Autism Awareness Campaign - Early Intervention

Focus in last three days posters was on Early Intervention.  I received number of questions in my personal WhatsApp as well as by phone.  They include, who does the early invention, what is meant by early intervention, what is done in early intervention, what kind of improvements can be expected during and after the early intervention, etc.. 

Yesterday I received a phone call from Kerala from a mother of 18 months old child.  [I was quite delighted to see the reach of my poster campaign]!!  Seems her son is unable to walk, and doesn’t interact or play with other children.  Elders in the family felt that such delays do happen and not to worry about it, leading to nothing done.  But the mother was worried.  She got to know about my poster campaign through a relative of mine.  I requested the mother to take the child to a ‘developmental paediatrician’.  Developmental paediatricians evaluate kids who aren’t developing, learning or behaving the way their peers are.  Based on evaluation, the developmental paediatrician charts out an early intervention program for the child. Each program is unique, as each autistic child (or a normal child) is unique. 

Today’s poster presents different aspects of Early Intervention.  What it is, what areas of child development it addresses, what kinds of therapies it include, what types of professionals are involved and what methodologies are generally followed.  It was not easy for me to bring all these facets of ‘Early Intervention’ on a single poster.  Somehow managed! I will just touch upon the methodologies here.  The three major approaches / methodologies widely adopted for early intervention are ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis), Discrete Trial Training (DTT) and Pivotal Response Training.  Will delve up on these in greater details in later posters.  

I didn’t know about ABA till Pratibha was around 20 years old. [Poor awareness]!  Not sure whether these methodologies are applied in special schools.  We did an intense ‘early’ intervention program for Pratibha based on ABA and DTT methodologies, when she was 26 years of age.  ‘Early’ and at the age of 26? Yes, it is possible! Lots of efforts have to be put in to get results. But we did get results!

Form a general awareness point of view, getting an overall idea about Early Intervention is sufficient, and that is what the scope of my poster campaign, during this Autism Awareness month. 

Autism Awareness Campaign - Why Early Intervention Important?

I received three questions based on my yesterday’s poster. All three were similar and here is what they meant.  “You lost first three years, for any intervention.  So what? You had many years after that.  You could have done therapies / treatments after 3 years also, which should have covered up for the lost years”.  My answer to these questions is in today’s poster.

Answer to the question “Why early intervention?” is beautifully depicted in the graph presented in today’s poster.  You can see how steep is the graph “brain’s ability to change” in early ages, and as age increases, the graph becomes flatter, implying ‘the brain’s ability gets decreased as age increases’.  The second graph “amount of effort” keeps increasing as the age increases, implying, more work to be done with brain as age increases.

This happens because of Neuroplasticity or brain plasticity, the ability of brain to modify its connections to re-wire itself.  Without this ability, brain would be unable to develop from infancy through to adulthood or recover from brain injury.  Neuroplasticity is maximal as a foetus or neonate, and then decreases as we age, although never going away completely.  

Is in’t it obvious from the graph [taken from a Harward University publication] that the ability to change brains decreases over time? So, spread the awareness. 0 - 2/3 years is very critical, for children.  I would say this is true, not just for those who show autism symptoms, but for all children.  Your ROI on efforts put on children at very early years is much higher than that compared to later years, in their development.

Autism Awareness Campaign - Symptoms that warrant immediate evaluation

I got quite a few questions, suggestions and appreciations for my yesterday’s poster.  One question was “Would request you to kindly share the traits that we should look for, pre 2 years of age”.. I chose that question to design the poster for today, listing the traits / symptoms that we should look for in pre-2 years children.  The content for the poster is based on my understanding.  My experience is that, each professional / parent working in this space has their own perspectives and opinions on these things.  Hence, emphasising that IMHO… 

Personally, only after about two and half years of age, we were told that our daughter is “special”.  I don’t remember the doctor using the term “Autism” at that time.  We lost the opportunity for “pre- 2 years intervention”.  We could start the intervention only around 3 years of age.   Reason being lack of awareness. Lots of activities are carried out by personnel working in this space to spread awareness, during the month of April.  This year all that is happening only on social media, because of the lockdown.

Let us spread the awareness about autism among our friends, families and other social circles.

Autism Awareness Campaign - Parents in Denial Mode

The most critical period in Autism is early days of the child, may be pre 2 years.  I believe, if right diagnosis is done, then it can be controlled to a great extent in many children, through early intervention programs.  

It is one of the most difficult phase for parents as well as family members of an autistic child.  Everyone in the family, especially parents get into denial mode.  Very few people realise that precious time is lost, and they have to pay a very heavy price for that loss.  Very recently, one of my close friend, a youngster, observed delayed milestones and some of the symptoms in his 14 months old son, and quickly took to doctor and therapist.  The early intervention helped to reduce the gaps in delays in milestones and other behavioural aspects.  The friend of mine was very much aware of some aspects of Autism and its implications, through discussions with me and closely following the activities of social media posts of Arpan.  That understanding triggered him to go for early intervention.  Therapies at that early stage can make a lot of difference.  

So, awareness of Autism among as many families as possible is very critical.  Sadly, the general attitude is to ignore such information, assuming that “nothing will happen to us”.  The way Autism and other developmental disabilities are increasing in the world, it is becoming imperative for everyone to have some basic understanding of Autism and its manifestations. 

Key is “Early Intervention”.. 

Autism Awareness Campaign - Early signs of Autism in children

Today’s poster on “Autism Awareness” presents few typical early signs of Autism in children.  As Autism being a spectrum disorder, all children may not have all symptoms and the degree of severity of each symptom would vary.  Couple of years back, one professional working in disability space told us that Pratibha is not autistic.  We were a bit surprised!  Then I realised that even few parents and professionals working in this space has different understanding and perspectives of Autism and its symptoms.  Hence I felt,  it is very important for general public (I mean, who are not autism parents, or related to any autistic persons) be aware of basic symptoms of autism, as a first step of awareness.  

The posters that I design and post here, are based on my understanding and experience of dealing with Autism in past 3 decades.  I would borrow information from public domain, but would validate and modify them based on my understanding and experience for presentation.   

Autism Awareness Campaign - What is Autism?

April is Autism awareness month. Many people I came across during past few months, have no clue about developmental disabilities such as Autism.

Just thought of creating and spreading a series of posters through social media, on Autism awareness, in the month of April. Planning to do one poster a day.

Request friends to spread the awareness. Even if a small percentage of people get to understand and contribute his/ her bit, to realise the dream of "Inclusion" in this world, that would be great.