UNDERSTANDING AUTISM 

Why do we see more cases of autism these days?

1. Many people are aware and would like to know about it and take benefit of being different... concessions, reservations, tax benefit.

2. Increased neonatal survival with serious brain insults

3. Growing prevalence of various genetic and epigenetic  diseases due to diverse enviornmental factors

4. nuclear families with reduced human to human interaction

5. Screen based and screen dominant  that is visual entertainment with repetitions starting at early age, takes the child away from verbal and social world

6. Schools and experts forcing for certification in children that behave different or delayed

TO KNOW MORE ABOUT BASICS OF AUTISM AND GETTING FREE ONLINE ASSESSMENT DONE, VISIT WWW.AUTISMDOCTOR.IN

Serious Need for Understanding autism is more human way!

Each person who deals with autism labelled kids is only hungry for label and loves to give every component of the problem some name and parents get confused, scared, worried and start googling. Parents are often seen running around for BERA test, genetic test, experts like Reflexology, NDT, sensory expert, Apraxia expert, SPD expert, hyperbaric OT, stem cell therapy, special diets and many foolish methods which are heard by hearsay from random people. REMEMBER, RUNNING ROUND OR LABEL IS NOT IMPORTANT, WHAT U DO AND START EARLIEST IS IMPORTANT, KEEPING REST IN WAITING. Following is a simple way to understand autism in just 5 lines.

"AUTISM IS A DISORDER OF CONCENTRATION, CONNECTION, COMMUNICATION, CONVERSATION, COGNITION, COORDINATION, CO-SOCIALISATION... ALL THIS IS A SOFTWARE OF THE BRAIN, WORK ON WHAT NEED TO BE DEVELOPED.. THAT IS SOCIALISATION AND COMMUNICATION ; IT CANNOT BE BUILT BY PHYSICAL EXERCISES, OR OBJECT BASED ACTIVITIES OR PHYSICAL UNSTEADINESS; BUT BY HELPING THE CHILD BE MORE SUSTAINED RECEPTIVE BY IMPROVING SITTING LOOKING LISTENING LEARNING FOCUS SO THAT CHILD CAN INTERACT FACE TO FACE WITH HUMANS, CONNECT WITH HUMANS AND CONVERSE WITH HUMANS."

Who is an autism expert?

Is the one who knows and understands autism and attempts to help parents and researchers dealing with autism, having an experience of a decade or more than 1000 cases with autism with  improving outcomes in children with autism.

There are a variety of experts who feel that autism is a specialty to be dealt only by the specific expertise. this is because most experts try to understand autism only form the perspective of what they have been taught and not what the case is. An expert who doesnt keep himself or herself updated with newer knowledge and researches in improving potential social normalcy in autism kids, is actually of noi us eto teh sufferers.

A huge number of experts mostly NGOs work towards awareness of autism alone and not towards its interventions. 

There is a need to understand autism in a different perspective. working in autism kids is more like a personality development of the child by following in the same sequence with at times overlap with adjacent stages of development adding sense to life and pulling the child to social world by: 

1. initially making the child aware of non living and more so living world

2. helping the child connect with humans face to face and eye to eye, making the child receptive, responsive, reciprocating and responsible

3. helping the child understand, copy and interact with family and humans around, the A to  Z social members

4. helping the child learn to communicate and copy expressions for need and beyond needs

5. helping the child understand and copy the activities of daily loving and living

6. helping the child understand social cues, manners, rules and interactive social sitting games

7. helping the child understand copy process and produce the verbal communication, conversation, composition, syntax and pragmatics

8. helping the child learn education, focussing on listening, reading, writing and complex hierarchial understandings 

9. supporting the child to learn the way child can be taught and also by the way child cannot learn easily

10. adding diversity difficulty differences and dynamicity at every stage of learning and life to help him become a better personality shaping the future.

Pediatricians - neuro developmental pediatricians are key in assessing classifying, investigating for treatable causes and components of teh disorder in addition counseling and managing these kids and its various medically manageable developments, complications and neuropsychiatric and behavioural complications. It is no longer an illness to be managed by psychiatrists but a neuro developmental disorder which can be attempted to put in order with the help of as needed following:

1. Understanding the developmental delay or deficit and modulating it with medications and therapies, 

2. Therapists: ABA

3. Therapists: Occupational and sensory integrational therapists

4. Therapists: speech therapists

5. Psychological and genetic counselors

6. Remedial educators

key principles in autism reversal: 

1.Dont be Special, turn into social 

2.To make social, switch from object world based teaching to people and action based teaching 

3.To develop communication; switch from screen based learning to body language based learning 

4.To develop language, switch from seeing-doing activities to listening talking activities 

5.Sitting tolerance increases by sitting activities with sensory breaks as per childs requirement.Making a child continuously jump and run will make him expert in jumping and running 

6.Constant hugging kissing and carrying skin to skin, make the child get physically pampered and stubborn. keeping your child 2 feet away face to face helps develop eye contact and social communication 

7. If you dont make rules for child behaviour, child will start ruling you and throw tantrums to change your behaviour. 

8.Children copy what they see, hear and feel. Dont let them see ,hear and feel what u dont want them to learn, for example saying no or physically handling the child or shouting to grab attention. 

9.Dont teach letters and alphabets,or what is this type of teaching; they are for picture recognitions. Teach in sentences, it means language. Dont ask questions, just go on narrating. 

10.Music/rhymes is good only for momentary solo pleasure. Switch to lyrics and language if you wish the time to be utilized for learning and communication. 

Dr Kondekars ten commandments on Autism reversal AS ABOVE

*Understanding-Goal Directed Approach :* 

Dear Parents Make a list of all things u feel will be impossible in your kid and work towards it. if you believe nothing is impossible, list things or issues your kid has difficulty in and list what all you did for your kid for same issue for last 3 months. list what all you made possible.

 if you can list all changes you brought in last 3 months, discuss with expert about next step and how rapidly it can be achieved. 

if you are stuck at a step for more than 3 months, we are losing time and raise an alarm. 

*Accept autism, don't accept disability, work towards enabling same*. 

Understand and re understand the issue differently and work towards it. 

Its true that you know best for your kid, but *its equally true that u don't know what is best for others kids* ;

Parenting an autism kid since ages, doesn't make you an expert for others kids unless you get through details of thousands of cases. 

So unless you are expert *don't start teaching other parents,* you may be giving some information halfway which is true only for your kid.

 It's not a routine parenting issue in autism. 

*Dont give up your desire to learn and do something new every day.*

 its true that home therapy is needed, but *don't make your house a therapy center with various toys and activities.* 

Home therapy in true sense will mean practicing tricks with home based day to day objects and acts. 

if you feel you have learnt all tricks of OT etc , and you can teach OT to any kid with autism or take care of your autism kid for years, *you are wrong*; it just means that you dont know the next step. Sometimes it's good to accept we are wrong, then only we can *see the ray of hope.* 

When we work with medicines and therapy *we develop connections and cross connections to processing centers;* which shows extended level of communications in the form of development in various *domains of understanding* including knowledge, nonverbal communication, behavior, emotions, socialization, interactive games and talking and writing skills apart from physical things. ** 

*Leaving things half way will develop connections half way and loose connections always die.* ** Often with a spark. 

*Development is decided by connections, speed is decided by myelination.* 

At least keep a *minimum goal of readiness for primary school* admission over 2 year phase. 

Then divide them into steps. 

*Later the age of intervention or medicines harder will be recovery or development of milestones.* 

Work towards reducing severity of level, A child who can take main stream schooling for primary usually is *independent* and can be educated and trained to take care of family responsibly , when he or she grows up. 

*Remember every one has limits.. even God too does.. we all are attempting to look beyond the perceived limit and find a higher achievable limit, in the best interest of the child, when we walk towards horizon attempting to touch the limit, the limit too moves ahead.*giving us hopes to improve further every month Dr Kondekar #MakingSense 

I want all parents to understand when we are looking for improvements, what all changes we may look for. A keen parent would like to note down minor details about every change on weekly basis rather than saying sir no improvement. Other parents may have similar ideas but if u don't note down In details, it's not easy to compare the improvement across time line. See the monitoring chart. Given at website neuropediatrician.com  OR ASK whatsapp 9869405747  for getting a serious idea to see objective change. 

The improvements can be minor when we expect changes every week , it's always better to note down. 

*Try to list changes as per gains since last visit and goals till next visit* 

Also you have headings 

activities - living, household, skills and 

gross /fine motor 

Communication Interaction 

Academics Langauge 

concepts Pre math concepts 

Story concept 

Math concept 

Abstract concepts etc 

Medicines in autism : As I told u most of them are raw material or connectivity and brain speed related medicines used for building block for forming bridges in brain. 

These combinations will reduce or change every month after every weekly titration across whatsapp. 

After first positive response we follow gradual reduction in nutrients...systematically. 

Half hearted efforts will give incomplete response, more so in a situation where world say nothing can be done except exercises. 

Physical Exercises only effect the physical input but has no major role in processing connections needed for connection, communication, conversation in brain. 

lets turn every child into an auditory learner and dreamto make the kid an orator.

One who doesn't listen, cannot talk. one who keeps on doing seeing and doing activities most of the times is  not working for listening and talking during that phase.

WHAT WE KEEP ON DOING, PERMITTING AND PROMOTING, BECOMES PERMANENT.

CURIOSITY, NOVELTY, DYNAMICITY, DIVERSITY, DIFFERENCES, DIFFICULTY AND  DETERMINATION IS MUST FOR ANY HIERARCHIAL LEARNING IN AUTISM KIDS.

www.autismdoctor.in

Part I

• What is Autism? 

its a disorder where childs social communication is not in order, and in addition has behavioural issues. if there are zero behavioural issues, then the child has only social communication disorder (icd code 6A01.22 ) and not autism (6A02 ).

What are the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)? asd Code: 6A02 is the primary code for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Subtypes: The code includes further specifications to describe the severity and presence of other conditions: 6A02.0: ASD without intellectual or language impairment. 6A02.2: ASD without intellectual development but with impaired functional language. 6A02.3: ASD with intellectual development and impaired functional language. 6A02.4: ASD without intellectual development but with absence of functional language. 6A02.5: ASD with intellectual development and absence of functional language. 

• What is Aspergers Syndrome? in Olden days called as high functioning autism, usually not a much social concern , so should be moved out of autism as they dont have behavioural issues. sinilar category is Savant ability wgere a child may have grown his specific interest in only one field with a gift to remember or calculate or draw or recall.. a specific pattern of information. usually of no day to day benefit due to major social communication challenges. often experts glorify this ability, but that doesnt solve socialisdation and communication. very rare cases do exceptionally well.

• How can you tell Autism from Aspergers Syndrome? its no longer a separate diagnosis. if the child satisfies diagnostic criteria for autism he will be called as autism.

• What is Pervasive Developmental Disorder � Not otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS)? these were old terminologies for autism like disorders.

• What is Rett Syndrome? LD90.4  is a genetic disorder of MECP2 gene mutation on x chromosome.  its a triad of a partial or complete loss of purposeful hand skills, a partial or complete loss of spoken language, and impaired or absent walking, often accompanied by distinctive repetitive hand movements such as wringing or clapping.  its no longer classfied as autism.

• What is Childhood Disintegrative Disorder?

• What is the prognosis of children with Autism?

• Are there other diseases that have the same symptoms of autism?

• Do autistic children commonly suffer from other illnesses?

• Is there an association between autism and Tourette�s syndrome?

• I have heard that the symptoms of autism are exaggerated and incorrectly portrayed in the media. What are some of the common myths about autism?

Part II

• Are there risk factors for Autism?

• What are some of the symptoms of Autism a Parent should look for?

• How do doctors diagnose children with Autism?

• What are Screening Tools for Autism?

• What are some of the more common autism screening tools that are used today?

• What medical tests should the doctor perform when making a diagnosis of Autism?

• What is a multidisciplinary team and how do they help to diagnose an autistic child?

• Are their tests that are not recommended for the diagnosis or management of autism?

• Can I wait to have my child tested for Autism?

Part III

• Is there truth to the claim that the number of children with autism has been increasing ever since the MMR vaccine has been in use?

• Is there a link between MMR Vaccine and the development of Autism?

• What have studies found regarding MMR vaccine and autism?

• What should a parent do about childhood immunizations?

• Is mercury exposure dangerous?

• Does Thimerosal cause autism?

Part IV

• How will I know if a new therapy is right from my child?

• What is Applied Behavioral Analysis?

• What is Sensory Integration therapy?

• What is TEACCH?

• I�ve heard of an educational model called Floor Time. What is it?

• Facilitated Communication

• What is the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)?

• Are there other therapies that are useful in treatment of behavioral symptoms in Autistic children?

Part V

• Are medications useful in treating the behavioral problems of Autistic children?

• What types of medications are used to treat autistic children?

• Is there anything I should do before giving my child a medication?

• Are antipsychotic medications helpful in the treatment of autism?

• I�ve heard that anti-seizure medication can be helpful in treating some behavior problems associated with autism. Is that true?

• How are Anxiety and depression treated in an autistic person?

• What medications are used to treat seizures in autistic children?

• What are some treatments for involuntary movements, vocalizations and Tourette�s Syndrome associated with Autism?

Part VI

• Is there any harm in trying unproven treatments on my child?

• Are dietary interventions helpful to autistic children?

• What are some common dietary interventions used to treat Autism?

• Is Secretin helpful in treating the symptoms of Autism?

• Is Naltrexone helpful in treating autism?

• What is chelation therapy?

• Can chelation therapy help my autistic child?

• Part VII

• How long does it take for Social Security to determine if my child is disabled

• What is SSI?

• How does the government decide if A Child Is Disabled?

• What are the eligibility criteria for Supplemental Security Benefits (SSI)?

• Does Autism usually qualify as a disability according to the Social Security Administration?

• What is Medicare?

• What is Medicaid?

• Is my autistic child eligible for Medicare or Medicaid benefits?

• What other healthcare services are available for my child?

Part VIII

• I want to care for my child after I�m gone, but I was told by my lawyer not to leave any money in my child�s name. Why is that?

• Why does a parent with an autistic child need a will?

• What is a Will?

• What is a special needs trust?

• Now that I have a trust, who should I choose to be trustee?

• What is a "Letter of Intent" and why is it necessary when creating a special needs trust?

• What can a �special-needs trust� pay for?

• Why do I need to establish guardianship for my adult child? Am I not his guardian already?

• What is guardianship?

• How do I obtain Guardianship for my adult child?

Part IX

• What does the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 have to do with the education of my child?

• What is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and why should I know about it?

• What is special education?

• How do I get special education services for my child?

• What is the Individualized Education Plan or IEP?

• What can I do if I don�t agree with the findings in the IEP?

• How do I choose the best special education program for my child?

• Are computers useful in the education of an autistic child?

• What type of computer should an autistic child use?

• When discussing plans for my teenage son, I�ve heard the term �transition.� What does it mean?

Part X

• My child was just diagnosed with Autism. What do I do first?

• What are some tips for parenting kids with autism?

• Traveling with my autistic child is difficult. What can I do to make �going out� easier?

• Keeping my child clean and neat is a real challenge. How do other parents deal with this?

• Getting (and keeping) my child dressed is very difficult. What can I do to make it easier?

• What are some causes of behavioral change in autistic children?

• How can I help my children form a relationship with their autistic sibling?

• How can I get my autistic child to exercise?

• I spent time and money childproofing my home when my son was an infant? Do I have to change anything now that he has been diagnosed as autistic?

• Is my home unsafe from my autistic child?

• How do I make my home safe for my autistic child?

• How do I change my child�s behaviors to reduce risk of accident or injury?

• Where do Autistic People Usually Live?

• What is Respite Care?

• How can I tell if my family needs respite care services?

Part XI

• How are parents with Autistic Children stressed?

• What are some ways that parents can reduce their stress?

• Do some families deal with stress better than others?

• Do siblings suffer increased stress as a result of having an autistic brother or sister?

• What can I do about my children�s stress?

• What are some resources for learning more about autism?