Our support to kids with ASD
The WHO has estimated that one in one hundred children are diagnosed with Autism. As this month is the autism awareness month, at Learner Circle, we want to be part of this journey just by offering our support. We believe that it is also important to build and foster compassion for the journey and challenges of families dealing with ASD. While the awareness has been increasing, there is still a dearth of compassion as many people around the world, literally back away from the sight of a child with autism. This behavior is not from a lack of awareness but lack of understanding and compassion.
World Autism Awareness Day
In the year 2007, the Union General Council passed a resolution to internationally recognized one day: April 2nd is World Autism Awareness Day. The objective of this resolution was to increase awareness around autism. This day also aims to bring together people around the world who are involved in the development of research and care of autism.
What is Autism?
Autism or ASD has a broad range of manifestations in children. Children with ASD face many challenges with social skills. They also must deal with restrictive and repetitive behaviour. Parents often notice the symptoms in early childhood. These symptoms usually persist and begin to interfere in daily living.
“God created autism to help offset the excessive number of boring people on Earth” – Unknown
Therefore, parenting autistic kids can be exhausting because it requires every ounce of patience and understanding on the part of the parent.
People with autism also face sensory issues in the sense that they can be either over sensitive or under sensitive to sound, light, touch, taste, smell, pain, or any other stimuli.
As parents go through this journey with their kids, they need to find ways to communicate to the kids, as most kids have social communication challenges like trouble with eye contact, inability to gesture effectively and trouble with facial expressions.
“For success in science and art a dash of autism is essential.”– Hans Asperger
What is required of parents who must care for children diagnosed with ASD?
Parents of kids who are diagnosed with ASD need to render their full-time attention as many kids face additional social challenges as they grow. Autism throws challenges like the inability to recognize one’s own emotions or the emotions of others. Therefore, these kids have difficulty in seeking emotional support. In social situations kids with autism are overwhelmed and they find themselves unable to take part in regular conversations. Social situations also become difficult as some kids are unable to gauge physical personal space.
“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid”– Einstein
According to WHO ‘’the needs of autistic kids may evolve over time’’
A real life story
A story from “Humans of Bombay”” talks about the journey of a couple and the emotional upheaval they faced when they realized that both their kids were autistic. A beautiful story filled with challenges, emotional outbursts and struggles. They narrate a story of joy as they experimented and tried various methods of parenting. They eventually gave up their jobs and opted for flexible work so that their kids had their full-time attention. As the years went by, the couple fit into a routine with the kids trying to create some sort of balance. Their story talks about their discoveries through trial and error. They began swimming classes with their son to soon learn that swimming influenced his behavior in a positive manner. It increased his attention span and gave him a sense of accomplishment. His passion for swimming led to explore deep sea swimming and in 2019, their kids became the first two special kids to participate in deep sea swimming. They went on to experiment with skating classes and within months took part in an international competition. The kids skated for 48 hours non-stop with their team and became a part of the Guinness World Records!
‘’Parents of autistic kids say that the journey is enlightening, exhausting, depressing at times and rewarding’’
Some other challenges that children with autism face is:
body movements that are repeated (spinning, rocking, flapping)
Repeated motion with objects
Doing the same thing over and over again.
They exhibit a lack of interest in anything.
“A child with autism sees things differently than we do. Perceives things in a different light. Can perceive things in ways we could never imagine”
Conclusion
Learner Circle has online courses that are curated for all kinds of kids. We also have planned an interesting initiative for families dealing with ASD. In order to help these families and offer our support we have curated an experiential learning program. This program is an outdoor event that helps families to learn various coping skills.
We also have a range of online courses to improve futuristic skills like critical thinking, creativity, logical reasoning and problem-solving. Our tutors enable kids to pursue their dreams and use the benefits of our programs to become better leaders and citizens of the world. If you want to know more about our programs, please sign up for a free demo.
.png){kind=logo}
Comments