Early Signs of Autism
September 29, 2008
Identifying the early signs of autism is an important part of limiting the effects of autism. When it comes to children, there are certain areas of development, as they get older. If you’re unable to offer treatment for a problem before that area starts developing, you have a much more difficult time fixing these developments. This disorder will limit a person’s social abilities and communication. These are the most important areas to develop in any child because you can’t teach unless you can properly communicate with a person. Without identifying this problem, you may not be able to correct this problem. I’m going to show you the early signs of autism and how you can easily identify them in your child.
Do They Respond to Their Name?
Infants have an amazing ability to respond in someway to their name. They also respond to common voices that they hear. They’ll end up looking at you and give a smile. When you have a child with autism you get the complete opposite effect. They will rarely ever respond to you saying their name. Loud noises and other stimulus that would get the attention of all the other children in the room would be completely ignored by a child exhibiting early signs of autism.
Do They Mimic Behavior?
Infants are extremely good at mimicking the behavior they have around them. If you smile at them, they’ll more than likely smile back. If you play peek-a-boo, they’ll have the typical excitement of seeing your face appear. When it comes to an autistic child, they’re less likely to behave this way. The smiles you end up giving don’t seem to get reciprocated. You play peek-a-boo and they don’t seem to be interested.
Do They “Pretend” Play?
Younger children really have one objective, to play. That’s what they do. They want to pretend to be mother or father. You may take them to a beach and they put their plastic bucket on their head. These are all the signs of a regular child using their imagination and it also fits in with the previous behavior of mimicking what they see around them.
Doctors typically don’t look for the early signs of autism until they’re around 3-4 years old. The reason is that it could be a slow development in one area that will balance out in time. As a parent, it is much better to identify this now and try to work with it, instead of ignoring it and hoping for the best.
If you need assistance with the latest information for diagnosing autism check out the highly researched resources at Autism Symptoms.
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