Children on the autism spectrum feel safe when there is a consistent and predictable routine in place. They can become overwhelmed when there is a lack of structure, or routines suddenly change. Inconsistency causes anxiety and frustration, which is often expressed in what adults perceive as challenging behaviour.
Routine Brings Order to an Otherwise Chaotic World
Children with autism often have difficulty making sense of new sounds, behaviors, or events. A routine can create order in their life by helping them learn what to expect, when to expect it, and how to react.
Routines are often important to autistic children and teenagers. They can find change and transitions difficult to cope with. They might like to eat, sleep or leave the house in the same way every time.
But beyond that, repetitive behaviors may offer these individuals a way to calm their anxiety, generate or maintain awareness of their bodies, focus their concentration or deal with overwhelming sensations or emotions. They may also help autistic people communicate their mental or emotional state to others.
Autistic children and teenagers often like routines and rituals and don't like change. This means your autistic child might need help to manage changes to daily routines. Common changes or new situations might include: leaving the house.
Symptoms of High-Functioning Autism
Like all people on the autism spectrum, people who are high functioning have a hard time with social interaction and communication. They don't naturally read social cues and might find it difficult to make friends. They can get so stressed by a social situation that they shut down.
Although each case is unique, many people with autism tend to spend money on things they want, like video games, movies, or anything else that they enjoy collecting.
What Is Posturing in Autism? Posturing is the act of holding one's fingers or hands out at an angle. It is merely one example of stimming or self-stimulatory behavior. It's also defined as arching the back while sitting.
Many autistic people have intense and highly-focused interests, often from a fairly young age. These can change over time or be lifelong. It can be art, music, gardening, animals, postcodes or numbers.
Fixation, or hyper-focusing on a specific interest, is a recognized feature of autism. Fixations, along with other features or symptoms of autism like repetitive behaviors and cognitive inflexibility, may appear from the outside to be symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Many autistic people enjoy spending time alone and consider it important for their wellbeing. Loneliness is different though. You might feel lonely if you don't have opportunities to socialise, or find this difficult. You might have friends/colleagues but feel misunderstood, or like you cannot be yourself around them.
Smiling may not come easily to you if you are autistic or neurodiverse. It might feel unnatural or insincere. It doesn't mean you're in a bad mood if you don't smile. You could be neutral or really focused on your work.
About 70% of autistic people have an intellectual disability, which means they have an IQ lower than 70. The remaining 30% have intelligence that ranges from average to gifted. Autism and intelligence are two separate characteristics. A person can be autistic with any level of intelligence.
Every autistic person is different, but sensory differences, changes in routine, anxiety, and communication difficulties are common triggers.
Common Autism Obsessions
Fixation on a particular topic or subject: Many people with autism have a deep interest in a particular topic, such as trains, dinosaurs, or computers. They may spend hours reading about or talking about this topic, to the exclusion of other activities.
These obsessions, which included hygiene, health, exercise, safety, animals, computers, people, cars, DVDs and, in one case, Kate Winslet, could dominate people's lives. The intensity and type of obsession varied over time but remained, for most people, a consistent feature of their lives.
Difficult social situations and sensory environments can increase stress and increase anxiety for autistic people. Another significant cause of anxiety is a sense of being misunderstood and/or not accepted by non-autistic people. To 'fit in' and not be seen as different, autistic people might mask or camouflage.
Making friends doesn't come easy for everyone, especially when you're neurodiverse. Often individuals with autism struggle to make friends because they're fearful of being vulnerable, experiencing social anxiety, and struggle with the social skills necessary to make new friends.
They are not aware of their own stimming behaviour and neither are they aware of others reactions to their stimming behaviour. Autism causes a lot of anxiety, fear, anger and other strong emotions in people, since they have high levels of sensory inputs in comparison to ordinary people.
This refers to the tendency of the autistic patient to press the chin into an object or another person's leg to apply pressure to the mandible or temporomandibular joint.
Some of the frequent facial features of autism are a broader upper face, shorter middle face, wider eyes, bigger mouth, and the philtrum [19]. The use of facial features as a physical marker to detect autism is one of the most exciting topics in autism research.
These interests are extremely common among people with autism: 75 to 95 percent have them. An interest may involve collecting items such as postcards or dolls, listening to or playing music in a repetitive way, or focusing intensely on a narrow topic, such as insects fighting.
Social behavior and social understanding
Basic social interaction can be difficult for children with autism spectrum disorders. Symptoms may include: Unusual or inappropriate body language, gestures, and facial expressions (e.g. avoiding eye contact or using facial expressions that don't match what they are saying).