Problems of Autistic Children and Their Families: A Study in the Urban Areas of Bangladesh

Abstract

Autism is now firmly established as a disorder of the developing mind and brain functions. Autism prima fascia a problem of enological maturation which becomes apparent in three years from birth and the very problem leads to inability of a child in normal and expected social interaction. Literature shows that it has a gender dimension that boys are more vulnerable to develop autism reveals in impediment of oral communication, observation and ‘abnormal’ behavior. Now autism is still full of mystery. Most people have accepted that autism is a lifelong condition and that it is inappropriate to expect a cure. People with autism often find social interaction difficult, have problems with verbal and non-verbal communication; demonstrate restrictive and repetitive behavior; have a limited set of interests and activities. ASDs include Asperger syndrome, Rett syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified. Experts estimate that three to six children out of every 1,000 will have autism. Males are four times more likely to have autism than females. Autism is a developmental disorder where language disorder is the most common characteristic in it, the sort of problems that children with ASD may have include as- not being able to express themselves well, not being able to understand gestures, facial expressions, or tone of voice, saying odd things, echolalia, pronoun reversal, sometimes using many words when one would do, using odd phrases and odd choices of words, making up their own words, not being able to understand difficult orders. Very few individuals who fail to achieve spoken language by this age later develop complex speech. For the majority of individuals with language impairments, the comprehension of language is generally at a higher level than their expressive abilities. Social relatedness includes marked impairment in non-verbal communication, peer relationships and social-emotional reciprocity. Restricted interests and activities includes encompassing preoccupations, adherence to non-functional routines or rituals, stereotypes and motor mannerisms. Communication/play includes either a delay or total lack of spoken language and lack of developmentally-appropriate make-believe or social play. A significantly greater number or PDD children displayed the problems: inaccessibility, strange behavior, and sleeping problems. The specific problems more or less in here in autism. Developmental deviance and retardation in the domains of cognition, language and socialization; rigid, stereotyped and inflexible style of functioning. The non-specific type of problems is additional to and not necessarily bound up with autism among these overactive behavior, temper tantrums, aggression, self-destructive behaviors, fears and phobias, sleeping problems and problems with toilettraining. In infancy non-specific symptoms are recognized, such as the lack of initiative, hyperactivity and sleeping and feeding problems. Children may develop normal speech until the age of two and then stop. Fifteen percent of children with autism develop seizures in the first few years of life and these spasms or seizures are thought, in some case, to cause autistic withdrawal. Some of autistic children are unable to make peer relation. They play only in themselves have very eccentric introvertness. They don’t understand the social norms. As they are unaware of basic social norms, they cannot maintain the interactional reciprocity in a given social context. For example to wear heavy weight dress during summer is odd for interaction but they are unaware of it. Children with autism would not or could not perform the tasks possibly due to severe mental retardation or the deficits in comprehension of language, impaired perception of rewards for cooperation, or severe impaired attention. Early onset of autism is widely accepted as before two and a half to three years of age. Learning difficulties are reported in 70% of children with autism (Taylor, 2006: 511). The majority of children with autism are mentally retarded and, therefore, a minority of children with autism functions in the normal to near-normal IQ range. Children with autism can have impaired hearing, but most do not. Some have impaired vision, but again, most do not. One of the earliest attempts to explain the cognitive problems of children with autism tend to touch, taste, and smell objects and people, often in a socially embarrassing way. Experimental evidence, however, soon showed that the excessive use of taste, touch and smell was not specifically associated with autism, but was associated with low mental age. This study asserts that the parents of autistic children undergo a high degree of stigmatization and public negligence in social interaction which makes them prone to stress regarding their children’s future.