Autism Child
There is no one “autism child” – no poster child for autism. The signs and symptoms vary from child to child. “If you have seen one child with autism, you have only seen one child with autism”
The earlier your autism child gets treatment the better chance they stand for recovery. Here is my recovery story about one of the kids I worked with that I will cherish forever.
“He started with us when he was 2 years old. He was non vocal with just a few sounds. We started on 3D PECS (picture exchange communication system) – we started on 3D because his fine motor skills were not strong enough to pull off a 2D picture. After working hard on his sounds and his fine motor skills we moved to 2D PECS. He could communicate with us using pictures telling us what he wanted. After a while of hard work and ABA every day he started saying his first words, his first word was jump and as soon as he had enough words we only expected vocal requests from him and no longer used the PECS.
We pushed and worked hard on his vocals as well as some other skills he needed some help in. Soon we started with two word sentences and after a while pushed to full sentences.
His fine motor skills improved so beautifully as well as his gross motor skills and language, we concentrated on all the areas he needed some help with.
Today three years later he is in school in grade R, he made friends at school and is able to keep up with the class pace. He still come to us and receives ABA after school for us to make sure he is keeping up with his peers and his class work and if there is anything he falls behind on we work on catching it up so that he can stay with his peer’s progress.
He was non-vocal when he started with us, but with a great ABA programme and a dedicated team, I am proud to say that he is now fully independent.
There are many more stories like this at The Star academy, and where recovery is not achieved, functional independence is the goal. If they don’t end up going to school we teach them life skills and independent skills to be able to keep a job and take care of themselves so that you don’t have to worry about what the further hold for them.
With a programme specifically created for your autism child’s needs and a team dedicated to do one on one ABA with your child as well as strong parents. Recovery is possible!
