Defining Autism 4

A significant number of parents who come to us and whose children are diagnosed with autism, often have a substantial amount of information that they would like to share with us about the early stages of development of the child and the movement challenges that they faced when the child was growing up. We would like to share information relating to these movement challenges, and that our witnessed by parents in the early stages of development, of their children who were later found to be on the autism spectrum disorder.

The whole concept of movement challenges have such has been researched very sporadically, and the level of information flowing out of commercial websites, most of the schools in India, as well as the private practitioners is not complete in its essence.

What we had the Dyslexia Association of India™ have noticed over a period of time is that given the disproportionately ratio of the number of children to the number of schools available - where the number of children far outnumber, the school is available, dissemination of information is a one-way street with parents being on the receiving end, and with a lack of a common scientific vocabulary in which to code their observations, most schools tend to adopt it difficult posture while sharing information with caregivers.

We would like parents and caregivers will read this article to empower themselves with information because the Dyslexia Association of India™ has screened and tested enough children with autism, to put it in our equivocal and personal view that movement problems are present in children and that they deserve correct and appropriate attention.

We believe that it deserves correct and appropriate attention because, when we focus on recognizing movement problems and autism, we are looking at a issue with a 20 x 20 vision, but a vision that is in hindsight. What this means is that the act has already been done and that the child we are talking about has already very successfully either crossed the room, or has claimed that ladder, or walked across the meaning in the playground - so there is nothing immediately that is recognisable as a failed attempt to perform any action.

New when we screened each child very thoroughly at our centre at the DAI™ that components or movements which are poorly integrated or disconnected come to the fore.

Also most caregivers and parents in India take a first line approach off a medical intervention, or a psychiatric intervention, which is more of a pharmacologically based intervention, which in our personal opinion, and a opinion which we would not like to use to challenge any established medical norm - is not a optimum, or a very productive form of approach to helping your child. The reason we have this opinion is that when we look at it from a medical point of view, we are looking for what is missing and we are trying to plug the gap with either medications, or therapy which is not proven or internationally validated.

At the Dyslexia Association of India™ we look for what is remaining, and look for the subcomponents of movement where we can find the complementarity between what's missing and what remains in the child.

It is important for the parents of those children who are on the autism spectrum, to know that a major key to the understanding of the movement discrepancies that their child would be displaying, would be understanding the concept of allied reflexes. When we screen and examine a child at our centre, we checked this issue very thoroughly because we are off the firm opinion that these reflexes work together to achieve an end, for example when the child we are testing goes through the act of swinging off his arms while walking, the issue to understand is that is the amplitude of the gait of the child increasing or as a decreasing! Similarly we look at this concept when we observed the mouth and eyes of the child, and subject the child to an aversive stimulus, because we believe that in evolutionary terms this form office spread has a defensive or a protective value.

Screening for these reflexes, allows us to understand what is triggering movements for your child, so that we can appreciate the root cause of the movement disturbances that are being observed, and what you may notice as his clumsiness or bumping into things as well as, not being able to ride in my cycle for example, all being scared of heights. So once we know how these movement discrepancies are playing out with the child, we have a invaluable source of information about how the child is going about accomplishing actions which he is not able to initiate directly, because there is a serious lack of ability relating to movement as well as social disorders when we talk about children with autism of those were on the spectrum of autism.

Movement differences and discrepancies in those children for from the beginning short variances are important enough for parents to take notice because if later on your child is diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum disorder then its potential application in areas such as stopping, starting and transitioning activities, as well as in social interactions, will effect the outcome of how your child grows up and how he integrates into society as a contributing member of a productive of community.

When the doctors at the Dyslexia Association of India™ test and screen your child, one of the main things that we a ascertain with a significant degree of accuracy is the discontinuous mode of shifting of weight, that children with autism tend to rely on and which can be very easily missed even by the best trained medical eye. It is worthwhile for parents to understand that when they look at their child they have two orbs of what is making the movement happen as against what is being moved by the child. It could be that the entire leg is moving, but that the child is unable to control the action of either the upper leg or the lower leg. Over a period of time, the DAI™ has been able to narrow down, the similarities in the leg movements and bought with beginning walkers and children who are normal India developmental milestones as against those children who later on have found to have autism. In fact the infantile mode of weight shifting, that most children with autism tend to retain, along with the superimposition of movements in various tasks that we give while continuing to walk is a form of integration which seems to be missing in these children. Have you ever noticed that your child who has been diagnosed with autism, dense to hold up his arms while walking? Have you as a mother or a father ever wondered, about the motor development of the child that may have become arrested at a very early stage, and is being ignored because we may be thinking that it is normally so or ‘like this only’ with children on the growth curve, but actually as we have seen at the Dyslexia Association of India™ find it may even be suggestive of uneven lateral development of the child's body, with both sides exhibiting different developmental levels.

In fact most of the children that have been examined by us, we have found that from records when the child was the infant and was turning over from the stomach to the back, and the child was still in the undiagnosed state, significant movement problems were clearly observable which are normally not displayed by other children. Most parents at that stage do not understand, that movement differences can have a huge impact on the cognitive development of their baby, and that it can affect academic performance at a later stage, and if it is a neurodevelopmental issue like autism, it is better if these movement differences are taken note of and acted upon immediately.

The screening that is used at the DAI™ allows us to recognise a child who will later be labeled with autism or a pervasive developmental disorder on the basis of movement problems alone, at one year of age.

Parents who observe movements which are different in their own child from what their gut says should be appropriate, should work on the bases of their ‘gut’ feeling or the sixth sense that the mother has, and have the child assessed are screened because the earlier we are able to identify a development issue the higher the possibility that we will be able to help the child. Parents need to ask themselves questions like, what is happening in the development of my child, which precedes the onset of the usual developmental indicators around the time, that speech and language develop, as does the ability of social interaction. Parents need to ask themselves that, what complex and cumulative role can movement disorders that may seem normal, but are actually different, can do to the cognitive, linguistic, and social development of their child who is going off the track?

Subsequently if parents can ask these questions of themselves, the second most important issue would be to ask themselves and each other how is it that we can best intervene and help our child from developing problems which would period of time are going to become more and more difficult to remediate.

The approach of the Dyslexia Association of India™ to children who come to us as well as to children who have, in our personal opinion - multisystem developmental disorders is to be so what was shown on the platform that these children who were later diagnosed to have autism, can and do fail to master the early steps of the normal developmental sequence. How will we also do believe that, if “caught” on time, we can rebuild the sequence if the parents can be made to understand how to concentrate on intensive relationship-building and appropriate play activities.

We would also like to share with the parents that, an infant's development proceeds by easily recognizable stages. Right from the beginning when they learn to regulate their sensory system, too when they begin to show an interest in the world around them, leading on to a stage when attachment/relationships are beginning to form, which involved synchronous motor movements followed by the development of intentional two- way communication ability, each and every timeline has a specific movement ability associated with it, which translates into the emergence of a complex sense of the self of the child. Any failure in this process, by the child to organize complex movement synchronicity, would lead to the emergence of symptoms where at a later stage if the child is diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum disorder, it would be relatively difficult to reverse the processes.

For example, if the child rather than signaling to his mother that he or she wants to have a cookie or a biscuit that is out of the reach of the child, becomes withdrawn or becomes perseverative, or throws a tantrum, well you as a mother or a father are searching desperately for the unconveyed reason why your child is throwing a tantrum or sitting on the floor and crying, while you are doing everything to placate the child, is a worrying issue. The reason it is a worrying issue is that, it is a disturbance of a movement disorder, which in our personal opinion, has not developed and the synchronous patterns of movement, which should be supporting this early communicative engagement, have not developed – and /or are leading to the meaningful flow of movement being absent.

We are also of the personal and equivocal opinion that sensory modulation and very often-auditory processing problems begin to show themselves very early on along with very fine movement disturbances in those children who are later diagnosed to have autism, and that if your child who is showing these movement differences, is not given help at the right time to find manageable and rewarding interactions, your child is going to begin to ‘shutdown’, and the confusing environmental input as well as a form of self-imposed sensory deprivation will begin to set in.

Therefore when parents come to us and say that, their child is in a world of her own, it is not a very good thing because the parent has to appreciate that, the environmental input may be so confusing for the child that she has reached the stage of self-imposed shutdown because she is not able to understand the world around her. So a child may just sit down and be in the world of her own because, and once again this is a personal opinion, and that the lack of perfect movement is leading to minor disturbances in the entire sensory system, which may be leading to a disorder of building of productive relationships and we must not forget that movement is important in a relationship, whether it is a movement that involves the child walking from one part of the room to the parent, or a movement involving a facial expression that communicates a message to the father or the mother about the state of mind of the child.

Movement disorders in children who are diagnosed to have autism at a later stage, have varied asynchronies and asymmetries, and these children are not able to create shared spatial and temporal scaffolding for them to overcome the differences in movement asynchronies.

The intervention that we provide at the Dyslexia Association of India™, allows us to virtually creative relationship between the child with autism and our diagnosticians where we compensate for the child's deficiencies and expand the child's world. Our interventions follow our patented T.R.A.I.N™ programme where we are able to dryly child into increasingly more complex interactions. Our work with children who have autism as well as movement disturbances and disorders has given us evidence that the assumption that clusters of symptoms have permanence over time, may actually not be accurate and that those diagnosticians who are in a profit based or revenue bases private practice or who are not qualified enough may actually be engaging in a confusing reification of developmental stages of the child which would actually, either give no benefit or cause changes in the child which are imperfect for the future development of the child.

Though variety of obvious and not so obvious movement challenges that children with autism encounter right from the beginning of infancy, covers issues, which are far more than obvious examples of physical clumsiness or unusual gait.

Movement disturbances as well as differences that we see in children with autism, may involve difficulty starting, stopping, executing, continuing, combining and switching actions, and these may eventually cause an impediment in the way these children exhibit basic postures, actions, speech, thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and memories.

If appropriate as well as in-depth test along with screening even if an iota of suspicion is therein the mind of the parents is crucial because if we delay helping our children, when the children begin to exhibit symptoms of movement disturbances and differences we will indulging what we call a knee-jerk behaviour, where the parents would immediately seek pharmacologically based extinction regimens, whereas what may be required is for the parents to think physiologically.

The Dyslexia Association of India™ is of the firm belief that we have to enter into the child's world to understand what is going on and analyze each and every movement disturbance very carefully, as we believe that the child becomes what we call addicted to people or individuals who are in contact with him, by experiencing the human interactions either as rewarding and fun or a punishment that have to be just borne.

Movement disorders and disturbances in children, who are on the autism spectrum, are a fact of life as well as a reality that has to be carefully understood, appreciated and accepted. Movement disturbances in children do not happen because the child is purposely indulging in those actions, they happen because of a high degree of a lack of sensory issues, and each issue is different for each and every individual child, and this is what the parents must understand when they have their child screened.

We normally advise the caregivers or the parents to use caution before adopting any unproven treatments, which are delivered by so-called specialists and homegrown therapy centers, which offer the promise of immediate results.

The Dyslexia Association of India™ users it’s patented and copyright T.R.A.I.N™ Neuroplasticity program to help children with autism overcome their behavioural as well as sensory difficulties and improve their cognitive abilities over a period of time using a combination of neuro plasticity along with applied behavioural analysis so that these children can lead balanced and fruitful lives, and be productive members of the community whereby they can stand on their own feet and have in place a self advocacy plan for the future.

For further information please contact the Dyslexia Association of India™ on our mobile number 88260 22886 or e-mail us at info@dyslexiaindia.org.in.

(Views and observations expressed in our articles are equivocal and personal based on our observations and experience. Being equivocal and personal they are non contestable and Individuals are under no pressure to confirm to our views, thoughts and observations. The accuracy ratio for screening and remedial processes of the DAI™ is extremely high.)