Autism Awareness

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to respond to their names, reduced interest in people and delayed babbling. (Autism Speaks, n.d.). As children get older they may have difficulty playing social games, playing with others and generally won’t imitate the actions of others. All of these things, lead to the development of social skills, without participation in them social awareness is delayed. As children with autism get older and become adults, many times they won’t know how to respond in a social situation, and will come across as awkward. Often, people with autism are self-centered in that they aren’t aware of what is going on around them and what other people are feeling. This can lead to inappropriate behaviors and unresponsiveness to others. People with autism may love being around people, but at the same time they don’t always know what to do with themselves in a social situation.

The third thing that autism typically affects is creativity and imagination. This mainly has to do with playing and repetitive behaviors. Children with autism, don’t play. At least not naturally. Playing is something that they must be taught and a lot of times they only engage in a small range of activities. This could be lining up toys instead of “playing” with them or drawing circles instead of “coloring”. As children reach adulthood sometimes this becomes a preoccupation with having household or other objects in a fixed order or place and getting upset if their “order” is disrupted. Another characteristic is sticking with the same behaviors and becoming obsessed with them. This includes hand-flapping, rocking, biting, jumping, spinning, and repeating sounds and phrases. The behaviors can be an extreme interest, that makes little or no sense to onlookers and can be very unusual in content (e.g. obsession with doors, curtains, fans or toilets) or in amount of knowledge they have (e.g. knowing detailed information about all the presidents of the United States or knowing everything about Barney the dinosaur). Some with autism have musical talents or an advanced ability to count and do math calculations. There a large percentage of children with autism that show “savant” skills, extremely high abilities in specific areas, such as painting, music, business skills or math.

These things are all categories that people with autism generally have problems in. However, each person with autism may or may not have a problem in all three areas and how in depth the problem is will change from person to person. The reason autism awareness is so important is because there is no blanket that covers every part of autism.

Sources

Autism Speaks. "Symptoms." Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks, n.d. Web. 30 Aug. 2016.

NCAI. "About Autism." Autism. National Center for Autism India, n.d. Web. 30 Aug. 2016.

NINDS. "Autism Spectrum Disorder Fact Sheet." N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Aug. 2016.