What Parents Can Do About their Autistic Child Being Bullied at School
Although bullying is a prevalent problem in US school playgrounds and any child can be a victim, autistic children are far more likely to be bullied than their normally developing peers. A recent study revealed that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are bullied 5 times as often as children who aren’t affected by the condition. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2011 by the International Autism Network revealed that 63% of the children with ASD had been bullied at some point in their life.
Many young people who are affected by ASD struggle to recognize social cues and have a high sensitivity to environmental stimuli. This difference in the way they behave and communicate makes autistic children easy targets for bullies.
For parents, raising an autistic child is challenging as it is, and bullying can compound the problems. Bullying can affect your child’s social skills, self-esteem and mental health. Here are the things that parents can do to make school a safer place for their autistic child.
Talking to Your Child with ASD about Bullying
Communicating with your autistic child is perhaps the best way to help them deal with bullying. Generally, there are behavioral and emotional signs that indicate if your child has been bullied at school. If your child seems depressed or doesn’t want to go to school anymore, ask them if something has happened which made them sad. If the child has difficulty with speech, you can ask them to use visual aids such as drawings and pictures to tell you what’s bothering them.
Work with Your Child’s School
If your child has ASD and is being bullied at school, get in touch with the schools as quickly as possible. Bullying is something that all schools take seriously, and teachers and the staff are trained to identify and handle bullying. Schedule a meeting with your child’s teachers and the school’s welfare coordinators and talk to them about how the issue is affecting your child. Although it’s not a pleasant experience for any parent to find out that their child is being bullied, focus on being assertive rather than angry in your meetings with the school staff. Before you conclude these meetings, make sure that there is a plan how you and the school are going to manage and prevent further bullying.
Supporting Your Autistic Child at Home
Because children with ASD often have difficulty with speech and interaction, they might not be able to communicate it to their parents that they are being bullied. In some cases, the child might not even want to talk about what is wrong. If you’re autistic child is being bullied at school, it’s important to provide them lots of love and support. Reassuring them that the situation isn’t their fault and that it will be taken care of prevents them from feeling isolated.
Autism interventions can help both parents and their children to effectively deal with any problems that may arise. Orange County New York for Autism provides tons of resources which can help parents raising a child with autism.
In the 1940s, a strange coincidence occurred. Two physicians who were largely unaware of each other’s research—Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger—both described children who have issues with social interaction and displayed interests and behaviors that fell into a very narrow set. What was even more surprising was that both described such children as ‘autistic.’
What they were describing specifically were the symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome (now referred to as level one autism spectrum disorder). What sets Asperger’s apart from other autism spectrum disorders is that it is generally a lot more high-functioning. This means that people who have it are generally more capable of doing, say, everyday tasks than someone who is low-functioning.
The downside to this is that people who have Asperger’s often don’t get diagnosis till much later in their lives. Most people who are diagnosed with are older children and adults. So what is Asperger’s Syndrome and what do we know about it today?
The Causes and Symptoms
Like a lot of autism spectrum disorders, it’s important to say that we still don’t know enough about all the whys. But scientists do have some theories about what causes Asperger’s. Here are a few of them.
Genetics
It is commonly agreed upon that autism can run in the family. Scientists have conclusively demonstrated, for example, that children who have Asperger’s are much more likely to have a younger sibling who does too.
Asperger’s can also be a comorbid condition of other genetic conditions such as Rett syndrome or Fragile X syndrome.
Mental Health
Connected to comorbid condition, a lot of kids with Asperger’s also show signs of depression and anxiety. It remains to be determined whether they cause the Asperger’s to arise eventually or if they arise because of Asperger’s.
Environmental Triggers
A lot of potential complications during pregnancy can lead to a child having Asperger’s. From contact with chemicals like pesticides to dangerous drugs and viral infections, there are a lot of triggers.
What doesn’t cause Asperger’s is things like vaccines! We mention this because of the dangerous myth that they do.
What are the signs and symptoms of Asperger’s? Let’s find out.
Symptoms
Above-average or normal levels of intelligence but having difficulty when it comes to interacting with people.
Only paying deep attention to very specific topics.
Anxiety and frustration that lead to disruptive behavior.
Not smiling or missing social cues.
Showing emotions in different ways from neurotypicals.
Having said all of this, it’s also important to remember that “if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person.” Generalizing about the entire community is very dangerous and instead, we should focus on the person in front of us.
If you’re someone who thinks they may have Asperger’s Syndrome or if you’re a parent concerned about your child. Reach out to Orange County for Autism Awareness today. They have all the resources to connect you to someone who may be able to provide you with a diagnosis. They also provide all kinds of resources for those looking to learn about autism.
What Kind Of Extracurricular Activities Does Your Child With Autism Need?
Children with autism often feel isolated in social settings, which makes it difficult for them to engage in extra-curricular activities, like other kids their age. However, with a little planning, you can make sure your child participates in engaging activities that stimulate their mind and provide them an opportunity to learn and have fun at the same time.
Here’s a list of some questions you should be asking before you select an activity for your child:
Does it develop Motor Skills?
Motor skills refer to the ability to use muscles. Children with autism struggle with posture co-ordination and motor planning due to developmental delays. Low muscle tone or joint hypermobility can also hinder the development of motor skills. Activities like block building or line drawing can be used to improve fine motor skills in children with ASD.
For gross motor skills, you may try to pretend play or something simple like stepping up and down on a cardboard box. If there are visible signs of improvement, you could also set up a trampoline at your home.
Does it develop Cognitive Skills?
Cognitive development refers to a child’s ability to use logic and solve problems. A 3-year prospective study on development of cognitive skills in autistic children indicates that while autistic children struggle with behavior prediction, the profile of cognitive skills of autistic children can be improved over time.
Simple brain training games and applications can be used for this purpose. If those are unavailable, you can try games that involve questions, such as identification of different colors, shapes or sounds.
Does it develop Social and Emotional Skills?
Recognizing facial expressions and picking up nonverbal cues is difficult for children with autism. Engaging in activities that involve frequent expression of thoughts and acknowledgment of feelings and emotions can help improve emotional and social skills of autistic children.
Watch a movie with your child and point out different actions associated with emotions. For example, if a person is in distress and crying, let your kid know that they are crying because they feel sad.
Does it develop Language and Speech Skills?
Language and speech related problems are fairly common in children with ASD. But with some effort and practice, these skills can be improved.
Let them participate in a musical. Through singing, or being around people who are singing, your child might pick up some words. You could also use assistive devices or visual aids to encourage your child to speak.
Like all children, each kid with ASD has their own personality and taste. Therefore, there’s no definitive way of knowing which activity could be the best one for your child. However, it’s important to select one that they are most comfortable with, so they can learn and enjoy themselves simultaneously.
Raising a child with autism requires immense emotional strength and constant input, but the smile on the face of your child is equally rewarding. If you’re located in Orange County New York, there’s a community of supporters for people with autism, their families and caretakers known as Orange County For Autism. You may reach out to them to know more about local autism programs and services.
There’s a growing body of scientific literature on autism spectrum disorder. For those who don’t know, autism spectrum disorder is a neurological developmental disorder, typically characterized by people showing trouble with social interactions, communication, and repetitive behaviors.
This is a very reductive and simplistic way to understand it, but it’s the baseline you need to know to understand what the autism spectrum is. Estimates say that around 1 percent of the entire world is autistic, that’s around 70 million people! Taking that into consideration, it’s alarming how small the penetration of autism awareness is, and how few quality autism resources there are.
So what do we know about autism and the autism spectrum? We’re going to try to engage here with the research that’s already established, and what researchers are still working to figure out.
What Is It?
For starters, there is no one type of autism. The reason that it’s a spectrum disorder is because there’s a whole gamut of types of autism.
A phrase that’s been popularized among autism awareness circles is “if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” This speaks to the large amount of variance in the autistic experience; very few people are autistic in the same way. For example, one variant of autism is Asperger’s syndrome, while some people have what’s classified as Pervasive Developmental Disorder.
As mentioned above, autism is a neurological developmental disorder that manifests itself in people having divergent development of the parts of their brain that deals with social interaction, communication, and even cognitive function at times. This means that in essence, autistic people are “wired differently” than neurotypicals, and interact with the world differently.
Why It Happens?
Scientists have a pretty grounded understanding of a lot of the reasons why autism happens, while still trying to figure out some others. One of the primary reasons kids are born with autism is because of genetic mutations. It’s pretty well documented at this point that if one child has autism in a family, there is higher chance that another kid in the same family will also have it. This tells us that the autism gene can be transmitted down.
Another established fact is that autistic children have higher chances of developing another genetic chromosomal disorder like Down Syndrome and or tuberous sclerosis. This cements the fact that autism is a function of gene mutation, and that unlike what a historically common myth said, it has nothing to do with how a child was raised.
What is also known is that there is some correlation between taking certain drugs, not limited to valproic acid and thalidomide that can increase the chances of a child being born with autism. Care needs to be taken not to take either recreational drugs or harmful prescription drugs during a pregnancy.
There’s a lot of research being done on the social nature of autism, and other causes, but so far, it is inconclusive.
What Problems Does the Autistic Community Face?
By far the largest problem that the autistic community faces is existing in a world that does not understand how differently-abled people interact, communicate, and express themselves. Furthermore, the way able-bodied people act in public space can also at times activate a lot of triggers that autistic people have.
This is what happens when for example, an autistic person is on a bus that’s extremely noisy, and they have what people may describe as a “meltdown.” This is because the levels of sensory stimuli are too much for that person to handle, and because of the lack of education most people have regarding autistic people, they don’t know what they should or shouldn’t do around them.
There are also large-scale structural problems that the community faces. From unemployment levels that are off the charts, due to companies not being accommodating to the needs of autistic individuals, and firing them for what they see as infractions when autistic people merely exist the way they do. There are also problems with a lot of autistic kids not graduating school, because schools also don’t make the right allowances for them.
How Can We Give Autistic People the Right Care?
There’s a multitude of things we can do to make sure that autistic people have the right care. One of the first is educating ourselves so we don’t perpetuate any harmful stereotypes about autism and the people who have it.
The second is to reach out and make institutions and companies aware that they need to have autism friendly policies so that we can do something about the crisis of autistic unemployment.
Thirdly, autism research requires funding, and donating to the right charities can make a lasting change in the long run for the healthy living of autistic individuals.
At Orange County For Autism, we believe that with the right funding, learning, and empathy, we can make the world a lot better for all autistic individuals. To learn about the right early interventions, and treatment options, visit our site today.
Three Major Types of ASD: Everything You Need to Know
1 in 59 children in the United States suffer from some form of disorder on the autism spectrum, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in April, 2018.
Before the 2013 edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) which is used by psychiatrists worldwide to detect symptoms of various mental disorders, Autism, Asperger’s and Pervasive Development Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified were treated as three completely disorders.
However, with the reclassification—and because the three have such similar symptoms—the three disorders are now considered to fall under the same umbrella term: Autism Spectrum Disorder.
What is ASD?
ASD is defined as “a developmental disorder that affects communication and behavior,” according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Symptoms may include repetitive behaviors, inability to communicate with peers and lack of ability to relate to others and understand body language and gestures. These symptoms usually manifest themselves during the first two years of life, and it is easily detectable.
Children lying anywhere on the Autism spectrum vary in terms of intensity of symptoms, which is why the previously different “types” of autism now are simply treated as varying levels of symptoms.
Nonetheless, there are three major types of autism, which are found in all ethnic, racial and socioeconomic groups. These are Asperger’s syndrome, Autistic Disorder and Pervasive Development Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS).
Asperger’s Syndrome
Children diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome usually lie on the lower side of the autistic spectrum as they typically do not exhibit signs of delay in development of motor or intellectual skills. Most children with Asperger’s do very well in school and can hold steady jobs when they grow up.
However, children with Asperger’s usually find it difficult to relate to other people and are incapable of understanding non-verbal behaviors such as posture, body language and facial expressions.
They also exhibit a propensity towards organization, routine and may have exceptional memory skills. They lack empathy, and find it difficult to understand how their behavior might affect the other person. However, those with Asperger’s actually try to seek out social interaction but are incapable of seeing it through and forming lasting relationships.
Autistic Disorder
The disorder most people think of when they hear the word “Autism”, Autism is characterized by a significant delay in motor and intellectual skills, usually detectable in the first three years of life. It is typically a more severe form of Asperger’s which also manifests itself as a desire for isolation; autistic children make no effort to interact with other humans and may even reject physical touch.
Learn how to detect the signs of autism in children.
Pervasive Development Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified
Simply stated, PDD-NOS lies in the middle of the autism spectrum. Also known as atypical autism, people with PDD-NOS show symptoms of both Asperger’s and Autistic Disorder but don’t fall neatly into either, making it difficult to make a clear diagnosis. For example, children with PDD-NOS may have significant childhood developmental delay, but they may actively seek out social interaction, which means they fall into neither category.
About Orange County, NY for Autism
Orange County, New York for Autism is a community designed to raise awareness about Autism and ease the troubles parents of autistic children go through by providing them with learning workshops, support and make them better equipped to enabling their autistic child.
Whether you’re a parent with an autistic child or just want to help us on our mission, contact us for detailed information regarding autism programs and services offered in Orange County.
