Understanding autism

Autistic? You can’t believe your child is autistic. Yes, he spends hours lining up his trucks in formations, but so did you when you were 4 years old, right? If you’ve heard of the disorder, you think of autistic children as closed off to others, angry, nonverbal, and in possession of some kind of special talent, like the ability to do lightning-fast calculations in his head. Your child doesn’t fit this mental image. He seems very calm and expressive. Even if your child doesn’t point to objects, look at you the way his sister did at his age, or initiate conversations unless he wants something, you chalk it up to self-sufficiency and shyness, and you consider his fascination with light switches and toilet handles to be signs of a budding engineering talent. So why is your doctor talking this nonsense about Pervasive Developmental Disorders and autism spectrum disorders? And why would you put your child in some kind of training program when he should be out playing with his friends? Well, come to think of it, he doesn’t seem inclined to play with other kids at all. He doesn’t seem to have any friends.
Autism is a set, or “bucket” of behavioral symptoms that fall along a continuum from normal to abnormal with few dividing lines. Because science offers no brain scan or medical test that clearly identifies specific neurological disorders, diagnosis is still controversial and imprecise. Doctors base diagnosis on behavioral symptoms, which are subject to misinterpretation and may change over time. Symptoms can range from mild to severe. The group of developmental disabilities we cover in this chapter is often called the autism spectrum, and the phrase autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may replace the term (Pervasive Developmental Disorders) PDD in the medical lexicon because people who support those with autism consider it more useful. In this chapter, we outline the subtypes of the autism spectrum and other conditions that people confuse with or that frequently occur along with autism. We also explore the benefits of early detection and treatment. Every child with developmental problems, no matter the terminology that accompanies the problems — whether PDD, autistic, or autistic-like — still needs an individualized program designed to address his or her strengths and weaknesses. The same child may receive different diagnoses from different doctors, although — and this is what you need to keep in mind — the educational prescription is likely to be similar.