Autism
Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurobiological developmental disorder that already manifests during the first three years of life and will last throughout the life cycle.
The fandamental symptoms of autism are two:
• Persistent deficiencies in communication and social interaction.
• Restrictive and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities.
Indications that may be indicative of ASD in children are:
- •In kindergarten and school, there is a lack of interest in other children.
- They do not share interests (they are not used to pointing the finger at what catches their attention to share it with others).
- Absence of symbolic play (feeding dolls, making little kitchens, playing cars as if they were real, etc.).
- Little eye contact is established and they do not observe the expression on the face of the interlocutor when together they are seeing something unusual. They are not used to making the social smile.
- Their language, if it exists, is literal (they don’t understand jokes, jokes, double meanings or metaphors).
- They avoid physical contact or they like it less. They are accustomed to having tactile, olfactory, gustatory and auditory hypersensitivity. There is often little sensitivity to pain.
- They react little to the voice of their parents, which can lead to suspicion of a hearing deficit.
- They have unusual interests. Also, they are repetitive and not shared.
- They can show strange, repetitive and self-stimulating behaviors such as rocking, flapping hands, or walking on tiptoe, among others.
- Those who have a higher intellectual level, notice that they are different and do not understand what is happening to them. They are the piece of the puzzle that does not know how to fit or fit on the social board.