Autism affects people in a multitude of areas, such as:

• communication
• social interaction
• unusual behaviour
• learning

Children with autism may show symptoms as young as 1.5 to 2 years old. They may have problems acquiring functional speech and communicating thoughts. Some children do not seem to be able to speak at all. Some can speak but do not make sense and some can only echo other’s speech and cannot verbalize their own thoughts. Others cannot stop talking on their favorite subjects. A lot of these children cannot project their thoughts, for example, they cannot point to an interested object to share their thoughts. Therefore, hand-leading instead of pointing is another tale-tell sign of ASD.

One of the important indications of social interaction impairment may be the lack of eye-contact. For example, if the child were offered a toy, the child might not look at the person who was offering the toy. Some of the most common ‘unusual behaviours’ have to be hand-flapping and head-banging. While there is much speculation as to the reason for these behaviours, there is no solid evidence to support the claims. We will do extensive behaviour analysis to find how best to replace or to accommodate the behaviours - with the children’s best interests in mind.

Children with autism lack the natural capabilities to develop many skills as their typically developing peers do. Communication and language disorders are some of the defining problems. Without language and communication, learning is critically impaired. The developmental gap widens exponentially as time goes pass. Children learn to protect themselves by withdrawing into their own space. Not only that space is limited and boring, it is also sad and lonely.