Strong nerve and willingness to help the child in trouble are crucial for the caregivers dealing with autism affected kids. The parent is required to stand strong by the child and take him through the tough time that is unavoidable.
First suggestion to the parents is not to delay the process. As soon as you have a faint hint about the abnormal neuro-development of your child, consult a doctor and don’t wait for any further diagnosis. Every parent wants to hear that his/her child is perfectly healthy and happy. Being diagnosed with autism is particularly frightening, but this is when they need to keep their ground strong and help the child survive the battle of life. Another crucial factor that works here is that people generally tend to think that autism is incurable hence there is no point hoping for anything better, but that is not so. True that autism does not come with a promise of complete eradication but with proper treatment, the patient can hope for a better, more peaceful and healthier future. We, on the other side of the table, the so-called healthy ones can never lose hope.
A few self help tips-
- Read, learn and know about Autism- Get loaded with more and more information, the more you know about the disease, the better equipped you’ll feel to handle your child. Moreover, there would be lesser chance of any kind of misguidance.
- Have an expert knowledge about your child- What triggers creativity in your child or what affects him or her badly, makes the child upset, know it all. Learn what he finds stressful, what has a general calm and tranquil effect on him, what excites him in a positive manner and makes him happy and try and incorporate all that positives in his/her life more.
- Accept the child as he/she is. The child might tend to act violently or scream or shout or withdraw himself/herself completely and refuse to take part in any social interaction. This hardly means you should be apprehensive or irritated towards the child. Try to remember the fact that the child is not aware of his/her ‘not normal’ conditions, he/she wants and deserves to be loved and accepted unconditionally.
Structure and safety come first.
- One needs to remain essentially consistent with the child. Autistic children need time to pick up things and they cannot be expected to learn or execute what they’ve learned too fast, it is best to remain patient with them and maintain certain level of consistency.
- A sense of security and safety is also important. The child must not feel threatened at any cost. They are emotionally very active unlike what is usually thought about them, so any kind of gesture or actions that make them feel less important or threatens their position can be harmful.
- Fun time is learning time for them. Make sure you and your child enjoy a lot of happy fun-filled time. More than any therapy or pills what your child truly requires is more life, more energy, more happiness and positivity and it is definitely in your hand to provide him with so.
You have to hold on, keeping all these in mind and executing them guarantees positive results but not in the blink of an eye. Different children suffer from different density of the disease. Some intense cases might show early signs of cure while some others could linger and take up a lot of time, no matter what. So when you are dealing with the latter group, hold on to your patience and never lose hope.
