|
Children with autism don't have to disappear into the bewildering and terrifying caverns of the disorder. Early intervention techniques may help bring them home. In this series, meet a little boy named Christopher and his mother, fighting autism together. Learn what early intervention is, how it works and what it may mean for millions of children with autism.
By Melissa Tennen, HealthAtoZ writer
Blue eyes. That's the first thing you notice about two-year-old Christopher Cronin. These eyes regard you and then sweep away.
It is remarkable that Christopher looks at you at all. He is not your average two-year-old. He does not play like a two-year-old, he does not talk like a two-year-old, he doesn't act like other two-year olds.
Christopher is severely autistic. When he was about a year-and-a-half, his parents watched him freefall into a frightening world of autism. He stopped babbling. He did not ask for things. He did not respond to his name. He did not smile. He was not Victoria Cronin's same little boy anymore.
"If a bomb blew up across the street, he wouldn't have noticed," Victoria says. "He would be completely disconnected."
Now Christopher asks for rides in a wagon, sits quietly for a few moments to watch his favorite movie ("Toy Story"), and gently hugs his mother. Through special, scientifically based techniques, Christopher is emerging from some of his autism. Symptoms of the condition, as well as more autistic behaviors are being held off while he builds his life skills.
But these milestones did not come easily. Early intervention education for children under three is relentless work disguised as play.
"If you wait until they are three years old, then it might be too late," says David Holmes, Ed.D., chairman and CEO of Lifespan Services, LLC, a full service consulting company established to help families and individuals with autism and related disabilities in Princeton, New Jersey. He is also former chairman of the Autism Society of American, Panel of Professional Advisor. "Their brains are developing inappropriate neurological pathways, which will be hardwired in the child if not 'shut down' by appropriate environmental stimulation."
The first three years of life are when a baby's brain grows the fastest. The brain is not fully developed at birth. A newborn's brain is about 25 percent of its adult weight. By age three, the brain has created billions of cells and hundreds of trillions of connections - called synapses - between these cells, forming a complex control center for sight, hearing, movement, tasting, touching, thinking and feeling.
Autism is a complex developmental disability that usually appears in the first three years of life. It is a neurological disorder affecting the brain, affecting normal development in social interaction and communication skills. This is why early intervention with autism is important. Research, as cited by the National Institutes for Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, shows that early diagnosis and interventions are more likely to result in "major positive effects on later skills and symptoms." This organization says the sooner a child begins to get help, the more opportunity there is for learning that gives children the best start possible and the best chance of developing their full potential."
Children and adults with autism usually have trouble with verbal and nonverbal communication and play activities. A game like peekaboo, for instance, does not interest a child with autism because it involves too much interaction with other people.
However, they excel at tasks that don't require communication, like systematizing numbers.
Autism does not have a cure but early intervention, like other techniques to draw autistics out, can reduce the severity of the autism.
Building the Basics
In two-year-old Christopher's education, he learns how to talk, interact, play, learn, ask for things and care for his needs. These are basics that a normally developing child learns by imitating adults and other children, things anyone would take for granted. When normal two-year-olds see another child going down a slide, they want to do the same thing. You wouldn't normally teach a child how to talk, how to say what he or she needs, and even how to put on a coat. For a child with autism, this development does not happen the way it does for other children.
"You have to teach them the social and imitative skills that other kids learn spontaneously," says Patricia Krantz, Ph.D., adjunct professor at the learning processes doctoral program at Queens College of the City University of New York, and executive director of the Princeton Child Development Institute where Christopher attends school. "The assumption is that these children, for whatever reason, don't learn social interactions. The characteristics of these children are that they don't learn to imitate. They don't get the intrinsic rewards from social interaction."
They also cannot ask for social responses. For instance, a normally developing two-year-old might be in the grocery store with a parent and points to a box of diapers with a picture of a baby. The child articulates the word and looks to the parent to confirm it, Krantz says. This is pro-social interaction.
Some scientists believe children with autism cannot do perform pro-social interaction because the brain cannot plan for motor activities such as asking for toy truck, says Carole Samango-Sprouse, Ed.D., a neurodevelopmentalist director of the Neurodevelopment Diagnostic Center for Young Children, and an associate clinical professor in the department of pediatrics at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Christopher is severely language-delayed. Before beginning early intervention therapy six months earlier, he could not process what was said to him and could not tell his mother what was wrong or what he needed. Often children with autism tend to cry and scream because they cannot vocalize or gesture as normally developing children can at two years old. Christopher, however, did not have tantrums. "He would just completely disconnect," his mother, Victoria, says.
Now Christopher chooses from a collection of photos of playthings, such as a wagon or swing. When he wants to go for a ride in the wagon, he chooses the correct card, slides it through a special machine that says, "Wagon." He tries to say the word but only manages a syllable. And then, as a reward, he gets a ride in the wagon.
His mother revels in even the tiniest of milestones: Christopher now acts like someone who knows his own name.
"He would just dart ahead. I would call to him, and he wouldn't respond," she says. "I called his name the other day and he stopped."
|
Related Articles
|
|
External Sources
|
This article was reviewed and updated June 2007.
Return to the previous page
|
