For children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who commonly show impairments in social interactions, recognizing emotions in others is especially challenging. They also are hindered by a lack of interest in initiating conversation and atypical eye contact.
Autistic children and teenagers experience a range of emotions, but they might need support to recognise, understand and manage their emotions. For example, your autistic child might feel all negative or unpleasant emotions as anger. Or they might not recognise when they're excited.
Children on the autism spectrum often keep crying as long as it seems to work for them. When it doesn't, they eventually quit. If they are upset about something, we want them to learn to handle their feelings in more powerful ways.
Abnormal cry f0 has also been observed in infants with ASD; compared to those of developmentally delayed (DD) and typically developing (TD) children, the atypical cries of children with ASD tend to have a higher f0 and shorter pauses (Esposito, del Carmen Rostagno, Venuti, Haltigan, & Messinger, 2014; Esposito, ...
Autistic children are sometimes oversensitive or undersensitive to sensory information. This means their senses take in either too much or too little information from the environment around them. Not all autistic children have sensory sensitivities, but some might have several.
High-functioning autism (HFA) is part of the autism spectrum disorder (ASD), children with HFA often struggle with reading body language and other non-verbal forms of communication such as facial expressions but have fully developed verbal language and no learning or other disability.
As they explore what's around them and how they fit into their surroundings, they often look to others for guidance. For neurotypical children, this generally involves copying the actions of their parents or caregivers. This may not be the case for an autistic child.
Repetitive behaviour
For example, children might: make repetitive noises like grunts, throat-clearing or squealing. do repetitive movements like body-rocking or hand-flapping.
Some children with autism smile to show they're happy but don't share their enjoyment. Others show little facial expression or have flat affect and rarely smile so you may not know when they're happy.
At both ages, those in the autism and disability groups are more likely than the controls to transition quickly from whimpering to intense crying. This suggests that the children have trouble managing their emotions, the researchers say.
We do know that children with autism don't always naturally generalise skills. They may only follow instructions the person who normally gives them or they may only follow them in the situation where it normally occurs.
Dissanayake's research findings show that autistic children do exhibit a secure attachment towards their caregiver, from which we can infer that “nurturing the secure attachment relationship may represent a protective factor for these children.”
Defining the Traits and Behaviors of Level 1 Autism
Difficulty switching between activities. Problems with executive functioning which hinder independence. Atypical response to others in social situations. Difficulty initiating social interactions and maintaining reciprocity in social interaction.
Listen up: Autistic toddlers are less likely to seek their parent's attention to share a sound than typical toddlers are.
Children with autism spectrum disorder have good vocabularies but unusual ways of expressing themselves. They may talk in a monotone voice and do not recognize the need to control the volume of their voice, speaking loudly in libraries or movie theaters, for example.
If your child does wake up, the sound might be soothing to them and help them to fall back asleep. White noise doesn't work for everyone, but it's definitely worth trying! Unfortunately, it's common for children with autism to have difficulties communicating how they feel and what they need.
Jealousy in children with autism and their siblings may look different. For their siblings, jealousy can appear as anger or deep sadness and retreat from a typically developing sibling. The most common reason for jealousy is undoubtedly the extra attention that the sibling with autism receives.
Kids with Aspergers tend to display better attachment to parents than kids with more severe forms of classical autism. However, you may notice that despite your youngster's bonding with you, he still has difficulty connecting with her peers.
Many children on the autism spectrum use echolalia, which means they repeat others' words or sentences. They might repeat the words of familiar people (parents, teachers), or they might repeat sentences from their favourite video. When children repeat words right after they hear them, it's known as immediate echolalia.
Some developmental health professionals refer to PDD-NOS as “subthreshold autism." In other words, it's the diagnosis they use for someone who has some but not all characteristics of autism or who has relatively mild symptoms.
If you still hear people use some of the older terms, you'll want to know what they mean: Asperger's syndrome. This is on the milder end of the autism spectrum. A person with Asperger's may be very intelligent and able to handle their daily life.