What are the Symptoms of Autism?

•           Social interactions and relationships. Symptoms may include:
  
  • Significant problems developing nonverbal
    communication skills, such as eye-to-eye gazing, facial expressions, and body
    posture.
  • Failure to establish friendships with children the same
    age.
  • Lack of interest in sharing enjoyment, interests, or
    achievements with other people.
  • Lack of empathy. People with autism
    may have difficulty understanding another person's feelings, such as pain or
    sorrow.
•           Verbal and nonverbal communication. Symptoms may include:
  
  • Delay in, or lack of, learning to talk.
    As many as 40% of people with autism never speak.¹
  • Problems taking steps to start a conversation.
    Also, people with autism have difficulties continuing a conversation after it
    has begun.
  • Stereotyped and repetitive use of language. People with
    autism often repeat over and over a phrase they have heard previously
    (echolalia).
  • Difficulty understanding their listener's perspective.
    For example, a person with autism may not understand that someone is using
    humor. They may interpret the communication word for word and fail to catch the
    implied meaning.
•           Limited interests in activities or play. Symptoms may include:
  
  • An unusual focus on pieces. Younger
    children with autism often focus on parts of toys, such as the wheels on a car,
    rather than playing with the entire toy.
  • Preoccupation with
    certain topics. For example, older children and adults may be fascinated by
    video games, trading cards, or license plates.
  • A need for sameness
    and routines. For example, a child with autism may always need to eat bread
    before salad and insist on driving the same route every day to
    school.
  • Stereotyped behaviors. These may include body rocking and
    hand flapping.

                           

Autism is a spectrum of closely related disorders with a shared core of symptoms. Autism spectrum disorders
appear in infancy and early childhood, causing delays in many basic
areas of development, such as learning to talk, play, and interact with
others.

                           

The signs and symptoms of autism vary
widely, as do its effects. Some autistic children have only mild
impairments, while others have more obstacles to overcome. However,
every child on the autism spectrum has problems, at least to some
degree, in the following three areas:

                           

• Communicating verbally and non-verbally
• Relating to others and the world around them
• Thinking and behaving flexibly

                           

There are different opinions among
doctors, parents, and experts about what causes autism and how best to
treat it, but also there is much that we still don’t know. There is one
fact, however, that everyone agrees on: Early and intensive intervention
helps. For children at risk and children who show early signs, it can
make all the difference.