Challenges Faced by Parents, Teachers and Caregivers

I should start by saying that success will come.  But be prepared for a change of priorities and lifestyle. Whether you are a Caregiver who is responsible for a diagnosed autistic child or a Teacher or Parent, success will come, but not without much stress and pressure.  It will be challenge as you could be juggling a spouse, other children, your home and a relatively normal life.  But success will come in small measured steps at a time, with hard work.

You will have dedicated personal physician and therapists to help you who work outside the school system.  Through testing of your autistic child you will find out which interventions and programs are best suited for your child with possible special health care needs.  So there is help, and I repeat, there is help along the way.

There will be a lifestyle commitment of Parents, Teachers and Caregivers who will accept this understanding on both parts.  Pointing out characters in pictures and story books, i.e. ball, car, wagon is a good way to get reaction from a very unresponsive autistic child. In this way he can be involved and not withdraw into himself, but he may be interested in a certain toy in the picture. By pointing out things in books and pictures he is also developing personal interaction skills which are so important.

Having a tantrum or “melt down” is telling you he may not understand what is expected of him.  We all have our own way of doing things, things that work for us and only us, and so it is for the autistic child.  All the steps have to be given to him to learn, i.e. ask him to go to the table, see the book, pick up the book, and bring the book to you.

Noise and commotion along with many people may over stimulate and be overwhelming to the autistic child, so Parents, Teachers and Caregivers need to be made aware of this. The repetition of words or one word in a loud voice is their very own set of rituals.  By making learning fun he will respond best with visual material in his learning of human and social behavior.   Computer learning can be helpful when they see what they should be doing.

• playing
• bathing
• toilet training
• eating at the table with a fork
• bedtime

Non stimulating sports and simple musical instrument for them to hum along also are good learning tools.