatment. In this case, various drugs are prescribed to eliminate the adverse symptoms that occur in various stages of the disease. Such drugs are prescribed by a doctor only after examining the baby and possible additional examinations.
• Psychological consultations. A child medical psychologist must work with a child with autism. Using various psychological techniques, the specialist will help the child cope with emerging outbursts of anger and auto-aggression, as well as improve the inner feeling when integrating into a new team.
• General wellness treatments. Children with autism are not at all contraindicated in sports. However, they should be engaged in special groups with professional instructors or trainers who are trained in the elements of working with "special" children. Such children can show excellent results and achieve good sports achievements. Success is only possible with the right pedagogical approach.
• Logopedic classes. With a baby under 3 years old, a speech therapist must conduct classes. In such lessons, children learn to speak correctly, refuse to use multiple repetitions of words. Speech therapy classes allow you to improve the baby's vocabulary, add even more words to his vocabulary. Such educational games help children to better adapt to new groups and improve their social adaptation.

Medical treatment

The appointment of various drugs on an ongoing basis for children with autism is not required. Such drugs are used only to eliminate the negative manifestations of the disease. In this case, untimely treatment can lead to the development of various adverse effects and even worsen the condition of the baby.

The most commonly prescribed drugs for autism in children are the following.

Psychotropic drugs and neuroleptics

Used to treat attacks of aggressive behavior. They can be prescribed for a course appointment or once to eliminate a violent outbreak of auto-aggression. Psychiatrists choose various drugs that can eliminate the negative symptoms of the disease. For example, the antipsychotics "Rispolept" and "Seroquel" allow you to cope with acute attacks of severe aggression and calm the baby.

It is important to note that the appointment of antipsychotics on an ongoing basis is carried out only in severe cases of the disease. In this case, the severity of symptoms is excessively high.

Long-term use of any antipsychotic medication can be addictive and have various side effects. In order to prevent this, doctors resort to prescribing a course application.

To eliminate panic attacks or improve mood, the doctor may prescribe special drugs that affect the level of endorphins. These drugs also have a number of contraindications. They are used only when various psychological methods of behavior correction have been carried out, but they have not been successful and have not led to an improvement in the child's well-being.

Probiotics for the treatment of dysbacteriosis

In children with autism, in 90% of cases, doctors register persistent irritable bowel syndrome or dysbacteriosis. In this case, the microflora in the gastrointestinal tract is disturbed. It practically lacks beneficial lactobacilli and bifidobacteria, but microorganisms of pathogenic flora reproduce perfectly. Very often also in such children an increased growth of yeast is found.

To eliminate these adverse symptoms, doctors resort to prescribing various drugs enriched with lacto- and bifidobacteria. Babies are prescribed: "Bifidobacterin", "Acipol", "Linex", "Enterol" and many others. The appointment of these funds is carried out after an additional study - bakposeva feces and a test for dysbacteriosis. The drugs are prescribed for a course. Usually it is designed for 1-3 months of daily use.

In the diet of a child with dysbacteriosis, in addition to medicines, it is imperative to include fresh fermented milk products with a high content of microorganisms beneficial to the intestines.

You can also make them at home. In this case, the useful properties of the product are not lost, and it can be safely given to the baby.

The effect of the use of fermented milk products occurs, as a rule, by the end of the first week.

vitamin therapy

Children with autism have a pronounced and almost constant deficiency of a number of vitamins: B1, B6, B12, PP. To eliminate this condition, the appointment of a complex of biologically active substances is required. Such vitamin and mineral preparations can eliminate the deficiency of any vitamins, as well as normalize the microelement composition inside the body.

Since babies with autism are very attached to any type of food, their diet is often very monotonous. This leads to insufficient intake of vitamins and trace elements from the outside.

In order to improve this condition, a daily addition of various vegetables and fruits to the diet is required, especially in the summer. These products contain a high content of various vitamins and minerals, which is vital for the baby.

Calming agents

Used to relieve anxiety. Very often, when exposed to a strong psychotraumatic situation, a sick child may experience a strong panic state. In this case, psychiatrists prescribe psychotropic drugs that can effectively eliminate this manifestation. The course appointment of such drugs is not required. Just a single dose is enough.

Children with autism often do not sleep well. They have difficulty falling asleep. The duration of sleep can be no more than 6-7 hours a day.

For a small child, this is not enough. To improve nighttime sleep, as well as normalize the circadian rhythm, doctors recommend the use of mild drugs that calm the nervous system and help you fall asleep quickly.

For babies, it is safe to use various herbs that have a sedative effect. Such natural medicines practically do not cause side effects and do not have numerous contraindications. To normalize sleep, decoctions of lemon balm or mint are used. You can give these herbs to your baby in the form of tea. It is better to drink such a sedative medicine no later than 2-3 hours before bedtime.

The appointment of sedative drugs is allowed only with severe sleep disorders. Typically, these drugs are prescribed for a fairly long time. It is not advisable to use these drugs for milder forms of the disease, as they may have a pronounced tranquilizing effect or be addictive. The appointment of drugs is done by a psychotherapist after a preliminary examination.

Help from a psychologist

The use of various psychological techniques is an important element in the therapy of children with autism. American experts who conduct daily classes with sick babies recommend conducting such classes at least 2-3 times a week.

It is better that the psychologist also has a medical education. In this case, it can quickly orient him when the condition worsens and send the baby for a consultation with a psychiatrist.

The psychologist does not prescribe medication. He treats only with words. Usually for kids with autism, the first meeting with a specialist is very important. It is at this time that one can understand whether such classes will be successful and whether the child will find a common language with the psychologist.

In order to penetrate into the inner world of a child with autism, the psychologist must make friends with him very delicately. Only in this case the baby will make contact.

Often, treatment may not bring a pronounced positive effect in the absence of primary contact between the autistic child and the psychologist.

All classes are held in a specially equipped room. Often, to work with children with autism, all lessons are held in only one room. This helps to create a more relaxed and comfortable atmosphere for the child.

Psychologists try not to move or rearrange toys for no reason, as this can bring severe mental discomfort to the baby.

Usually game forms of conducting classes are chosen. During such games, children are as “open” as possible and can demonstrate real emotions. The duration of each lesson is usually no more than an hour.

With longer communication, the baby may experience severe fatigue and unwillingness to make contact with a specialist.

Working with children with autism is usually done throughout the life of the child. At the same time, only the types and forms of psychological methods change.

Very often, psychologists become real family members or very close friends. In America, several cases of family treatment to psychologists have been registered. In this case, not only the child suffered from autism, but also one of the parents.

It is important to note that family activities also have a good therapeutic effect.

Classes with a psychologist with kids up to 3-5 years old are often held together with one of the parents. Usually, the parent with whom the baby has a closer relationship is chosen. The psychologist in a playful way creates various everyday situations that can be encountered in everyday life. During such a game, he teaches the baby how to properly respond to new people. Babies learn to communicate better with other babies, as well as acquire new useful skills that can be useful to them every day.

Lessons

To improve the integration of a child with autism into society, it is necessary to carry out additional activities that will help him in this. Usually such a complex of various activities is compiled together with a child psychologist or on the recommendation of a psychiatrist.

Usually, before choosing any hobby that will be interesting to the baby, a good analysis of his abilities and a qualitative assessment of the level of health and physical development are required. Not all kids with autism will do the same tasks with the same interest. The right choice of activities to a large extent improves the prognosis of treatment and favorably affects the mental and mental development of the baby.

Usually, children with autism are recommended various remedial activities that improve the social integration of the baby in society. Sports are recommended for kids. However, not all sports activities can be selected. Calm sports are more suitable for autistic kids: learning to swim, playing chess or checkers, golf. It is worth choosing those sports that require concentration on one subject.

Sports that require high speed or a high risk of injury are best left. Toddlers with autism should not run, jump, box and various power struggles.

Team games are also not suitable. It is better to give preference to more relaxed sports that will help improve the health of the baby and have a positive effect on his nervous system.

Toddlers with autism are very warm to various animals. In such children, doctors often even note a certain “cult” of animals. An autistic kid can have a whole collection of cats or dogs. Direct contact and touching of pets can cause strong positive emotions in the baby and even improve the prognosis of treatment.

Children with autism benefit from spending time interacting with different animals. Doctors recommend sessions of hippotherapy or dolphin therapy. Such contacts with animals will bring great joy to the baby and will have a positive impact on his development.

When a baby touches any living creature, special endorphin molecules begin to be produced in the cerebral cortex, which cause him a sea of ​​positive emotions.

If possible, such activities with animals should be carried out as often as possible. It is better that the child has the opportunity to constantly observe living beings and communicate with them. While communicating with a dog or cat, the baby learns to contact the environment. This has a positive effect on his ability to make new contacts and improves social adaptation in society.

What toys to buy?

Parents often puzzle over what gift to give to their child who has been diagnosed with autism by doctors. It seems that each new toy practically does not bring any joy to the child. However, this is not quite true. Each child with autism has their own personal preference for a particular type of toy.

Often boys choose different planes or ships, and girls choose different animals or dolls. It is important to note that autistic kids can be delighted with the presented animals. The main thing is to determine which particular animal your child likes. Usually this is not difficult: an autistic kid will never let go of his favorite toy in the form of an animal.

If once a gift of a plush dog is the child's favorite, then any other dogs will also cause great delight.

Babies diagnosed with autism are not prone to hoarding at all. They only need 2-3 different toys for a state of comfort and happiness. A huge number of different gifts can even scare them!

Children under three years old should choose toys that improve fine motor skills of fingers. Usually, autistic kids perform poorly on any tasks related to drawing or modeling.

You can try to interest the baby in picking up various puzzles, consisting of large and bright details. Designers are perfect, from the elements of which you can build numerous combinations of figures.

For kids aged 1.5-2 years, rugs that consist of several large parts are perfect. The upper surface of such products has small elevations or irregularities. This is necessary so that the legs are massaged while walking. This effect has a beneficial effect on the entire musculoskeletal system of the child. Choose a rug in more neutral colors, avoiding overly bright colors.

For older children and especially those prone to aggression, you can choose a spinner. This fashionable toy normalizes the functioning of the nervous system and even allows you to deal with the effects of stress. Toddlers often like to spin the spinner, as any repeatedly repeated action brings them calm and even positive emotions.

In adolescence, it is better not to buy computer games for your child. Most of these toys can cause a spontaneous attack of aggression in a baby or, on the contrary, increase an apathetic state.

Very often, children with autism love to play computer games, as it does not require any real contact with the outside world. However, the consequences can be very negative.

Can autistic children have healthy children in the future?

Scientists note a pronounced genetic pattern in the possibility of inheriting the disease. There are also theories about the presence of special genes that are responsible for the development of the disease in babies whose families have previously been diagnosed with autism.

Autistic people can have healthy children. Inheritance of genes occurs at the stage of intrauterine development. If the baby was born in a family where only one of the parents has autism, then he may well be healthy.

If both parents have autism, the chance of having an affected child is 25%, and the chance of having a child carrying this gene is 50%. This disease is inherited in an autosomal recessive manner.

If more than one baby is born in such families, then the risk of the birth of sick babies may increase. It also increases when exposed to various provoking factors on the unborn child during fetal development in the body of a pregnant mother.

To determine the latent autism in newborns, the "heel" method is used. It suggests the presence of this mental illness in the baby. It is usually carried out in parents with autism or in cases where there is a suspicion of the possibility of developing a disease in a born child.

Is the child given a disability?

In Russia, the diagnosis of "autism" provides for the establishment of a disability group. However, it is not exposed to all babies. In our country, special medical and social criteria are applied, which take into account various factors.

The decision to establish a group is taken strictly collegially. This involves specialists from several specialties at once: a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a rehabilitation specialist.

In order for a child to have a disability group, it is required to provide all necessary medical documentation to the medical and social examination authorities. In the baby's child card, the conclusions of the psychiatrist and child psychologist who observed him must be present. In this case, medical experts may have a more informative picture of the age of the disease.

Before undergoing a medical and social examination, the baby is often assigned additional tests and examinations. These can be both various laboratory tests and specialized brain studies that allow you to clarify the nature and degree of violations. Usually in our country, EEG or electroencephalography of the brain is prescribed.

Using this method, it is possible to establish various violations of the conduction of nerve impulses in the cerebral cortex. The method is quite informative and is often used in child psychiatric and neurological practice.

The results of the test allow doctors to determine the nature and extent of the disorders resulting from the disease.

Not all forms of autism can be assigned a disability group. As a rule, it is determined in the presence of persistent disorders of nervous activity, which lead to severe maladaptation of the baby.

The level of mental development and intelligence also significantly affect the prognosis of the course of the disease and the establishment of the group.

Often, disability is established after three years. Cases of establishing a group at an earlier age in Russia are practically not found and are episodic.

Autism is a disease that in most cases occurs without persistent periods of remission. This leads to the fact that the disability group, as a rule, is set for life.

Children with disabilities due to mental illness must undergo a whole range of rehabilitation measures. Speech therapists, psychologists, rehabilitation doctors deal with such kids. The course of rehabilitation is usually designed for a fairly long period, since the treatment of the disease is carried out throughout the life of a person suffering from autism.

Parents who have encountered the establishment of a disability group for their child often note some difficulties in conducting a medical and social examination. Most often they note: a huge amount of pre-prepared medical documentation and long queues for examination. Not always the disability group was established during the initial treatment. Often, only on the second or third attempt, expert doctors made a positive decision about the presence of disabling signs in a child.

Establishing a group is a highly complex and often contentious task. However, for kids with autism, this step is often forced, but really necessary. To conduct full-fledged classes with a child, quite large financial costs are required: training with a psychologist, consultations with a speech therapist, hippotherapy courses, the use of special psychotropic drugs. All this without a disability group becomes very difficult and financially burdensome for many families.

For parents raising autistic children, the main thing is to understand that the child will have this disease for life. Unfortunately, there is currently no cure for autism.

Autistic kids, with the right approach, develop perfectly and from the outside they don’t even differ at all from their peers. Only a few strangers can notice that the baby is a little different from others. However, they often believe that such a child is simply over-spoiled or has a bad temper.

In order to improve the quality of life of the baby and help him in social adaptation, use the following tips:

• Try to communicate properly with your child. Autistic kids categorically do not perceive a raised tone or abuse. It is better to communicate with such children in the same calm tone, without the use of swearing. If the kid did something wrong, try not to react excessively violently and aggressively, but simply explain to the child how to do this action correctly. It can also be shown as a kind of game.
• Both parents should take care of the upbringing of the child. Even though, as a rule, the baby chooses communication with dad or mom, both of them should participate in his life. In this case, the child feels more comfortable and gets the right idea about the organization of the family. In the future, when creating his own life, he will be largely guided by the principles laid down in childhood.
• Potty training for children with autism can be difficult. Usually child psychologists help with this. In a playful way, they create a similar everyday situation and work out the correct sequence of actions with the baby. For self-study at home, remember that potty training should be gradual and consistent. Never raise your voice and do not punish the baby if he did something wrong. In the case of an autistic child, this measure will not lead to a positive result.
• To teach a child with autism to read is possible only with daily activities with him. Try to choose educational books without overly bright pictures. A huge number of diverse colors can alert and even frighten a child. Choose publications without colorful pictures. Learning is best done in a playful way. So the baby will perceive this process as a regular game.
• During a strong tantrum, the baby must be carefully calmed down. This is best done by the family member with whom the child has closer contact. If the child is overly aggressive, then try to quickly take him to the nursery. The familiar environment will help the baby to calm down easier. Never raise your voice at a child, trying to shout to him! It won't lead to anything good. Explain to the baby that he has nothing to be afraid of, and you are there. Try to switch attention to another event or object.
• Make sure you connect with your autistic child. Only with the people closest to him does the child communicate calmly. To do this, never ask the baby a million questions. Frequent hugs will also not lead to establishing contact. Try to spend more time with your baby, just watching him play. After a while, the child will perceive you as part of his game, and it will be easier to make contact.
• Teach your child the correct daily routine. Usually, autistic kids are fine with a well-organized routine. This gives them a feeling of complete comfort and security. Try to get your child to go to sleep and wake up at the same time. Be sure to follow the feeding schedule. Even on weekends, keep your baby's daily routine.
• Be sure to undergo regular examination and observation by a child psychotherapist and psychologist. Such consultations are very important for assessing the prognosis of the disease and establishing the dynamics of the child's condition. Typically, young patients with autism should visit a psychotherapist at least twice a year. With deterioration of health - more often.
• Organize proper nutrition for your baby. Given the characteristics of the disturbed microflora, all babies with autism need to eat fermented milk products. They must be as fresh as possible. It is in this case that the concentration of beneficial lactobacilli and bifidobacteria will be sufficient. Only such products will be useful for the child and improve his digestion.
• From the very first days of a child's birth, try to show him care and affection more often. Autistic babies react very poorly to various bodily manifestations of love and tenderness. However, this does not mean at all that it is not necessary to do this. Doctors advise hugging and kissing a child more often. This must be done without causing him mental pressure. If the baby is not in the mood, it is better to postpone hugs for a while.
• Give your child a new friend. Most autistic children are very fond of pets. Communication with fluffy animals brings the baby not only positive emotions and a positive effect on the course of his illness, but also has a real healing effect on tactile sensitivity. A cat or a dog will become real friends for the baby and will help him to establish contacts not only with animals, but also with new people.
• Don't scold the child! An autistic child perceives any increase in voice very painfully. The reaction can be the most unpredictable. Some babies fall into a strong apathy and become more indifferent to everything that happens in everyday life. Other children may have an excessively strong attack of aggression, which even requires the use of medications.
• Try to choose an interesting hobby for your child. Very often, children with autism are great at drawing or playing musical instruments. Education in a specialized art school will help the kid achieve high professional success. Often these kids become real geniuses. Be sure to keep an eye on the load that falls on the baby. Excessive enthusiasm can lead to severe fatigue and impaired attention.
• Do not move furniture in the children's room and throughout the apartment. Try to keep all the toys and objects that belong to the child in their places. Strong rearrangements can cause an autistic child to have real panic attacks and excessive aggression. Acquisition of new items should be done carefully, without drawing much attention to it.
• Don't limit your child to just being at home! Toddlers with autism do not have to constantly be in the four walls. This will only exacerbate the inability to make new friends and acquaintances. Gradually expand the conditions where the baby spends a large amount of time. Try to motivate him to go for a walk, visit close relatives. However, this should be done gradually, without psychological pressure. The baby should be very comfortable in the new environment.

Autism is not a sentence. This is just a disease that requires increased and special attention to the baby who is sick with this mental illness.

The right approach to organizing life and establishing personal contact helps such children feel more secure and improves the prognosis of the course and development of the disease.

Moms and dads should remember that a baby diagnosed with autism needs your attention and care every day for a lifetime. Such children are often called "special", since they need to build a unique approach with them.

Children with autism, with good rehabilitation, integrate well enough in society and are quite successful in later life.

Useful videos

Yana Summ (ex-wife of Konstantin Meladze) in the next video in my experience talks about what you should pay attention to in order to suspect autism in a child.

You will learn a lot of nuances about autism by watching the programs of Dr. Komarovsky and "Live Healthy".

In preparing the article, materials from the site "autism-test.rf" were used.

child autism social rehabilitation

The early development of an autistic child as a whole fits within the approximate terms of the norm; At the same time, there are two variants of the general peculiar background against which development takes place. In the first case, from the very beginning, such a child may show signs of weakness of mental tone, lethargy, low activity in contacts with the environment, lack of manifestation of even vital needs (the child may not ask for food, endure wet diapers). At the same time, he can eat with pleasure, love comfort, but not so much as to actively demand it, defend a form of contact that is convenient for him; He gives the initiative in everything to the mother.

And later, such a child does not seek to actively explore the environment. Often parents describe such children as very calm, “perfect”, comfortable. They can stay alone without requiring constant attention.

In other cases, children, on the contrary, already at a very early age are distinguished by special excitability, motor restlessness, difficulty falling asleep, and special selectivity in food. They are difficult to adapt to, they may develop special habits of bedding, feeding, grooming procedures. They can express their dissatisfaction so sharply that they become dictators in developing the first affective stereotypes of contact with the world, individually determining what and how to do.

Such a child is difficult to hold in his arms or in a stroller. Excitation usually increases by the year. When such a child begins to move independently, he becomes absolutely uncontrollable: he runs without looking back, behaves absolutely without a “sense of edge”. The activity of such a child, however, is of a field nature and is in no way connected with a directed examination of the environment.

At the same time, both parents of passive, submissive, and parents of excited, hard-to-organize children often noted anxiety, timidity, and an easy onset of a state of sensory discomfort in children. Many parents report that their children were especially sensitive to loud sounds, could not stand household noises of normal intensity, there was a dislike for tactile contact, characteristic disgust when feeding; in some cases, there was a rejection of bright toys. Unpleasant impressions in many cases were fixed for a long time in the affective memory of the child.

The unusual response to sensory impressions also manifested itself in another way. When trying to limit sensory contact with the world, with an insufficient focus on examining the environment, the child was captured, fascinated by certain stereotypical impressions - visual, auditory, vestibular, proprioceptive. Having received these impressions once, the child again and again strove to reproduce them. Only after a long period of fascination with one impression was he replaced by a predilection for another.

The difficulty of distracting the child from such impressions is typical, for example, a nine-month-old child stretches the expander to complete exhaustion, another child falls asleep over the designer.

Preoccupation with rhythmic repetitive impressions is generally characteristic of an early age. Up to a year, the dominance in the behavior of “circulating reactions” is natural, when the child repeats the same actions in order to reproduce the effect - knocks with a toy, jumps, closes and opens the door. A child with normal development gladly includes an adult in his activity.

In the case of early childhood autism, it is practically impossible for a loved one to engage in activities that absorb the child. Special sensory hobbies begin to fence him off from interaction with loved ones, and therefore from the development and complication of interaction with the outside world.

The origins of the problems of forming a bond between an autistic child and his mother:

A normal child tends to develop socially almost from birth. The infant very early reveals a selective interest in social stimuli: the human voice, face. Already in the first month of life, the child can spend a significant part of wakefulness in eye contact with the mother. It is contact through the gaze that has the function of launching and regulating the process of communication.

Many mothers of autistic children talk about the fact that their child did not fix his gaze on the face of an adult, looked past, "through".

Clinical observations and studies of older autistic children have shown that a person, his face is the most attractive object for an autistic child, but he cannot stop his attention on him for a long time, his gaze seems to fluctuate, this is both a desire to approach and a desire to leave.

Contact with an adult is attractive to an autistic child, but social stimulation does not fall within his comfort range.

The first smile, according to the parents, appeared in such a child at the right time, but it was not addressed to an adult and arose as a reaction both to the approach of an adult and to a number of impressions pleasant to the child (braking, the sound of a rattle, the mother's colorful clothes, etc.) . Explicit "infection with a smile" was observed only in a part of the children (according to F.Volkmar - in a third of the observed cases).

Along with the violation of the development of the first stereotypes of everyday interaction, the formation of stereotypes of emotional contact is disrupted.

If normal by 3 months. there appears a stable "complex of revival" - the child's anticipation of the situation of contact, in which he becomes his active initiator, requiring attention, emotional activity of an adult, the infant assumes an anticipatory posture, stretches out his arms towards the adult, then such manifestations are not typical for small autistic children. In the arms of the mother, many of them feel uncomfortable: they do not take the position of readiness, the indifference of the child, or his tension, or even resistance is felt.

The ability to differentiate facial expression, intonation usually occurs during normal development between 5 and 6 months. Autistic children are less able to distinguish facial expressions of loved ones and may even respond inappropriately to a smile or a sad expression on their mother's face.

Thus, in the first six months of life, an autistic child has disturbances in the development of the initial phase of communication skills, the main content of which is the establishment of the possibility of exchanging emotions, the development of common emotional meanings of everyday situations.

By the end of the first - the beginning of the second half of a year of life, a child who develops normally has a clear differentiation of "us" and "them", and among "us" the greatest attachment arises to the mother as the main caregiver or a person replacing her, which indicates sufficient development of individual stereotypes of emotional communication.

According to developmental histories, many of the autistic children in the second half of life still separate a loved one. Based on the results of the experiment, M. Sigman and her colleagues conclude that attachment is formed because an autistic infant responds to separation from the mother in the same way as other children.

The attachment of an autistic child manifests itself, however, most often only as a negative experience of separation from the mother. As a rule, attachment is not expressed in positive emotions. True, a child can rejoice when loved ones bother him, entertain him, but this joy is not addressed to a loved one, the child does not seek to share it with him.

Such attachment has the character of a rather primitive symbiotic relationship between the child and the mother, when the mother is perceived only as the main condition for survival.

The insufficiency of the development of emotional connection, the development of individual stereotypes of communication with loved ones is also manifested in the absence, characteristic of many autistic children, of the “fear of the stranger” observed in the norm by the end of the first year of life. Such children can, with the same indifference, go into the arms of both relatives and strangers, strangers.

By the end of the first year, a normal child usually develops differentiated stereotypes of relationships with different family members, with his own and strangers. In autistic children, symbiotic attachment to one person usually increases and is accompanied by difficulties in contact with other loved ones.

After six months, it is normal, thanks to the development of stereotypes, rituals of communication, games, in the interactions of a child with an adult, it becomes possible to mutually focus attention not only on each other, but also on external objects. After some time, the child himself begins to use a pointing gesture, vocalization, not only as a response, but also as an active attraction of the mother's attention to an event or object of interest to him. P. Mundy and M. Sigman consider the inability to unite attention, to a general focus on an object, one of the earliest obvious manifestations of childhood autism.

Violations of activity, sensory vulnerability, insufficient development of affective interaction stereotypes, emotional contact - all this pushes the child in search of additional autostimulation, leads to the development of hypercompensatory mechanisms that allow the child to drown out, reduce the feeling of affective discomfort. At the level available to him, he develops sophisticated methods of autostimulation of sthenic affective states. The obsessive desire of autistic children to constantly reproduce the same stereotypical actions that cause pleasant sensations to him makes a great contribution to the development of their monotonous behavior. These hypercompensatory actions, while providing temporary relief, only increase the general maladjustment of the child.

Normally, by the age of one and a half, signs of true imitation, imitation appear, which are expressed in the delayed reproduction by the child of intonations, gestures, and behaviors characteristic of his close ones. In an autistic child, the development of these forms is delayed for a long time.

Such severe damage to affective development also causes the formation of a special distortion of the intellectual and speech development of the child.

The underdevelopment of the affective mechanisms of selective and voluntary concentration becomes an insurmountable obstacle to the development of higher mental functions. Under these conditions, even with the highest prerequisites for intellectual development, an autistic child cannot cognitively master the environment. Its development here, as it were, changes its direction and goes mainly in line with the affective assimilation of impressions for the needs of hypercompensatory autostimulation. Such a child masters ways of obtaining certain stereotyped motor, sensory, speech, and even intellectual impressions. The intellectual development of these children is extremely diverse. Among them may be children with normal, accelerated, sharply delayed and uneven mental development. Both partial or general giftedness and mental retardation are also noted.

In stories about such children, one and the same circumstance is constantly noted: they never look into the eyes of another person. Such children in any way avoid communication with people. They seem to not understand or not hear at all what they are being told. As a rule, these children do not speak at all, and if this happens, then most often such children do not use words to communicate with other people. In their manner of speaking, another feature of speech is noted: they do not use personal pronouns, an autistic child speaks of himself in the second or third person.

There is also such a noticeable feature as a great interest in all kinds of mechanical objects and extraordinary dexterity in handling them. To society, on the contrary, they show obvious indifference, they have no need to compare themselves with other people or with their own "I".

Yet, autistic children's excessive aversion to contact with other people is tempered by the joy they often feel when they are treated as if they were very young. In this case, the child will not shy away from gentle touches until you begin to insist that he look at you or talk to you.

Children with autism, compared with healthy peers, are much less likely to complain. As a rule, they react to a conflict situation with a cry, aggressive actions, or take a passive defensive position. Seeking help from elders is extremely rare.

Many of these children suffer from severe eating disorders. Sometimes they refuse to eat at all. (The parents of a four-year-old girl tried everything to arouse her appetite. She refused everything, but at the same time she lay down on the floor next to the dog, assumed the same position and began to eat from the dog's bowl, taking food only by mouth). But this is an extreme case. More often you have to deal with a preference for a certain type of food.

Similarly, autistic children may suffer from severe sleep disturbances. It is especially difficult and sometimes impossible for them to fall asleep. The sleep period can be reduced to an absolute minimum, and there is no sleep regularity whatsoever. Some children cannot fall asleep alone; their father or mother must certainly be with them. Other children cannot fall asleep in their own bed, fall asleep in some particular chair, and only in a sleepy state can they be transferred to bed. There are also children who fall asleep only by touching their parents.

These strange features of children with RDA may be associated with some kind of obsessions or fears that occupy one of the leading places in the formation of autistic behavior in children. Many ordinary surrounding objects, phenomena and some people cause them a constant feeling of fear. Signs of intense fear in these children are often due to causes that seem inexplicable to a superficial observer. If you still try to understand what is happening, it turns out that often a feeling of fear arises as a result of an obsession. For example, children are sometimes obsessed with the idea that all things should be strictly ordered in relation to each other, that everything in the room should have its own specific place, and if they suddenly do not find this, they begin to experience a strong sense of fear, panic. Autistic fears deform the objectivity of perception of the surrounding world.

Autistic children also have unusual addictions, fantasies, inclinations, and they seem to completely capture the child, they cannot be distracted, taken away from these actions.

Their range is very wide. Some children sway, twirl, fiddle with string, tear paper, run in circles or from wall to wall. Others show unusual fondness for traffic patterns, street plans, electrical wiring, and so on.

Some have fantastic ideas for transforming into an animal or a fairy-tale character. Some children strive for strange, seemingly unpleasant actions: they climb into the basements in the garbage heaps, constantly draw cruel scenes (executions), show aggressiveness, in actions, reveal sexual attraction. These special actions, addictions, fantasies play an important role in the pathological adaptation of such children to the environment and to themselves.

The distortion of development in autistic children can manifest itself in a paradoxical combination, ahead of age norms, the development of mental operations and, on their basis, one-sided abilities (mathematical, constructive, etc.) and interests, and at the same time, failure in practical life, in the assimilation of everyday skills, methods actions, special difficulties in establishing relationships with others.

Some children with autism, with careful testing, can produce results that are largely outside the normal range for their age; but with some children, testing is simply not possible. So, you can get an intelligence factor in the range between 30 and 140.

Attention is drawn to the monotonous and one-sided nature of the development of the abilities and hobbies of these children: they like to re-read the same books, collect monotonous objects. According to the nature and content of the relationship of these hobbies to reality, two groups can be distinguished:

Isolation from reality (composing meaningless poems, "reading" books in an incomprehensible language)

Associated with certain aspects of reality, aimed at productive activities (interest in mathematics, languages, chess, music) - which can lead to further development of abilities.

Game activity significantly determines the mental development of the child throughout his childhood, especially at preschool age, when the role-playing game comes to the fore. Children with autistic traits do not play story games with their peers at any age, do not take on social roles and do not reproduce in games situations that reflect real life relationships: professional, family, etc. They have no interest and inclination to reproduce such relationships . Insufficient social orientation, generated by autism, in these children is manifested in the lack of interest not only in role-playing games, but also in watching movies and TV shows that reflect interpersonal relationships.

In autism, the phenomena of asynchrony in the formation of functions and systems are most clearly manifested: the development of speech often overtakes the development of motor skills, "abstract" thinking is ahead of the development of visual-effective and visual-figurative.

Early development of formal-logical thinking enhances the ability to abstract and promotes unlimited possibilities for mental exercises, not limited by the framework of socially significant assessments.

Psychological diagnosis of such children should by no means be reduced to an assessment of mental abilities. Data on intellectual development should be considered only in the context of the characteristics of his general mental development. The focus should be on the interests of the child, the level of formation of arbitrary regulation of behavior, and primarily regulation associated with orientation to other people, and social motives.

The question of opportunities and forms of training is complicated, but it should be noted that individual training is recommended only in exceptional cases.

Features of speech development

The use of vocalizations for the purpose of communication begins long before a child is able to speak words. Normally, the following stages of prelinguistic development are distinguished:

1) 0-1 month Undifferentiated crying. The first reaction to the environment, the result of a total bodily response;

2) 1-5.6 months differentiated crying. Hungry crying, crying associated with abdominal pain, etc.;

1) 3-6.7 months Cooing. stage of the vocal game. The child listens to the sounds around him and produces them himself. However, the spectrographic analysis of these sounds showed that they are objectively different from the sounds of adult speech, even when the mother tries to imitate the cooing of the child;

4) 6-12 months Babble, repetition of audible sounds, syllables;

5) 9-10 months Echolalia. Repetition of sounds that the child hears. The difference from babbling is that the child repeats what he directly hears from another individual.

Early development in autism is characterized by the following features of prelinguistic development: crying is difficult to interpret, cooing is limited or unusual (more like a screech or scream), and there is no imitation of sounds.

Speech disorders are most clearly visible after 3 years. Some patients remain mutated all their lives, but even when speech develops, it remains abnormal in many aspects. In contrast to healthy children, there is a tendency to repeat the same phrases, and not to construct original statements. Delayed or immediate echolalia are typical. Pronounced stereotypes and a tendency to echolalia lead to specific grammatical phenomena. Personal pronouns are repeated as they are heard, for a long time there are no answers such as "yes" or "no". In the speech of such children, permutations of sounds and the incorrect use of prepositional constructions are not uncommon.

Speech understanding abilities are also limited in children with autism. Around the age of 1, when healthy children love to listen to people talk to them, autistic children pay no more attention to speech than to any other noise. For a long time the child is unable to follow simple instructions, does not respond to his name.

At the same time, some children with autism demonstrate early and rapid development of speech. They listen with pleasure when they are read to, memorize long pieces of text almost verbatim, their speech gives the impression of being childish due to the use of a large number of expressions inherent in adult speech. However, opportunities for productive dialogue remain limited. Understanding speech is largely difficult due to the difficulty of understanding the figurative meaning, subtext, metaphors. Such features of speech development are more typical for children with Asperger's syndrome.

Features of the intonational side of speech also distinguish these children. Often they find it difficult to control the volume of their voice, speech is perceived by others as "wooden", "boring", "mechanical". Violated the tone and rhythm of speech.

Thus, regardless of the level of development of speech, in autism, the ability to use it for the purpose of communication first of all suffers. In addition, it should be emphasized that deviations from normal ontogeny are already observed at the stage of prelinguistic development. The spectrum of speech disorders varies from complete mutism to advanced (compared to the norm) development.

Non-verbal communication

Observations on healthy infants reveal associations between specific hand movements, gaze direction, vocalizations, and facial expressions. Already at the age of 9-15 weeks, hand activity in a certain sequence is associated with other behavioral patterns. For example: pointing posture before or after vocalization when interacting face-to-face with the mother, squeezing the hand during vocalization, spreading fingers - at those moments when the baby looks away from her face. Interestingly, some manual acts are characterized by right-left differences. The results of experimental studies of healthy children show the relationship between the development of gestures and the level of speech development. Obviously, in cases where there is no cooing and limited eye contact, which is characteristic of autism, this preparatory stage will proceed abnormally, and this cannot but affect the development of a number of mental functions. Indeed, at an older age, obvious difficulties in non-verbal communication are revealed, namely: the use of gestures, facial expressions, and body movements. Very often there is no pointing gesture. The child takes the parent's hand and leads to the object, goes to its usual location and waits for the object to be given to him.

Thus, already in the early stages of development in children with autism, there are signs of distortion of specific innate behavioral patterns that are characteristic of normal children.

Features of perception (Lebedinskaya K.S., Nikolskaya O.S.) Visual perception.

Looking "through" an object. Lack of eye tracking. "Pseudoblindness". Concentration of the gaze on a "non-objective" object: a spot of light, a section of a shiny surface, a wallpaper pattern, a carpet, flickering shadows. Fascination with such contemplation. Delay at the stage of examining one's hands, fingering the fingers near the face.

Examining and fingering the mother's fingers. Persistent search for certain visual sensations. A persistent desire to contemplate bright objects, their movement, spinning, flashing pages. Prolonged evoking of a stereotypical change in visual sensations (when turning on and off the light, opening and closing doors, moving glass shelves, spinning wheels, pouring mosaics, etc.).

Early color discrimination. Drawing stereotypical ornaments.

Visual hypersynthesia: fright, screaming when the light is turned on, the curtains are pulled apart; longing for darkness.

Auditory perception.

No response to sound. Fears of individual sounds. Lack of habituation to frightening sounds. The desire for sound autostimulation: crumpling and tearing of paper, rustling of plastic bags, swinging of the door leaves. Preference for quiet sounds. Early love for music. The nature of the preferred music. Its role in the implementation of the regime, compensation behavior. Good ear for music. Hyperpathic negative reaction to music.

Tactile sensitivity.

Altered reaction to wet diapers, bathing, combing, cutting nails, hair. Poor portability of clothes, shoes, desire to undress. Pleasure from the feeling of tearing, stratification of fabrics, paper, pouring cereals. Examination of the surroundings mainly with the help of palpation.

Taste sensitivity.

Intolerance to many foods. Aspiration is inedible. Sucking inedible objects, tissues. Examination of the surroundings with the help of licking.

Olfactory sensitivity.

Hypersensitivity to odors. Examination of the environment with the help of sniffing.

proprioceptive sensitivity.

A tendency to autostimulation by tension of the body, limbs, hitting oneself on the ears, pinching them when yawning, hitting the head against the side of the stroller, headboard. Attraction to play with an adult such as spinning, whirling, tossing .

The search for the causes of this disorder of mental development went in several directions.

The first examinations of autistic children did not give evidence of the pathology of their nervous system. In this regard, in the early 1950s, the most common hypothesis was the psychogenic origin of suffering. In other words, the violation of the development of emotional ties with people, activity in the development of the surrounding world was associated with early mental trauma, with the wrong, cold attitude of parents to the child, with inappropriate methods of education. Here we can note the following characteristic feature - it was assumed that a child with autism has a typical family background. RDA often occurs in the intellectual environment and in the so-called upper strata of society, although it is known that this disease is not limited to one or another social group. Thus, the responsibility for the violation of the mental development of a biologically full-fledged child was assigned to the parents, which very often was the cause of severe mental trauma to the parents themselves.

Further comparative studies of families of mentally retarded children and children suffering from early childhood autism showed that autistic children suffered no more traumatic situations than others, and parents of autistic children are even more caring and devoted to them than is usually observed in the family of a child with mental retardation. .

Currently, most researchers believe that early childhood autism is the result of a special pathology, which is based on the insufficiency of the central nervous system.

This insufficiency can be caused by a wide range of reasons: congenital abnormal constitution, congenital metabolic disorders, organic damage to the central nervous system as a result of the pathology of pregnancy and childbirth, early-onset schizophrenic process. More than 30 different pathogenic factors have been identified that can lead to the formation of Kanner's syndrome.

Of course, the actions of various pathological agents introduce individual features into the picture of the syndrome of early childhood autism. It can be complicated by varying degrees of mental retardation, gross underdevelopment of speech. Various shades can have emotional upsets. As with any other developmental anomaly, the overall picture of a severe mental defect cannot be directly inferred from its biological underlying causes alone.

Many, even the main manifestations of early childhood autism can be regarded in this sense as secondary, arising in the process of mental dysontogenesis.

The mechanism of formation of secondary disorders is most obvious when considering the clinical picture through the prism of abnormal mental development.

Mental development not only suffers from biological inferiority, but also adapts to it as to external conditions.

An autistic child evaluates most situations of interaction with others as dangerous. Autism in this regard can be presented as the main one among the secondary syndromes, as a compensatory mechanism aimed at protecting against a traumatic external environment. Autistic attitudes are the most significant in the hierarchy of causes that form the very abnormal development of such a child.

The development of those aspects of the psyche that are formed in active social contacts suffers the most. As a rule, the development of psychomotor skills is disturbed. The period from 1.5 to 3 years, which is normally the time for mastering the skills of neatness, dressing, eating independently, playing with objects, for a child with autism, often turns out to be a crisis, difficult to overcome. At the same time, unlike other categories of children with motor defects, autistic children have little or no independent attempts to compensate for these difficulties.

However, for children with early childhood autism syndrome of various etiologies, the main points of the clinical picture, the general structure of mental development disorders, and the problems facing families remain common.

The manifestation of early childhood autism changes with age. The clinical picture is formed gradually by 2.5-3 years and remains most pronounced up to 5-6 years, representing a complex combination of primary disorders caused by the disease and secondary difficulties arising as a result of incorrect, pathological adaptation to them by both the child and adults.

If you try to trace how the difficulties of the mental development of an autistic child arise, then most researchers doubt that such children have at least a short period of normal development. Although the pediatrician usually evaluates such a child as healthy, his "specialness" is often noticeable from birth and early signs of developmental disorders are noted already in infancy.

It is known that in infancy, the pathologies of physical and mental development are intertwined especially closely. Already at this time, autistic children show violations of the simplest instinctive forms of adaptation to life (which were mentioned above): difficulty falling asleep, shallow intermittent sleep, distortion of the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. There may be difficulties in feeding such children: sluggish sucking, early refusal of the breast, selectivity in the adoption of complementary foods. The digestive function is unstable, often disturbed, there is a tendency to constipation.

Such children can be both overpassive, unresponsive, and excitable, with a tendency to a panic reaction. In this case, the same child can demonstrate both types of behavior. Perhaps, for example, the lack of reaction to wet diapers, and complete intolerance to them. Some children who react little to their surroundings are suspected of blindness and deafness, while others scream for hours in response to an unusual loud sound, reject bright toys. So, the boy, to the envy of all mothers, calmly sits on a blanket, while other kids uncontrollably crawled across the lawn; as it turned out, he was afraid to get off it. Fear inhibits his activity, curiosity, outwardly he seems calm.

It must be added that once experienced fear can be fixed for a long time in such children and after months, and even years, influence their behavior. So, one girl, who, after a fright that occurred at the age of 3 months, when her mother left the house for a short while and they tried to feed her from a bottle for the first time, for several months began to scream every day at this time.

Peculiarities in establishing emotional contact of autistic children with loved ones also appear already in the first year of life. Passivity in relations with relatives is often noted: such a child weakly expresses joy at the appearance of a loved one, asks little for hands, does not adapt to the position on hands. Nevertheless, according to observations, in most cases, an autistic child at an early age, although not as active as a healthy one, is able to establish the simplest emotional connection with loved ones. The only exceptions are the most severe cases, possibly complicated by mental retardation. But in most cases, an autistic child enjoys emotional contact, loves to be fiddled with, circled, tossed.

When a child begins to walk, his character changes: from calm, he becomes excited, disinhibited, does not obey adults, with difficulty and a long delay learns self-service skills, he does not concentrate well on what is happening around him, it is difficult to organize, teach something.

For the first time, the danger of a special delay in the mental development of the child begins to be indicated.

The main reasons for such a distortion of mental development, according to researchers (K.S. Lebedinskaya, E.R. Baenskaya, O.S. Nikolskaya) are the following:

1. Painfully increased sensitivity, vulnerability of the emotional sphere with poor tolerance of the influences of the external environment that are usually strong in their strength, a tendency to fixate on unpleasant impressions, which causes the autistic child to be ready for anxiety and fears;

2. Weakness of the general and mental tone, causing a low ability to concentrate attention, the formation of arbitrary forms of behavior, increased satiety in contact with others.

Autism is a congenital incurable disease characterized by a mental development disorder that leads to a weakening or loss of contacts with the outside world, a deep immersion in the world of one's own experiences, and a lack of desire to communicate with people.

Such a child is not able to express his emotions or understand the emotions of another person. At the same time, violations of colloquial speech and even a decrease in intellectual development are often noted.

Autism, many experts do not regard as a mental illness in the strict sense. It's just that these children perceive the world around them differently. Therefore, autistic children are called children of the rain. Rain in this case symbolizes the peculiarity of children (similar to the film "Rain Man").

All manifestations of autism occur in 3-5 children out of 10,000 children, and in a mild form - in 40 children per 10,000. In girls, it occurs 3-4 times less often than in boys.

Causes

There is a lot of scientific work on childhood autism, just as there are many theories about the alleged causes of its occurrence. But the exact reason has not yet been established, since not a single hypothesis has been fully substantiated.

Some scientists suggest hereditary transmission of the disease. This point of view is supported by the fact that autism is often observed in members of the same family. But in such cases, it is possible that the children of parents with autism, having become parents, are also distinguished by pedantry, a “hard character” due to their upbringing and way of life in the family, which affects the distinctive features of their children.

Moreover, autistic children are much more likely to be born in families with a prosperous family climate. And the deviations revealed in the behavior of the parents of such children are more likely to be associated with psychological exhaustion due to the daily struggle with the disease.

Some psychiatrists have tried to link autism to the birth order of a child in a family. It was assumed that autism suffers more often from the baby born first in the family. However, the susceptibility to autism increases with the number of births in the family (i.e., the eighth child in a row is more likely to develop autism than the seventh).

Studies have shown that at the birth of one child with autism, the risk of developing it in the next child born in the family is 2.8 times higher. The likelihood of the disease also increases if at least one of the parents has autism.

The theory about the significance of a viral infection in the mother during pregnancy (,) has received the most evidence, which causes a violation of the formation of the fetal brain. Evidence of the development of autism as a result of vaccinations has not been found, as has not been confirmed and the assumption of its occurrence with malnutrition.

Most likely, a combination of genetic factors and adverse effects on the fetus (infection or toxic substances) matter.

Signs of the disease

The clinical manifestations of autism are as multifaceted as the personality itself. There are no single key symptoms: for each patient, the symptom complex is formed under the influence of the personality itself and the environment, each autistic child is unique.

Autism is a departure from the world of reality into the world of internal difficulties and experiences. The child does not have household skills and emotional connection with loved ones. Such children experience discomfort in the world of ordinary people, because they do not understand their emotions and feelings.

The signs of this mysterious disease depend on age. Specialists identify 3 groups of manifestations of autism: early (in children under 2 years old), child (from 2 to 11 years old), adolescent (from 11 to 18 years old) autism.

Signs of autism in children under 2 years of age:

• the baby is not attached enough to the mother: he does not smile at her, does not reach out to her, does not react to her departure, does not recognize close relatives (even the mother);
• the child does not look into the eyes and into the face when trying to communicate with him;
• there is no “position of readiness” when taking the baby in his arms: he does not stretch out his arms, does not press against his chest, and therefore he may even refuse to breastfeed;
• the child prefers to play alone with the same toy or part of it (a wheel from a typewriter or the same animal, doll); other toys do not cause interest;
• addiction to toys is peculiar: ordinary children's toys are of little interest, an autistic child can examine or move any object in front of his eyes for a long time, following its movement;
• does not respond to his name with normal hearing acuity;
• does not draw the attention of other persons to the subject that aroused his interest;
• does not need attention or any help;
• treats any person as with an inanimate object - pushes him out of his way or simply bypasses;
• there is a delay in speech development (does not roar at the age of one, does not pronounce simple words by one and a half years, but simple phrases at 2 years), but even with developed speech, the child rarely and reluctantly speaks;
• the baby does not like changes, resists them; any changes cause anxiety or anger;
• lack of interest and even aggression towards other children;
• sleep is poor, insomnia is characteristic: the child lies with his eyes open for a long time;
• appetite is reduced;
• the development of intelligence can be different: normal, accelerated or lagging behind, uneven;
• inadequate reaction (strong fright) to minor external stimuli (light, quiet noise).

Manifestations of autism from 2 to 11 years (in addition to the above symptoms, new ones appear):

• at 3-4 years old, the baby does not speak, or says only a few words; some children repeat the same sound (or word) constantly;
• the development of speech in some children can be peculiar: the child begins to speak immediately in phrases, sometimes logically (“in an adult way”) constructed; sometimes echolalia is characteristic - the repetition of a previously heard phrase with the preservation of its structure and intonation;
• also associated with echolalia incorrect use of pronouns and unawareness of one's own "I" (the child calls himself "you");
• the child will never start a conversation, does not support it, there is no desire to communicate;
• changes in the familiar environment cause concern, but more significant for him is the absence of any object, and not a person;
• characteristic is inadequate fear (sometimes of the most common object) and at the same time the absence of a sense of real danger;
• the child performs stereotyped actions and movements; can sit in a crib for a long time (including at night), rocking monotonously to the sides;
• any skills are acquired with difficulty, some children cannot learn to write, read;
• some children successfully manifest their abilities in music, drawing, mathematics;
• at this age, children “leave” as much as possible into their own world: often they have causeless (for others) crying or laughter, an attack of anger.

Manifestations of autism in children after 11 years:

• although a child by this age already has the skills to communicate with people, he still strives for loneliness, does not feel the need for communication. In some cases, an autistic child may avoid eye contact when communicating or, conversely, stare into the eyes, come too close or move too far away when talking, speak very loudly or very quietly;
• facial expressions and gestures are too poor. The contented expression on the face is replaced by discontent when people appear in the room;
• vocabulary is poor, certain words and phrases are often repeated. Speech without intonation resembles the conversation of a robot;
• finds it difficult to be the first to start a conversation;
• misunderstanding of the emotions and feelings of another person;
• inability to build friendly (romantic) relationships;
• calmness and confidence are noted only in a familiar environment or situation, and strong feelings - with any changes in life;
• great attachment to individual objects, habits, places;
• many children are characterized by motor and psychomotor excitability, disinhibition, often combined with aggression and impulsivity. Others, on the contrary, are passive, lethargic, inhibited, with a weak response to stimuli;
• puberty is more difficult, with frequent development of aggression towards others, depression, anxiety disorders, epilepsy;
• at school, some children create an imaginary impression of geniuses: they can easily repeat a poem or a song by heart, having listened to them once, although other subjects are difficult for them to study. The impression of “genius” is complemented by a concentrated “smart” face, as if the child is thinking about something.

The presence of these signs does not necessarily indicate autism. But if they are found, you should seek the advice of a specialist.

A type of autism (its milder form) is Asperger's syndrome. A distinctive feature of it is that children have normal mental development and sufficient vocabulary. But at the same time, communication with other people is difficult, children are not able to understand and express emotions.

Diagnostics

It is possible to suspect the development of autism in infants from the age of 3 months. But no doctor can accurately confirm the diagnosis at such an early age. Childhood autism is more often diagnosed at 3 years of age, when the manifestations of the disease become apparent.

Diagnosis of this pathology, even for an experienced specialist, is far from simple. Sometimes a doctor needs multiple consultative appointments, various tests and observation for differential diagnosis with neurosis-like conditions, genetic diseases with mental retardation.

Some symptoms may be characteristic of healthy children. It is not so much the presence of a sign that is important, but the systematic nature of its manifestation. The complexity lies also in the variety of symptoms of autism, which can be expressed in varying degrees of severity. For example, a capable student may be reserved by nature. Therefore, it is important to detect several signs, a violation of the perception of the real world.

Having found deviations in the behavior of the child, parents should contact a child psychiatrist who can diagnose a mental disorder in the child. In large cities, “Child Development Centers” have now been established. Specialists in them (children's neurologists, psychiatrists, speech therapists, psychologists, etc.) are engaged in the early diagnosis of developmental disorders in children and recommendations for their treatment.

In the absence of a center, the diagnosis is established on a commission basis with the participation of a pediatrician, a child psychiatrist, a psychologist and teachers (educators).

In the United States, all children at 1.5 years of age are tested by their parents to rule out autism in a child (the test is called "Test for autism for young children"). This simple test can help parents decide for themselves if their child needs a specialist consultation.

Each of the questions should be answered "Yes" or "No":

1. Does the child like being picked up, put on his knees, rocked?
2. Is your child interested in other children?
3. Does the child like to climb somewhere, climb stairs?
4. Does your child like to play with their parents?
5. Does the child imitate some action (“make tea” in a toy dish, operate a typewriter, etc.)?
6. Does the baby use the index finger to point to an object of interest to him?
7. Did he ever bring an item to show you?
8. Does the child look into the eyes of a stranger?
9. Point your finger at an object out of the baby's field of vision and say: "Look!", Or say the name of the toy ("car" or "doll"). Check the child's reaction: did he turn his head to look at the object (and not at the movement of your hand)?
10. It is necessary to give the baby a toy spoon and a cup and ask him to “make tea”. Will the child support the game and pretend to make tea?
11. Ask your child the question “Where are the cubes? or doll. Will the baby point to this object with his finger?
12. Can a child build a pyramid or tower out of cubes?

If the majority of the answers are “no”, then the child is very likely to have autism.

What should parents do if their child is diagnosed with autism?

Many parents cannot come to terms with such a diagnosis for a long time, explaining for themselves the changes in the behavior of the child by his personality, characterological features.

What can you advise parents?

1. There is no need to deny the diagnosis. After all, to make a diagnosis, doctors assessed according to many criteria.
2. Understand and accept that this pathology will not go away over the years and will not be cured, it is for life.
3. A lot of work needs to be done with the child to level the manifestations of autism. Not only the advice of specialists can help in this, but also the parents of other children with autism: you can use someone else's experience in the development of the child, meeting in circles of such parents or on an Internet forum.
4. Understand that time is precious when working with a child. symptoms will only get worse with age. The earlier corrective treatment is started, the higher the chances of success.
5. Autism diagnosis is not a sentence. At 3-5 years of age it is difficult to say about the severity of the process and its development. In many cases, social adaptation, the acquisition of a profession is possible.
6. You should use the help of specialists in carrying out speech therapy, corrective, pedagogical techniques to change the intellectual development, psychomotor and emotional behavior of the child. Consultations of psychologists, defectologists, speech therapists will help in the formation of skills, correction of communication disorders and social adaptation.

Treatment of autism in children

There is no drug treatment for autism. The main method of treatment is psychotherapy and adaptation of the child to life in society. Treatment for autism is a long and difficult (psychologically and physically) process.

The assumption about the effectiveness of using a gluten-free diet in the treatment of scientists has not been confirmed in studies. Eliminating casein and gluten from the diet of a child with autism does not lead to a cure.

Basic rules of treatment:

1. A psychiatrist with experience working with autistic children should be selected. It is undesirable to change doctors, because. each will apply his own program, which will not allow the child to consolidate the acquired skills.
2. All relatives of the child should participate in the treatment so that it continues at home, on a walk, etc.
3. The treatment consists in the continuous repetition of the acquired skills so that they are not lost over time. Stress and illness can lead to the original condition and behavior.
4. The child should have a clear daily routine, which should be strictly observed.
5. It is necessary to maintain the maximum constancy of the environment, each object must have its place.
6. You should try to attract the attention of the child, addressing him several times by name, but without raising his voice.
7. Forceful coercion and punishment cannot be used: an autistic child is not able to link his behavior with punishment and simply will not understand what he is being punished for.
8. Behavior with the child should be logical and consistent among all family members. Changing the pattern of behavior can adversely affect his condition.
9. The conversation with the child should be calm, slow, short clear sentences.
10. During the day, the child should have breaks so that he can be alone. You just need to make sure that the environment is safe for him.
11. Physical exercise will help the child relieve stress and give positive emotions. Most of these kids love trampolining.
12. Having taught the child new skills, it should be shown in what situation they can be applied (for example, to use the toilet not only at home, but also at school).
13. It is necessary to praise the child for success, using both words and other methods of encouragement (watching a cartoon, etc.), gradually he will find a connection between behavior and praise.

It is also important for the parents themselves to have a break and rest from these activities, because. they cause psychological exhaustion: at least once a year you need to go on vacation, and entrust the care of the child to grandparents (or take turns resting). It will not be superfluous to visit a psychologist by the parents themselves.

How to teach a child to communicate?

1. If the child is not capable of verbal communication, other options should be sought: non-verbal communication through pictures, gestures, sounds or facial expressions.
2. You do not need to do anything instead of the child if he does not ask for help. You can ask if he needs help, and only if the answer is yes, help.
3. You need to constantly try to involve him in any games with other children, even if the first attempts will cause anger. Anger and anger are also emotions. Gradually, the understanding will come that it is interesting to communicate.
4. No need to rush the baby - because he needs time to comprehend the actions.
5. In games with a child, do not strive to lead - gradually form a manifestation of the initiative.
6. Be sure to praise him for starting the conversation on his own.
7. Try to create a reason, a need for communication, because if everything you need is there, then there is no incentive to communicate with adults, to ask for something.
8. The kid must determine for himself when the lesson needs to be finished (when he is tired or tired). If he cannot say it in words, then his facial expressions will tell. You can help him choose a word to end the game ("Enough" or "Everything").

How to teach everyday skills?

1. Teaching a toddler to brush their teeth can take a long time. period, but it is possible. There is no single learning rule for all children. It can be a game form with learning through pictures, or a personal example, or any other option.

1. Toilet training can be especially difficult and take several months. It is better to start training when the baby is aware of the need to visit the toilet (which can be understood by his behavior or facial expressions).

For an autistic child, stopping the use of diapers will already cause dissatisfaction. Therefore, in order not to have to wean him from using the potty later, it is better to form the habit of using the toilet immediately after diapers.

At first, diapers need to be changed in the toilet so that the child can associate toilet visits with physiological functions. In the process of monitoring the baby, it is recommended to notice the approximate time of bowel movement and urination in the child. During these natural departures, you need to show the baby the toilet first in the photo and say the word "toilet".

At the approximate departure time, the child should be taken to the toilet, undressed and put on the toilet. Do not be discouraged if urination or defecation has not occurred. Even in this case, you need to use toilet paper, dress the baby and wash your hands. In cases where the need is resolved outside the toilet, you need to take the child to the toilet as soon as possible. Every instance of using the toilet should be accompanied by praise or a reward (give a toy, a cookie, etc.).

1. Washing hands must be taught after the toilet, after returning from a walk, before eating. When teaching, it is important to perform all actions in a strict sequence and not violate it. For example: pull up sleeves; open the faucet; moisten hands with water; take soap; lather your hands; put soap; wash soap off your hands; shut off valve; wipe your hands; fix the sleeves. At the beginning of training, the next action should be prompted with words or pictures.

Teaching an autistic child

An autistic child, as a rule, cannot study in a regular school. More often, homeschooling is done by parents or a visiting specialist. Special schools have been opened in large cities. Training in them is carried out according to special methods.

The most common training programs:

• "Applied Behavioral Analysis": step-by-step training under the guidance of a psychologist from simple skills to the formation of colloquial speech.
• “Time on the floor”: the technique offers treatment and communication skills training to be carried out in a playful way (a parent or teacher plays with a child on the floor for several hours).
• The TEACCH program: the methodology recommends an individual approach to each child, taking into account his characteristics, the purpose of education. This technique can be combined with other learning technologies.
• The method of the program "More than words" teaches parents to understand the non-verbal way of communicating with the child using gestures, facial expressions, his gaze, etc. The psychologist (or parents) helps the child develop new methods for communicating with other people that are more understandable to them.
• "Social stories" are original fairy tales written by teachers or parents. They should describe situations that cause fears and anxiety of the child, and the thoughts and emotions of the heroes of the stories suggest the desired behavior of the child in such a situation.
• Card exchange learning technique: used for severe autism and a child who is unable to speak. In the learning process, the child is helped to remember the meaning of various cards and use them for communication. This gives the child the opportunity to take the initiative and facilitates communication.

A strict daily routine, constant and not always successful classes with a child with autism, leave an imprint on the life of the whole family. Such conditions require unusual patience and tolerance from family members. But only love and patience will help to achieve even the slightest progress.

Forecast

The forecast in each case is different. Correction started in a timely manner can significantly weaken the manifestations of the disease and teach the child to communicate and live in society.

But you can’t expect success in a week or even a month. Treatment of such children should continue throughout life. In many children, some changes and the possibility of contact are noted after 3-4 months, while in others, positive dynamics are not achieved for years.

With a mild form of mental disorder, an autistic patient may be able to live independently by about 20 years of age. Approximately one in three of them acquires partial independence from their parents. With a severe course of the disease, the patient becomes a burden for the family, needs the supervision of relatives, especially with reduced intelligence and inability to speak.

Summary for parents

Unfortunately, neither the cause of development nor the cure for autism is known. Most autistic children have normal intelligence. Moreover, some of them have extraordinary abilities in music, mathematics, drawing. But they cannot use them.

It is important to work with children at any stage of autism as early as possible. You can't despair! Using a variety of developed correction techniques, in many cases success can be achieved. The main enemy of the child is time. Every day without work is a step back.

Which doctor to contact

If a child has autism, he should be observed by a psychiatrist, preferably one. Additional assistance in the treatment and rehabilitation of such children is provided by a neurologist, speech therapist, massage therapist, and psychologist.

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A specialist working with an autistic child must understand not only the clinical signs, not only the biological causes of childhood autism, but also the logic of the development of this strange disorder, the order in which problems appear, and the characteristics of the child's behavior. It is the understanding of the psychological picture as a whole that allows the specialist to work not only on individual situational difficulties, but also on the normalization of the very course of mental development.

It should be emphasized that although the “center” of the syndrome is autism as an inability to establish emotional ties, as difficulties in communication and socialization, it is no less characteristic of it that the development of all mental functions is impaired. That is why, as we have already mentioned, in modern classifications, childhood autism is included in the group of pervasive, i.e., all-penetrating disorders, manifested in the abnormal development of all areas of the psyche: intellectual and emotional spheres, sensory and motor skills, attention, memory, speech.

The violation in question is not a mechanical sum of individual difficulties - here one can see a single pattern of dysontogenesis, covering the entire mental development of the child. The point is not only that the normal course of development is disturbed or delayed, but it is clearly distorted, going "somewhere in the wrong direction." Trying to comprehend it according to the laws of ordinary logic, we always face the incomprehensible paradox of its picture, expressed in the fact that with random manifestations of both the ability to perceive complex forms and dexterity in movements, as well as the ability to speak and understand a lot, such a child does not strive use their abilities in real life, in interaction with adults and other children. These abilities and skills find their expression only in the sphere of strange stereotyped activities and specific interests of such a child.

As a result, early childhood autism has a reputation as one of the most mysterious developmental disorders. For many years, research has continued to identify central mental deficiency, which may be the root cause of a complex system of characteristic mental disorders. The first to appear was a seemingly natural assumption about a decrease in the need for communication in an autistic child. However, later it became clear that although such a decrease can disrupt the development of the emotional sphere, impoverish the forms of communication and socialization, it alone cannot explain all the originality of the pattern of behavior, for example, stereotype, of such children.

Moreover, the results of psychological research, family experience, observations of professionals involved in remedial education, say that the mentioned assumption is not true at all. A person who has close contact with an autistic child rarely doubts that he not only wants to be with people, but can also become deeply attached to them.

There is experimental evidence that the human face is just as emotionally significant to such a child as it is to any other, but it endures eye contact for much less time than others. That is why his gaze gives the impression of intermittent, mysteriously elusive.

There is also no doubt that it is really difficult for such children to understand other people, to perceive information from them, to take into account their intentions, feelings, it is difficult to interact with them. According to modern ideas, an autistic child is still more likely unable than unwilling to communicate. Work experience also shows that it is difficult for him to interact not only with people, but also with the environment as a whole. This is precisely what the multiple and diverse problems of autistic children speak of: their eating behavior is disturbed, self-preservation reactions are weakened, and there is practically no research activity. There is a total maladjustment in relations with the world.

Attempts to consider the pathology of one of the mental functions (sensory-motor, speech, intellectual, etc.) as the root cause of the development of childhood autism also did not lead to success. Violations of any one of these functions could explain only part of the manifestations of the syndrome, but did not allow us to understand its overall picture. Moreover, it turned out that you can always find a typically autistic child who is characterized by other, but not given, difficulties.

It is becoming increasingly clear that we should not talk about a violation of a separate function, but about a pathological change in the entire style of interaction with the world, difficulties in organizing active adaptive behavior, in using knowledge and skills to interact with the environment and people. The English researcher U. Frith believes that autistic children have a disturbed understanding of the general meaning of what is happening, and connects this with some kind of central cognitive deficit. We believe that this is due to a violation of the development of the system of affective organization of consciousness and behavior, its main mechanisms - experiences and meanings that determine a person's view of the world and ways of interacting with it.

Let's try to trace why and how this violation occurs. Biological deficiency creates special pathological conditions in which the autistic child lives, develops and is forced to adapt. From the day of his birth, a typical combination of two pathogenic factors appears:

- violation of the ability to actively interact with the environment;

- lowering the threshold of affective discomfort in contacts with the world.

First factor makes itself felt both through a decrease in vitality and through difficulties in organizing active relations with the world. At first, it can manifest itself as a general lethargy of a child who does not bother anyone, does not require attention, does not ask for food or a diaper change. A little later, when the child begins to walk, the distribution of his activity turns out to be abnormal: he "first runs, then lies down." Already very early, such children surprise with the absence of lively curiosity, interest in the new; they do not explore the environment; any obstacle, the slightest hindrance hinder their activity and force them to refuse to carry out their intention. However, such a child experiences the greatest discomfort when trying to purposefully focus his attention, arbitrarily organize his behavior.

Experimental data show that the special style of the relationship of an autistic child with the world is manifested primarily in situations that require active selectivity on his part: the selection, grouping, processing of information turn out to be the most difficult thing for him. He tends to perceive information, as if passively imprinting it into himself in whole blocks. Perceived blocks of information are stored unprocessed and used in the same, passively perceived from the outside form. In particular, this is how the child learns ready-made verbal cliches and uses them in his speech. In the same way, he masters other skills, tightly connecting them with a single situation in which they were perceived, and not using them in another.

Second factor(reducing the threshold of discomfort in contacts with the world) manifests itself not only as a frequently observed painful reaction to ordinary sound, light, color or touch (such a reaction is especially characteristic in infancy), but also as increased sensitivity, vulnerability in contact with another person. We have already mentioned that eye contact with an autistic child is possible only for a very short period of time; longer interaction even with close people makes him uncomfortable. In general, for such a child, low endurance in dealing with the world, a quick and painfully experienced satiety even with pleasant contacts with the environment are common. It is important to note that most of these children are characterized not only by increased vulnerability, but also by a tendency to fixate on unpleasant impressions for a long time, form a rigid negative selectivity in contacts, create a whole system of fears, prohibitions, and all kinds of restrictions.

Both of these factors act in the same direction, hindering the development of active interaction with the environment and creating the prerequisites for strengthening self-defense.

With all of the above in mind, we can now come to an understanding of what are the specific sources of both autism itself and stereotyping in the behavior of the child.

Autism develops not only because the child is vulnerable and has little emotional endurance. The desire to limit interaction even with close people is due to the fact that it is they who require the greatest activity from the child, and he cannot fulfill this very requirement.

Stereotyping is also caused by the need to take control of contacts with the world and protect yourself from uncomfortable impressions, from the terrible. Another reason is the limited ability to actively and flexibly interact with the environment. In other words, the child relies on stereotypes because he can only adapt to stable forms of life.

In conditions of frequent discomfort, limited active positive contacts with the world, special pathological forms necessarily develop. compensatory autostimulation, allowing such a child to raise his tone and drown out discomfort. The most striking example is the monotonous movements and manipulations with objects, the purpose of which is to reproduce the same pleasant impression.

The emerging attitudes of autism, stereotypes, hypercompensatory autostimulation cannot but distort the entire course of the child's mental development. Here it is impossible to separate the affective and cognitive components: this is one knot of problems. Distortion in the development of cognitive mental functions is a consequence of disturbances in the affective sphere. These violations lead to deformation of the basic mechanisms of affective organization of behavior - those mechanisms that allow each normal child to establish an optimal individual distance in relations with the world, determine their needs and habits, master the unknown, overcome obstacles, build an active and flexible dialogue with the environment, establish an emotional contact with people and arbitrarily organize their behavior.

In an autistic child, the development of mechanisms that determine active interaction with the world suffers, and at the same time, the pathological development of defense mechanisms is forced:

- instead of establishing a flexible distance, which allows both to come into contact with the environment and avoid uncomfortable impressions, the reaction of avoiding the influences directed at it is fixed;

- instead of developing positive selectivity, developing a rich and varied arsenal of life habits that meet the needs of the child, negative selectivity is formed and fixed, i.e. the focus of his attention is not what he loves, but what he does not like, does not accept, fears;

- instead of developing skills that allow you to actively influence the world, i.e. examine situations, overcome obstacles, perceive each of your mistakes not as a catastrophe, but as setting a new adaptation task, which actually opens the way to intellectual development, the child focuses on protecting constancy in the surrounding microcosm;

- instead of developing emotional contact with loved ones, which gives them the opportunity to establish arbitrary control over the behavior of the child, he builds a system of protection from the active interference of loved ones in his life. He sets the maximum distance in contacts with them, seeks to keep relationships within the framework of stereotypes, using a loved one only as a condition of life, a means of autostimulation. The child's connection with loved ones manifests itself primarily as a fear of losing them. A symbiotic relationship is fixed, but a real emotional attachment does not develop, which is expressed in the ability to empathize, regret, give in, sacrifice one's interests.

Such severe violations in the affective sphere entail changes in the direction of development of the child's higher mental functions. They also become not so much a means of active adaptation to the world as a tool used for protection and obtaining the impressions necessary for autostimulation.

Yes, in motor development the formation of everyday adaptation skills, the development of ordinary, necessary for life, actions with objects are delayed. Instead, the arsenal of stereotypical movements is actively replenished, such manipulations with objects that allow you to get the necessary stimulating impressions associated with contact, a change in body position in space, a feeling of your muscle ligaments, joints, etc. These can be waved hands, freezing in certain strange postures, selective tension of individual muscles and joints, running in a circle or from wall to wall, jumping, whirling, swinging, climbing furniture, jumping from chair to chair, balancing; stereotypical actions with objects: a child can tirelessly shake a string, knock with a stick, tear paper, delaminate a piece of fabric into threads, move and turn objects, etc.

Such a child is extremely awkward in any objective action performed "for the benefit" - both in large movements of the whole body, and in fine manual motor skills. He cannot imitate, grasping the right posture; poorly manages the distribution of muscle tone: the body, hand, fingers may be too sluggish or too tense, movements are poorly coordinated, their time is not absorbed " i sequence. At the same time, he can unexpectedly show exceptional dexterity in his strange actions: he can move like an acrobat from the windowsill to a chair, maintain his balance on the back of the sofa, spin a plate on the finger of an outstretched hand, lay out an ornament from small objects or matches ...

AT development of perception such a child can be noted violations of orientation in space, distortions of a holistic picture of the real objective world and a sophisticated isolation of individual, affectively significant, sensations of one's own body, as well as sounds, colors, forms of surrounding things. Stereotypical pressure on the ear or eye, sniffing, licking objects, fingering in front of the eyes, playing with highlights and shadows are common.

The presence of more complex forms of sensory autostimulation is also characteristic. An early interest in color, spatial forms can manifest itself in a passion for laying out ornamental rows, and this interest can even be reflected in the development of a child's speech. His first words may be the names of complex shades of colors and shapes that are far from the most necessary for an ordinary baby - for example, “pale golden”, or “parallelepiped”. At the age of two, a child can look everywhere for the shape of a ball or the outlines of letters and numbers familiar to him. Designing can absorb him - he will fall asleep at this lesson, and when he wakes up, he enthusiastically continues to connect all the same details. Very often, already up to a year, a passion for music is manifested, and the child may show an absolute ear for music. Sometimes he learns early to use the player, unmistakably, according to incomprehensible signs, selects the record he needs from the pile and listens to it again and again ...

Feelings of light, color, shape, one's body acquire value in themselves. Normally, they are primarily a means, the basis for organizing motor activity, and for autistic children they become an object of independent interest, a source of autostimulation. It is characteristic that even in autostimulation, such a child does not enter into free, flexible relations with the world, does not actively master it, does not experiment, does not seek novelty, but strives to constantly repeat, reproduce the same impression that once sunk into his soul.

Speech development autistic child reflects a similar trend. With a general violation of the development of purposeful communicative speech, it is possible to be carried away by individual speech forms, constantly playing with sounds, syllables and words, rhyming, singing, mangling words, reciting poems, etc.

A child often cannot address another person at all, even just call his mother, ask her for something, express his needs, but, on the contrary, is able to absently repeat: “moon, moon, look out from behind the clouds”, or: “ how much is a beam”, to clearly pronounce interesting-sounding words: “ochre”, “super-imperialism”, etc. Using only a meager set of speech stamps for business, he can simultaneously show acute sensitivity to speech forms, words as such, fall asleep and wake up with dictionary in hand.

For autistic children, there is usually an addiction to rhymes, poems, reading them by heart "kilometers". An ear for music and a good sense of speech form, attention to high poetry - this is what amazes everyone who comes close to them in life.

Thus, what is normally the basis for the organization of speech interaction becomes an object of special attention, a source of autostimulation - and again we do not see active creativity, free play with speech forms. Just like motor stereotypes, speech stereotypes (monotonous actions) also develop, allowing you to reproduce the same impressions necessary for the child over and over again.

AT development of thinking such children experience enormous difficulties in voluntary learning, in the purposeful resolution of real-life problems. Experts point out the difficulties in symbolization, the transfer of skills from one situation to another, linking them with the difficulties of generalization and with the limited understanding of the subtext of what is happening, the one-dimensional nature, and the literalness of its interpretations. It is difficult for such a child to understand the development of the situation in time, to dissolve causes and effects in the sequence of events. This is very clearly manifested when retelling educational material, performing tasks related to plot pictures. Researchers note problems with understanding the logic of another person, taking into account his ideas, intentions.

It seems to us that in the case of childhood autism one should not talk about the absence of individual abilities, for example, the ability to generalize, to understand cause-and-effect relationships, or to plan. Within the framework of a stereotypical situation, many autistic children can generalize, use game symbols, and build a program of action. However, they are not able to actively process information, actively use their abilities in order to adapt to the world that is changing every second, the inconstancy of the intentions of another person.

For an autistic child, the separation of the symbol from the usual game is painful: this destroys the constancy he needs in the world around him. The need for constant flexible adjustment of his own program of action is also painful for him. The very assumption of the existence of a subtext that undermines the stable meaning of the situation causes fear in him. It is unacceptable for him that the partner has his own logic, which constantly jeopardizes the prospect of interaction outlined by him.

At the same time, in a situation of complete control over what is happening, such children can develop a stereotyped game of separate mental operations - unfolding the same schemes, reproducing some kind of counting actions, chess compositions, etc. These intellectual games are quite sophisticated, but they also do not represent active interaction with the environment, a creative solution of real problems, and only constantly reproduce the impression of an easily performed mental action, pleasant for the child.

When faced with a real problem, the solution of which he does not know in advance, such a child most often turns out to be insolvent. So, a child who revels in playing chess problems from a textbook, playing classical chess compositions, is baffled by the moves of the weakest, but real partner, acting according to his own, not known in advance, logic.

And, finally, we must consider the most striking manifestations of the syndrome in the form of the child's direct reactions to his own maladaptation. We are talking about the so-called behavioral problems: violation of self-preservation, negativism, destructive behavior, fears, aggression, self-aggression. They increase with an inadequate approach to the child (as well as autostimulation, which fences him off from real events) increases, and, conversely, decrease with the choice of forms of interaction available to him.

In a tangle of behavioral problems, it is difficult to single out the most significant one. Let's start, therefore, with the most obvious - with the active negativism, which is understood as the refusal of the child to do something with adults, the departure from the situation of learning, arbitrary organization. Manifestations of negativism may be accompanied by increased autostimulation, physical resistance, screaming, aggression, self-aggression. Negativism is developed and consolidated as a result of a misunderstanding of the child's difficulties, an incorrectly chosen level of interaction with him. Such mistakes in the absence of special experience are almost inevitable: relatives are guided by his highest achievements, the abilities that he demonstrates in line with autostimulation - in the area in which he is dexterous and quick-witted. The child cannot arbitrarily repeat his achievements, but it is almost impossible for relatives to understand and accept this. Exaggerated demands give rise to a fear of interaction in him, destroy existing forms of communication.

It is just as difficult to understand and accept the need for a child to observe in detail the stereotype of life he has mastered. Why, after all, is it impossible to rearrange the furniture, go to the house by a different, more comfortable road, listen to a new record? why doesn't he stop shaking his hands? how much can you talk about the same thing, ask the same questions? why any novelty meets with hostility? Why is it impossible for an adult to speak on some topics, to pronounce certain words? why is it strictly forbidden for mom to leave the house, be distracted by a conversation with a neighbor, sometimes even close the door behind her? - these are typical questions that constantly arise from his loved ones.

Paradoxically, it is precisely the resolute struggle against these absurdities, this slavery into which relatives fall, that is capable of making an adult a toy in the stereotypical autostimulation of such a child. After a while, an adult may have the feeling that he is being teased on purpose, provoked into outbursts of indignation. The child seems to like to do everything out of spite, he seems to consciously evoke angry reactions and polishes the ways of provoking them. There is a painful vicious circle, and breaking out of this trap can be very difficult.

A huge problem is fears child. They may be incomprehensible to others, as they are directly related to the special sensory vulnerability of such children. When they are afraid, they often do not know how to explain what exactly frightens them, but later, when establishing emotional contact and developing ways of communication, the child can tell, for example, that at the age of four, his screams of horror and the inability to enter his own room were connected with an unbearably harsh beam of light falling from the window onto the baseboard. He can be frightened by objects that make sharp sounds: rumbling pipes in the bathroom, household electrical appliances; there may be special fears associated with tactile hypersensitivity, such as intolerance to the sensation of a hole in tights or the insecurity of bare legs sticking out from under the covers.

Often fears arise from the child's tendency to overreact to situations in which there are signs of a real threat, instinctively recognizable by every person. This is how, for example, the fear of washing arises and consolidates: an adult washes the child’s face for a long time and thoroughly, simultaneously capturing his mouth and nose, which makes it difficult to breathe. Of the same origin is the fear of dressing: the head gets stuck in the collar of the sweater, which gives rise to an acute feeling of discomfort. In summer, such a child is frightened by butterflies, flies and birds because of their sharp oncoming movement; the elevator gives him a sense of danger due to the tightness in a small enclosed space. And the fear of novelty, violations of the established stereotype of life, unexpected development of the situation, one's own helplessness in unusual conditions is total.

When such a child is ill, he can become aggressive towards people, things, and even himself. Most of his aggression is not directed at anything in particular. He simply brushes aside in horror the “attack” on him by the outside world, from interference in his life, from attempts to break his stereotypes. In specialized literature, this is described using the term "generalized aggression" - that is, aggression, as it were, against the whole world.

However, the unaddressed nature does not reduce its intensity - these can be explosions of despair of extreme destructive power, crushing everything around.

However, the extreme manifestation of despair and hopelessness is self-aggression, which often poses a real physical danger to the child, as it can cause him to self-harm. We have already said that autostimulation is a powerful means of protection, shielding from traumatic impressions. The necessary impressions are achieved most often by irritation of one's own body: they drown out the unpleasant impressions coming from the outside world. In a threatening situation, the intensity of autostimulation increases, it approaches the pain threshold and can go through it.

How and why this happens, we can understand from our own experience. To drown out despair, we ourselves are sometimes ready to beat our heads against the wall - experiencing unbearable mental pain, we strive for physical pain, just not to think, not to feel, not to understand. However, for us this is an extreme experience, and an autistic child can experience such moments every day - swaying, he begins to beat his head against something; pressing on the eye, does it so hard that it risks damaging it; sensing danger, begins to beat, scratch, bite himself.

I must say that, unlike the behavioral characteristics of other children, here problems can manifest themselves for years in the same, unchanged form. On the one hand, this makes it possible to predict the development of events and avoid a possible breakdown in the child's behavior, on the other hand, it gives a special painful shade to the experiences of loved ones: they cannot break out of the vicious circle of the same problems, are included in a sequence of repeated events, constantly overcome all the same difficulties.

So, we see that an autistic child goes through a complex path of distorted development. However, in the overall picture, one must learn to see not only its problems, but also opportunities, potential achievements. They may appear before us in a pathological form, but, nevertheless, we must recognize them and use them in corrective work. On the other hand, it is necessary to recognize the protective attitudes and habits of the child that oppose our efforts and stand in the way of his possible development.

Currently, there are a huge number of diseases that are inherited. But it also happens that it is not the disease itself that is transmitted, but the predisposition to it. Let's talk about autism.

Concept of autism

Autism is a special mental disorder that most likely occurs due to disorders in the brain and is expressed in an acute deficit of attention and communication. An autistic child is socially poorly adapted, practically does not make contact.

This disease is associated with disorders in the genes. In some cases, this condition is associated with a single gene or In any case, the child is born with an already existing pathology in mental development.

Reasons for the development of autism

If we consider the genetic aspects of this disease, they are so complex that sometimes it is not at all clear whether it is caused by the interaction of several genes or is it a mutation in one gene.

Still, genetic scientists identify some provoking factors that can lead to the fact that an autistic child is born:

1. Father's old age.
2. The country in which the baby was born.
3. Low birth weight.
4. Lack of oxygen during childbirth.
5. Prematurity.
6. Some parents believe that vaccinations can affect the development of the disease, but this fact has not been proven. Perhaps just a coincidence of the timing of vaccination and the manifestation of the disease.
7. It is believed that boys are more likely to suffer from this disease.
8. The influence of substances that cause congenital pathologies that are often associated with autism.
9. Aggravating effects can have: solvents, heavy metals, phenols, pesticides.
10. Infectious diseases transferred during pregnancy can also provoke the development of autism.
11. Smoking, the use of drugs, alcohol, both during pregnancy and before it, which leads to damage to the sex gametes.

Children with autism are born for a variety of reasons. And, as you can see, there are a lot of them. Predicting the birth of a baby with such a deviation in mental development is almost impossible. Moreover, there is a possibility that the predisposition to this disease may not be realized. Only how to guarantee this with 100% certainty, no one knows.

Forms of manifestation of autism

Despite the fact that most children with this diagnosis have much in common, autism can manifest itself in different ways. These children interact with the outside world in various ways. Depending on this, the following forms of autism are distinguished:

Most doctors believe that the most severe forms of autism are rare enough, most often we are dealing with autistic manifestations. If you deal with such children and devote enough time to classes with them, then the development of an autistic child will be as close as possible to their peers.

Manifestations of the disease

Signs of the disease appear when changes begin in areas of the brain. When and how this happens is still not clear, but most parents notice, if they have autistic children, signs already in early childhood. If urgent measures are taken when they appear, then it is quite possible to instill in the baby the skills of communication and self-help.

At present, methods of complete cure for this disease have not yet been found. A small part of children enter adulthood on their own, although some of them even achieve some success.

Even doctors are divided into two categories: some believe that it is necessary to continue the search for adequate and effective treatment, while the latter are convinced that autism is much broader and more than a simple disease.

Surveys of parents have shown that these children often have:

These qualities were most often shown by older children with autism. Signs that are still common in these children are certain forms of repetitive behavior, which doctors divide into several categories:

• Stereotype. Manifested in the rocking of the torso, rotation of the head, constant swaying of the whole body.
• Strong need for sameness. Such children usually begin to protest even when the parents decide to rearrange the furniture in their room.
• compulsive behavior. An example is nesting objects and items in a certain way.
• Autoaggression. Such manifestations are self-directed and can lead to various injuries.
• ritual behavior. For such children, all activities are like a ritual, constant and everyday.
• Limited behavior. for example, it is directed only at one book or one toy, while it does not perceive others.

Another manifestation of autism is the avoidance of eye contact, they never look into the eyes of the interlocutor.

Autism Symptoms

This disorder affects the nervous system, therefore, it is manifested, first of all, by developmental deviations. They are usually noticeable at an early age. Physiologically, autism may not manifest itself in any way, outwardly such children look quite normal, have the same physique as their peers, but upon careful study of them, deviations in mental development and behavior can be seen.

The main symptoms include:

• Lack of learning, although the intellect may be quite normal.
• Seizures that most often begin to appear in adolescence.
• Inability to concentrate your attention.
• Hyperactivity, which can manifest itself when a parent or caregiver tries to give a certain task.
• Anger, especially in cases where an autistic child cannot articulate what he wants, or outsiders interfere with his ritual actions and disrupt his usual routine.
• In rare cases, Savant syndrome, when a child has some phenomenal abilities, for example, an excellent memory, musical talent, the ability to draw, and others. There are very few such children.

Portrait of an autistic child

If parents carefully observe their baby, they will immediately notice deviations in his development. They may not be able to explain what is bothering them, but that their child is different from other children, they will say with great accuracy.

Autistic children differ significantly from normal and healthy children. The photos show this clearly. Already in the recovery syndrome is disturbed, they react poorly to any stimuli, for example, to the sound of a rattle.

Even the most dear person - mother, such children begin to recognize much later than their peers. Even when they recognize, they never stretch their hands, do not smile, and do not react in any way to all her attempts to communicate with them.

Such children can lie for hours and look at a toy or a picture on the wall, or they may suddenly be frightened of their own hands. If you look at how autistic children behave, you can notice their frequent rocking in a stroller or crib, monotonous hand movements.

As they grow older, such children do not look more alive; on the contrary, they sharply differ from their peers in their detachment, indifference to everything that happens around them. Most often, when communicating, they do not look into the eyes, and if they look at a person, they look at clothes or facial features.

They do not know how to play collective games and prefer loneliness. There may be interest for a long time in one toy or activity.

A characteristic of an autistic child may look like this:

1. Closed.
2. Rejected.
3. Uncommunicative.
4. Suspended.
5. Indifferent.
6. Not able to make contact with others.
7. Constantly performing stereotyped mechanical movements.
8. Poor vocabulary. In speech, the pronoun "I" is never used. They always talk about themselves in the second or third person.

In the children's team, autistic children are very different from ordinary children, the photo only confirms this.

The world through the eyes of an autist

If children with this disease have the skills of speech and construction of sentences, then they say that the world for them is a continuous chaos of people and events, which is completely incomprehensible to them. This is due not only to mental disorders, but also to perception.

Those irritants of the outside world that are quite familiar to us, the autistic child perceives negatively. Since it is difficult for them to perceive the world around them, to navigate in the environment, this causes them increased anxiety.

When should parents be concerned?

By nature, all children are different, even quite healthy children are distinguished by their sociability, pace of development, and the ability to perceive new information. But there are some points that should alert you:

If you notice at least some of the signs listed above in your child, then you should show it to the doctor. The psychologist will give the right recommendations on communication and activities with the baby. It will help determine how severe the symptoms of autism are.

Autism treatment

It will not be possible to almost completely get rid of the symptoms of the disease, but if parents and psychologists make every effort, it is quite possible that autistic children will acquire communication and self-help skills. Treatment should be timely and comprehensive.

Its main goal should be:

• Reduce stress in the family.
• Increase functional independence.
• Improve the quality of life.

Any therapy is selected for each child individually. Methods that work great with one child may not work at all with another. After the use of psychosocial assistance techniques, improvements are observed, which suggests that any treatment is better than none.

There are special programs that help the baby learn communication skills, self-help, gain work skills, and reduce the symptoms of the disease. The following methods can be used in treatment:

In addition to such programs, drug treatment is also usually used. Prescribe drugs that reduce anxiety, such as antidepressants, psychotropics, and others. You can not use such medicines without a doctor's prescription.

The diet of the child should also undergo changes, it is necessary to exclude products that stimulate the nervous system. The body must receive a sufficient amount of vitamins and minerals.

Cheat Sheet for Parents of Autistics

When communicating, parents must take into account the characteristics of children with autism. Here are some quick tips to help you connect with your child:

1. You must love your baby for who he is.
2. Always consider the best interests of the child.
3. Strictly follow the rhythm of life.
4. Try to develop and observe certain rituals that will be repeated every day.
5. Visit the group or class where your child is studying more often.
6. Talk to the baby, even if he does not answer you.
7. Try to create a comfortable environment for games and learning.
8. Always patiently explain to the baby the stages of activity, preferably reinforcing this with pictures.
9. Don't overwork yourself.

If your child has been diagnosed with autism, then do not despair. The main thing is to love him and accept him the way he is, as well as constantly engage in, visit a psychologist. Who knows, maybe you have a future genius growing up.