Autism-World

Ask: My friend has a brother who had autism, he seems pretty normal to me though, autistic kids dn’t show emtionbut the hamsters or something died and he was cryin, like he was really upset and things like jokes he laughs truely, he has a little brother who is 3, he’s great with him, if he cuts his knee, he’d b right downat his level, tellin it’s ok, moms gonna b here soon, gettin a big hug, thouggh he other shows, i mean i don’t have any proof, but i just odn’t feel that he has any love 4 his parents or anyone, that’s when i feel the autism in him, has he got it mild? or is autism just autism

Answer:Autism is what’s called a spectrum disorder. That means that it can range from very mild to quite severe. Kids with severe autism may never even learn to talk or make eye contact. At the other end of the spectrum, kids with Asperger’s, which is a very mild form of autism, might just be considered kind of nerdy growing up, and will often learn skills that will alow them to seem completely normal as an adult. So an autistic kid could be anywhere between completely unable to communiticate with others to pretty much just being considered the class nerd. Although the most severe forms are autism are what we usually hear about on TV and such, most cases are actually a lot more mild than that. Your friend’s brother is probably somewhere towards the more mild end of the autism spectrum.

Autism doesn’t quite mean that you don’t show emotion (that we call being male), but rather that you can’t read social cues in a normal way, and maybe can’t process sensory information well. Although your friend’s brother is cabable of some normal social interactions, he’s probably pretty bad at knowing what’s expected of him in a given social situation (although you may not see this as he gets older as many people with mild autism learn to conciously think about doing things that are instinctive to most of us, like how many seconds to make eye contact during a converstion). He might have poor verbal skills, say things that seem weird or inappropriate, and miss subtle non-verbal communication. And, of course, there’s the part of it that you picked up on where it doesn’t seem like he loves his parents.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 5:57 pm and is filed under What is Autism.