autism and the family
Uploaded by tennisace334 on Mar 25, 2004
Home Therapy and Autism 2
One of the most common developmental disabilities affects two out of every ten thousand children and appears before the age of three (Encarta, 2000). The disorder is autism. It is a disorder that severely impairs development of a person’s ability to communicate, interact with other people, and maintain normal contact with the outside world. Autism is often referred to as a spectrum disorder, a disorder in which symptoms can occur in any combination and with varying degrees of severity (Encarta, 2000).
Symptoms of autism usually begin during infancy. They may stiffen or go limp when picked up by parents rather than clinging up to them. Autistic infants often show little or no interest in other people and lack typical social behaviors. Another affect of autism is difficulty with language. Some never learn to speak or develop very limited speech. Over the past thirty years major advances have been made in the education and treatment of autistic individuals. While it is important for patients to receive outside therapy it is also critical that the families get involved and continue the therapy at home. In this paper we will look at not only at the types of home therapy programs, but also the effectiveness of these programs on the mental and physical limitations that autism puts on a child compared to outside therapies.
Children with autism need both physical and behavioral treatment programs. Not much research has been done on what parents can do to improve the limitations that autism cause and the research done was mainly on behavioral treatment, so that is what the focus will be on. This paper will focus
Home Therapy and Autism 3
on the social communication, emotional regulation, and IQ that a home based behavioral therapy program can improve.
“It is well documented that positive long-term outcomes for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are strongly correlated with the achievement of communicative competence” (Sheinkopf and Siegel, 1998). Two studies tried to focus on this aspect of autism. A controlled trail conducted in the United Kingdom on parent training intervention by Drew et al. focused specifically on improving the communication of pre-school children with autism, especially non-verbal social communicative skills.
This study used the clinical interviews and the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) to assess social interaction, non-verbal social communication abilities. Twenty...