Early Intervention Helps Autistic Children

Autism is a neurological condition that arises from insufficient development of a child’s physical, emotional or intellectual capacity.  Unfortunately, as debilitating as the condition appears, the disorder has remained largely misunderstood by the society.
ARONKE OLAYIWOLA writes on the difficulties autistic children face and how they cope with the everyday demands of their environment.
As Nigeria joined the rest of the world to mark the world autism day, perhaps one of the ways to understand Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is to view it as a set of multiple disorders happening to one person. By definition, autism is a pervasive developmental disability that manifests during the first three years of life and causes impairments in social communication, behaviour, social interaction, and imaginative skills. Many of those living with the condition have to cope with a range of sensory difficulties. An individual with an autism spectrum disorder therefore, experiences major difficulties in at least three areas of development which ultimately sets him up for more difficulties as he or she functions in the family, school and larger society.
People with the condition appear physically normal and do not have any obvious look or feature that marks them apart. The specific cause of autism is not known, but researchers have linked it to a complex interaction of genetic and environmental factors. Early intervention is currently the best hope of treatment for persons affected. Unfortunately, the level of awareness about this disorder in our country is extremely low and children affected are not being diagnosed early enough when intervention works better.
For Toyin Akinde, mother of Anjolaoluwa, she discovered that her son was not acting like a normal one and a half year old boy should act. He seemed very slow in picking up words as mummy, daddy and other elementary words a boy his age should speak. This she went on to discuss with her husband who thought she was just being paranoid. After persistently discussing the issue with her husband, they both decided to seek medical help for their son. This according to medical experts was a brilliant decision by the mother as early intervention has been prescribed as the goal standard for reducing the burden of care for parents.
Anjolaoluwa after being diagnosed with the ASD, started a speech therapy and four years after, he is totally transformed and improved.
According to a psychiatrist at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi Araba, Dr. Peter Ogunnubi, “Autism Spectrum Disorder is what we like to refer to this condition as there are different ranges of this condition. The features are basically out in different categories. First, there is the communication and social interaction; anywhere these autistic children are, there is poor communication and this can be seen in the fact that they don’t have interest in sharing things, they don’t have friends and they hardly have social interactions.
“Autistic children are usually characterized by a few inabilities such as not returning people’s glances if they are glanced at, they do not lift their hands to be carried, they do not respond to gestures to shake them. They always have a communication deficit. They also have problem adjusting to social life. If you see an autistic child in an environment, he may not be able to relate well with other children in that neighbourhood and they have repetitive pattern of communication problem and this is consistent. They have also problem with behaviour and it is restricted and repetitive, that is, they may show a particular interest in one thing and that is what they will be repeating over and over. If they like a particular toy, any other toy won’t attract them”, he further pointed out.
These signs will help parents to identify the early signs of autism so as to facilitate quick intervention of experts.
Anjolaoluwa at about 3 years exhibited many of these symptoms: “He loved to repeat whatever he was told and would repeat these things to himself even when no one was with him; was fascinated by objects and could just keep staring at the objects for several minutes.  He was always fascinated by spinning objects as well”.
A child that exhibits any of these, according to Ogunnubi, may be showing early signs of the disorder. “When you see a child that is focusing or preoccupied by objects, that may be an early sign of autism. Most of them have hypo or hypersensitivity. If you touch an austistic child, he may scream but if you beat him, he may not react and vice versa, that is an abnormal responsiveness to issues. Some of them have an adverse or abnormal response to sound. Most of them have speech problem, they cannot communicate, some of them would want to say “I want to eat” and could say “you want to eat”, we call that pronominal reversal. A child who at about one or two years can’t pick a word or two may be showing signs of the autistic disorder”, he further said.
However, some children have skills in mathematics, music, artistic design, sports and still have problems with social interaction; such children should be taken to the doctors for an assessment. There are some variances of the autistic spectrum disorder as patients that are academically sound still have social interaction problems.
According to Akinde, the burden of care is enormous especially in this environment. “Our environment doesn’t even care whether there is anybody with autism. If you are born in the western world with autism, sometimes you will live better life even than anyone not born with autism. They have social work department, welfare department, adequate social workers, adequate therapists; most of these things are given freely as much as possible. There are centres and hospitals that will attend to them”.
An Initiative such as the GTBank Orange Ribbon Foundation brings hope to the ordinary Nigerian and gives opportunities for assessments by experts. In this year’s ‘Annual Autism’ in collaboration with Blazing Trails International Texas, USA and the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, GTBank organized a series of training and teaching sessions for parents, teachers, therapists, medical practitioners, care givers and government officials.
With about less than 10 percent of parents with autistic children unaware and only the educated ones and keen parents being at advantage of discovery of this disorder early enough, it is imperative for mothers to know that there are a lot of steps to take when a child is born and growing; the mother must watch the child closely and take keen interest in such a child’s development processes.
Children with autism can ultimately lead a normal life; only their abilities need to be honed to bring them to excellence just as the captain of Argentina’s national football team and Barcelona forward, Lionel Messi, who is autistic. More precisely, he has Asperger’s syndrome, exactly like the great Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. This condition of his explains perfectly Messi’s exceptional talent.