What is Autism?

By: Sarah Johnson

Autistic Spectrum Disorder is a disorder that causes differences in the brain. Autism can cause many symptoms. This may be accompanied by sensory sensitivities.

Main Symptoms:

The main, or core, symptoms of Autistic Spectrum Disorder include differences or problems in social communication and restricted and/or repetitive behaviors.

Communication Challenges:

Communication challenges in Autism may include differences in how one communicates. One third of people with Autism are nonverbal. This means that some people don’t use words or speech to communicate. You might also notice that some Autistic people struggle with eye contact and/or tone of voice.

Stimming/ Repetitive, Restrictive Behaviors:

Stimming or repetitive and restrictive behaviors (RRBs) is one of the features of Autism. These actions may include hand flapping, rocking or flicking fingers in front of one’s eyes. Sometimes, repetitive behaviors can harm one’s self such as slapping him/herself over and over again.

Autistic students may continue stimming throughout their lives. There is no way of stopping this stim. If one stops, it may be replaced by a different stim. Plus, everyone does it anyway! People tap their pencils and bite their nails. Those also count as stims.

Children may use stimming to manipulate their environment. Autistic children might have trouble with imagination and/or creativity. This might cause them to have trouble with thinking of things to do. Stimming helps them with this.

Stimming also helps Autistic people with overcoming sensory overload. Sensory overload is when a person experiences over-stimulation from their environment. This over load of information can cause stress, anxiety, and even physical pain. It can help the child, or who ever it is, block out excess input.

Causes:

Autism is caused by a change in the genes. If the parent carries one or more of these genes (even if the parent does not have Autism), the child could come out as having the disorder. These changes can arise as early as in early production.

Other risks of heightening the possibility include advance parent age in either parent, pregnancy, birth complications, and/or pregnancies spaced less than 1 year apart.

Autism has two main core symptoms along with many other symptoms. People may use stimming to help with their imagination or overcoming sensory overload. Autism is caused by a difference in genes, along with many other things that can contribute to it.

Educating one’s self on this information can help the world along with their understanding of how others act and think. We can help each other using this info. Autistic Spectrum Disorder is a disorder that causes differences that people can learn to understand.