Symptoms of Autism

Today, I’m going to talk briefly about autism which is very commonly seen nowadays, in children. I would like to tell you what are the common symptoms and how would you identify autism in the early childhood.

A child at the age of one year who doesn’t do finger pointing, who doesn’t have good eye contact, doesn’t start uttering a single word, doesn’t have a joint attention or there are some other concern like child doesn’t mix up with the children of his own age, then, you must suspect either, there is some problem in hearing and accordingly you should go to a pediatrician to get him checked.

So, first of all, pediatrician would ask you to do a hearing test. If the hearing test is normal, then, we must think about the diagnosis of autism. It is called autistic spectrum disorder. It could be mild, moderate, severe. It may be associated with some other problems like some behavior problems, hyperactivity, poor attention, poor memory, epilepsy, so on and so forth. So, it is really important to diagnose this disorder as early as we can so that we can identify the cause of it and we can try to mend it accordingly.

And, there is no cure as such for autism. That’s the scary thing that there is no cure but having diagnosed it properly, early in life, we could do so many things, lots of therapies, for example, occupational therapy, speech therapy, sensory integration, psychological support and there are some medication as well to help with the comorbidities, not to treat the disorder as a core treatment.

If you want to know any further about it, and if your child is having any of the symptoms please, do contact your local pediatrician for basic screening and if you want to reach me