WHAT ARE SIGNS YOUR CHILD MAY BE AUTISTIC?

April is Autism Acceptance Month. With the number of individuals diagnosed with autism increasing every year, there has been a transition from autism awareness to autism acceptance. The journey toward acceptance begins with education. So, what is autism?

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a life-long developmental disorder that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other people. It affects how they make sense of the world around them. It is a spectrum condition, meaning that people with autism may share certain difficulties; however, their condition will affect them differently. The three main impairment areas are communication, social interaction, and behavior.

HOW MANY KIDS HAVE AUTISM AND WHAT ARE SOME CHARACTERISTICS?

C&A therapist Sunni Abney recently gave a staff presentation on Autism. In that presentation, Abney said one in 44 children are diagnosed with autism in the United States. Boys are four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls.

More common characteristics of autism include:

Food aversions
Parallel play
Honesty
Avoid eye contact
Struggle to understand idioms
Difficulty reading social cues
Special interests
Difficulty identifying emotions correctly
Attachment to objects
Often have sensory processing issues
Good long-term memory
Engage in stimming
Struggle with change
Difficulty with executive functioning
Repetitive words/phrases
Struggle to initiate or sustain a conversation
Unaware of danger
Sleep challenges
Overreact/underreact to pain

Here are a few common traits for females – engage in masking leading to burnout, attempt to make friends by mimicking behaviors and controlling others, advanced vocabulary, and anxiety is often a prevalent characteristic.

Behaviors

One of the behaviors children with autism experience is stimming. Stimming is a self-stimulatory behavior that usually involves repetitive movements or sounds. It can be used to help the individual stay focused, manage anxiety, assist in dealing with sensory overload or an unfamiliar situation, and express frustration. There are six types of stims – visual, auditory, tactile, vestibular, taste and olfactory.

What does some stimming look like? Examples of some stimming is rocking, humming, grinding teeth, rolling eyes, clapping hands, squinting, cracking knuckles, jumping or coughing/clearing throat.

Stimming only requires intervention when it disrupts others, is harming to themselves, interferes with socialization and/or acceptance from peers/community or interferes with learning.

Here are additional stimming behaviors and replacements:

Hand flapping – stress ball or other fidget, color or draw, arts and crafts, kinetic sand or play dough
Spinning in circles – go for a walk, act as staff helper, activity in gym and weighted blanket
Licking items – chew gum, eat a snack, engage in conversation, pencil topper, chewy
Repeating Lines from a show – ask a question about a show, engage in conversation about the show, give a specified amount of time to talk about the show
Rocking back and forth – lay on the floor, go for a walk, activity in gym, use an exercise ball as a desk chair
Jumping – provide a chair band, go for a walk, activity in gym, going up and down the stairs

The key to controlling stimming is communication, eliminating triggers, sticking to a routine, teaching alternative behaviors to reach the same need, and addressing the reasoning behind the stimming.

Sensory Processing

Individuals with autism often have difficulties organizing information from their senses, difficulty regulating emotional reactions, poor balance, coordination, and muscle control.

Some of the triggers for individuals with sensory processing are:

Buildings – smells, lights, sounds of multiple voices and zippers on bookbags
Schools– smells, hallway lighting, multiple voices, classroom lights, air purifier, smell of lunch, snack/lunch wrappers, people drinking/eating, desk drawers opening and closing, clock ticking, clicking of pencils/pens, staff phones, facets, keys, fidgets.
Offices – lights, smells, clock ticking, temperature, sounds/voices from other offices, fabric on chairs

Individuals with autism are divided into two groups – avoiders vs seekers.

Avoiders/hypersensitive tend to avoid or escape stimulation, avoids active movements or activities, become agitated in presence of stimulation, may meltdown due to sensory overload.

These types of kids will cover their ears, be distracted by background noises, be agitated in large groups, can hear frequencies others can’t, and avoid common sounds.

Tips to help these individuals include limit the number of steps given verbally, provide headphones and gradually introduce new, calming sounds.

In a visual setting, these individuals are sensitive to bright lights and sunlight, sensitive to certain colors and squint or use peripheral vision.

Visual tools include providing sunglasses, limit stimuli on the walls, move desks from windows and low lighting.

Individuals who are seekers/hypo-sensitive often are viewed as acting out or defiant and disruptive, crave or seek out stimulation, under-reactive to input, may not register low-level stimulation, hyperactive and impulsive.

These individuals speak loudly, don’t notice sounds unless they are loud and make loud repetitive sounds. Tips for these individuals include playing calming music, nature sounds, as wells as hum, clap or whistle sets of sounds and the client repeats.

These kids may be attracted to visual stimulation, like lights turned on and off, reflective surfaces, and likes moving objects.

These individuals will like hidden pictures, create and use a sensory bottle, play hide and seek, scavenger hunts, sort shapes and play ‘I spy.’

Most neurodiverse individuals are a combination of both avoiders and seekers.

Sensory Overload

Many autistic individuals have a sensory overload, which causes the individual to lose balance or coordination, refusing the activity, covering their ears, crying, complaining of stomach pain, sweating excessively, easily agitated/angry, stimming, echolalia, verbal and/or physical aggression and non-verbal.

Tips to help individuals may include turning down the lights, minimal things on the wall, give instructions in few steps, allow additional time to process directions, give additional time to complete activity/play game, quiet instrumental music, provide a visual schedule, advanced warning of change in routine, sensory toolbox.

Many schools today have sensory rooms. But if a school does not have a sensory area, here are some tips a school could implement. The school could have pipe cleaners, worry stones, stress balls, Pop-it, Rubik’s cube, Tangle, bubble wrap, sensory bottle, slinky, squish ball, coloring pages, headphones, fidget spinners, stretch fidget, kinetic sand, expanding ball, animal squishy, marble fidgets, infinity cube, fidget cube, marble maze, cotton balls, Legos, and bubbles.

If you feel your child may be on the spectrum or is experiencing stress, anxiety, or other behavioral issues, please contact C&A at 330.433.6075.

Sunny Abney, MA, LPC, has been a therapist at C&A for 11 years. She currently works with clients in our Day Treatment school. Abney is the parent of two sons with autism. The information for this post was taken from a staff training she did on Feb. 21.

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STARK COUNTY SCHOOLS MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS

16 Apr, 2024

The sixth annual Stark County Schools Mental Health Awareness Week is May 6-10 Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health (C&A), CommQuest Services and Pathway Caring for Children will partner to bring positive mental health awareness to more than 53,000 students and 7,000 support and administrative staff in all 18 Stark County School districts.

UNDERSTANDING RACE IN SOCIETY AND THERAPY: CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS’ EXPERIENCES

By Chris Alpert • 16 Nov, 2023

In the film, I’m Not Racist… Am I? as introduced and explored in first of this three-part blog post series, the participants engaged in multiple workshops that address race and racism. Interpersonally, the group of students grapple with their own differences and similarities, which impact the content and emotions they share with each other. There are several moments in the film that demonstrate the clear differences in the participants’ understanding of race. In the first workshop, the students were exposed to the idea that all white people are inherently racist seeing as American society was founded on principles meant to support white people (see more on structural racism here, here, and here for further understanding). Several white students in the film became emotional during that workshop. Most students remained quiet. Following this workshop, a black student and a white student were filmed independently of each other in their own homes and discussed the workshop and what they learned with their families. The white student discussed the differences between structural racism and bigotry with her mother and struggled to identify with the principles taught in the training. The black student stated to his mother how almost everything spoken in that workshop applied to him. The student further discussed his feelings by stating how overt racism is and yet how “subliminal” it is at the same time. How can something be so in your face and yet under your feet simultaneously? I immediately reflected on the dialectic of something being so clear and yet so vague. The film continued to grapple with student differences. At the beginning of the film, one white male student discussed with his mother how he feels that all individuals, if they apply themselves wholeheartedly, have the same chance of success regardless of their skin, gender, sexuality or other demographic factors. As a white man myself, I must confess that when I was in high school, I had the same mindset. How could it be different? Especially when I was reading mythic bootstrap literature in high school classes. Sure, the harder you work the more you deserve, but that statement does not work for all Americans. I had not accounted for racial factors that inhibit the growth of others, not to mention socio-economic factors, nationalities, citizenship status, gender and age. I continued to reflect on these statements and connected them to my experience in high school in New York City. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement responding to the murder of George Floyd, multiple private progressive schools in New York, including the one I went to, suffered scrutiny from students and alumni who identify as black, indigenous people of color (BIPOC). Multiple Instagram accounts surfaced with the handle “BLACK AT [school name].” I read the posts in 2020, and again before writing this post, and remembered feeling horrified knowing these acts of racism, bigotry and microaggressions happened all around me. This was subliminal to me, yet overt to others.

UNDERSTANDING RACE IN SOCIETY AND THERAPY

By Chris Alpert • 01 Nov, 2023

When I first came to Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health (C&A), I was unsure what to expect regarding race and diversity at both the organization and in Ohio. Having grown up in Harlem in New York City and attended graduate school in San Diego, CA, I had heard stereotypes about Ohio, specifically that Ohio was a very white state. At C&A during orientation, we discussed the role of first impressions for clients and discussed how the front desk staff are considered, “the directors of first impressions.” I loved this term. After orientation, I wondered, why we didn’t discuss demographic factors such as race and gender? We generally pick those up upon first impressions and have implicit biases and judgements in those first impressions. It was odd to me that we did not discuss these demographic factors. As the summer and fall progressed, I noticed that there were few discussions about race as it impacts C&A and the kids and families we serve. I noticed the number of white staff at C&A and reflected on my own privilege as a white man who can easily avoid the discussion of race because I do not suffer discrimination on an individual or systemic level. I reflected on my first experiences discussing race in high school. When I was in high school at the Calhoun School, my father received a grant to create a film and workshops that addressed race and racism seen through the eyes of high schoolers in New York City. My dad had completed a training hosted by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. This training opened my father’s eyes to his own white privilege and motivated him to teach kids, specifically white kids, about their privilege earlier in life. I first saw the film, I’m Not Racist… Am I? (see more here ), toward the end of high school after it had come out in 2014.

THE DANGERS OF MARIJUANA USE

By Dr. Karita Nussbaum • 20 Oct, 2023

Ohio is at a crossroads once again with marijuana on the ballot next month. The following article is from Every Brain Matters, an organization that believes that the THC in marijuana is a dangerous and addictive drug. Every Brain Matters is a trusted source of educational material based on the latest scientific evidence. One of the major criticisms of expanded marijuana legalization is that it makes the drug more accessible to minors. A brand-new study just published in JAMA Pediatrics shows that it has become a valid concern.

LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE – SOUTHERN NIGHTS: ILLUMINATING HOPE AND MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS FOR THE YOUNGER GENERATION

By Savannah Okray • 11 Sep, 2023

For the last few months, C&A has been diligently preparing for the 18th Annual Let Your Light Shine – Southern Nights presented by The Repository by organizing auction items, printing tickets and using their creativity to make sure that eventgoers feel as though they are walking into an evening in the south, with barrels and lanterns to boot. The committee, led by chair Jen Frey and co-chair Molly Sperling and auction chair Stacy Remark are hard at work, it’s crucial to remember that this event raises awareness and dollars to support the agency’s programs and services amid suicide prevention and awareness month.

GROWING WITH YOUR CHILD AS A PARENT

By Dan Mucci • 30 Aug, 2023

I have grown up as a parent for the last four and half years! As luck would have it, a little more than four and a half years ago, I started at Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health (C&A) in the mission advancement department with my responsibilities being the marketing and development coordinator. Some might say, I did a good job of raising my two kids, who were teenagers at the time. But, boy, if I had known of the services C&A offered and even some of the parenting tools for my toolbox, parenting might have been even better.

WHAT DID YOU DID THIS SUMMER?

By Dr. Karita Nussbaum • 09 Aug, 2023

This summer I attended a Marijuana Prevention conference near Denver, Colorado. I was curious to know what the locals were saying after 10 years of legalization. The speakers included a Denver Police Commander, school resource officer, medical doctor, residential treatment program CEO, deputy from the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), Executive Director of the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association and others related to educating the community and defending children’s rights. In the audience were parents, professionals and advocates for children from all over the United States. The conference was geared toward the protection of children.

FROM DARKNESS TO DISCOVERY: MY COLLEGE JOURNEY OF SELF-TRANSFORMATION

By Savannah Okray • 24 Jul, 2023

When I arrived on campus, I tried to immerse myself in college culture. I joined a sorority, the speech and debate team, and two other clubs which were extensive time commitments, factoring in no time to relax or focus on bettering my mental health. This lack of attention to my mentality, combined with my low self-esteem that prevented me from making friends led me down a dark hole in which some days I thought it would be better if I wasn’t here. About four weeks into school (at Ohio University), I realized that I had to do something, as I knew it was not safe for me to continue down the road I had been on. From there I moved home and attended an inpatient treatment center where I worked with counselors for five hours a day, learning coping skills and other ways in which I could help mend my suffering mental health. Through the lessons I learned I was able to get the skill set and help I needed and returned to school three weeks later.

THIS IS WHY WE CELEBATE

By Mary Kreitz • 19 Jun, 2023

This time of year there are a lot of celebrations happening in our communities – Memorial Day, Pride Festivals, Juneteenth celebrations, 4th of July and many more. These events aren’t just frivolous excuses to have parties, backyard barbecues or festivals. They are important cultural and civic events we need these celebrations.