Autism by Chirstina

Autism- Developmental disability that significantly affects verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction generally evident before age three, and that adversely affects a child's educational performance.

Characteristics of Children with Autism:

• One of the indicators of a fundamental development disability in autistic children has been a lack of a theory of mind, the ability of human beings to understand the thinking and feelings of others. A theory of mind is necessary for understanding, predicting, and shaping the behavior of others.
  
• One of the characteristics shared by many persons with autism is a hypersensitivity noise in the environment. It almost seems as if they have lost the ability to modulate sounds, as these sounds come in with great impact.
• Children on the autism spectrum also have difficulty with a range of motor skills such as gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and motor planning.

Other characteristics that are almost always present in children with autism:

• Failure to develop social relationships
• Language retardation with impaired comprehension
  
• Ritualistic or compulsive behaviors
  

How Children with Autism Differ:

Children with autism often have trouble with pretend play, imitating adult behaviors, or pointing to objects on command. These are typical behaviors that children do as they are growing up they wan tot be just like their parents doing everything that they do. Also often times when children are young parents ask whats this whats that and children point. Playing and pretending that different things are real is an important part of children growing up.
Children who have autism often differ from typical growth and development patterns because they often lack proper communication. They have a hard time with speech and for that mater have to resort to building communication skills in different ways.
There are many different levels of severity when it comes to autism so the amount a child will differ will depend on this.

Assistive Technology:



Children with autism often have difficulty confronting unorganized environments and become anxious in an unpredictable classroom, one adaptive strategy has been what is called structured teaching. This means presenting the child with autism what an individual daily schedule that describes what is going to happen at each time in the school day.



The importance of communication to the child with autism is universally agreed on. When the child does develop speech and receptive language in the usual fashion, different devices are tried to increase the child's communication skills and example of one is above. One is demonstrated above, Picture Exchange Communication System.

American Sign Language may also be introduced in order to increase communication skills.



A computer mouse or touch screen can help to increase hand eye coordination for students with autism.

Organizations:
There are many different organization that are statewide and community centered that aid in children with autism. Some of these organizations word directly with the parents and others work directly with the children.This hyperlink provides a listing of different organizations that deal with autism disorder as well as links directly to information that deals with the specific organization.

TEACCH-
Is a statewide program in North Carolina with six regional centers, Intensive work is done with parents to help them become teachers of their own children with autism.



Kirk S. , Gallagher J.J. , Coleman M.R. , & Anastasiow N. (2009). Educating Exceptional Children (12th ed. , pp.250-284). Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.