Autistic Children: 6 Tips To Live Their Full Potential

There is a lot of stigma about autism, especially in children. When we first hear the phrase “your child has autism,” we may feel it as a condemnation, but nothing could be further from the truth.

What does my child need if he has autism?

Autistic children are different, as are all other children. How can we accompany them in their uniqueness?

1. Help to lower hypersensitivity

Through sensory integration therapy we can help you filter stimuli, live better with it and be able to communicate.

2. Appropriate therapies

Some therapies focus on forcing superfluous learning, through rewards, without a real understanding of what is being “learned.” They are focused on a child with autism functioning as a neurotypical, with the tremendous effort that this implies.

Worse, it can lead to even more lockdown. It is important to avoid superfluous learning and to help the child to attenuate the sensory intensity so that his own capacities arise, with therapies such as sensory integration or the Tomatis method.

3. Don’t be isolated

Sometimes, because of the way he acts, we take it for granted that he wants to be alone, when the opposite is usually the case. He needs spaces (school, home, family, etc.) where he is not treated as if he were less. He’s just different, like all children.

4. Contact and more contact

Hugs, kisses, tickles, looks. In the case of rejecting them, we can gradually break that barrier using tools that favor containment, proprioception and the sensation of pressure, such as weighted blankets, elastic bags, balls that we pass through the body, etc.

Temple Grandin built for herself the “hugging machine,” which provided a calming pressure in the face of anxiety. Containment and pressure trigger our parasympathetic nervous system, helping us to focus and calm ourselves.

5. Trust by parents and teachers

It is essential that the child’s potential does not end up disappearing, and for this he needs adults who are able to see it.

6. Diversification

Help him get out of his repetitive routines, without straining, offering new challenges. Their encyclopedic memory is a great asset, but they need to get out of the ordinary little by little.

What do we parents need?

Focus on your strengths and everything you can do. Plus…

1. Extra dose of patience

While it is normal for any child to have outbursts of rage or to be unsettled by changes, in children with autism it skyrockets. Let us remember in those moments that they do not want to manipulate us, that rejecting them hurts them, that they need us to accompany them emotionally.

2. Perform a genetic test

On suspicion, and since early intervention is key, a specific karyotype for autism can help us a lot. The usual karyotype does not detect it. This test, paradoxically, is going to reassure us, to position us, to help us stop blaming ourselves. Our child needs us strong and safe.

3. Understand your hypers and nsibilidad

Let’s understand that you don’t reject food on a whim, you just can’t stand certain textures, smells, tastes, colors. Sensory integration therapy will help you organize these stimuli, so that eating is no longer a headache. And it will give you, in turn, a greater brain balance.

4. Breeding with contact

All children need it, but they need it even more. It is essential to break the barrier of contact, which many children with autism reject. This can be achieved if it has been encouraged from a very early age.

5. Connect with them

Your child is there, even if at times it seems that he looks at nothing and does not listen to you. Although sometimes it seems to you that it is isolated in itself, it is not. He listens to you, he sees you, he needs you. Talk to him, interact, make up games.

6. Stop external aggressions

Let’s not allow people to isolate them or treat them as weird, starting with ourselves.

7. Stop focusing on what you cannot do to focus on what you can

If you are attentive, you will discover the potentials of your child. What interests you, what you stand out for and what you like to do. All children need us to see this, but in the case of children with autism, we have a much harder time understanding this point.