Early Intervention the answer on Autism

More children are being diagnosed as having autism, and although it is a lifelong condition, early intervention is the best to help, child psychologist and autism expert Dr Hannah Waddington told the club this week.

Autism is a neurological condition mainly caused by a genetic difference in the baby’s development in the womb and is becoming more common in many countries.

Dr Waddington gave as reasons for the increasing incidence greater awareness leading to more diagnoses, a wider definition of autism than had been previously used, and reclassification of some other conditions such as Asperger’s as autism. In New Zealand one child in 45 was placed somewhere on the autism spectrum compared to one in 59 in the USA.

Autism showed up in children in two ways: one was a social awkwardness and difficulty in interaction with others; the second was repetitive and restrictive behaviours such as wanting to play only with a train set or to sit on a swing to the exclusion of other activities.

Dr Waddington said that such children needed help to get them interested in other things. Otherwise they risked missing out on important parts of their development. In answer to a question she said that while about ten percent of autistic children could be classed as ‘savants’, exceptionally bright and very fast learners, there were about an equal number who were intellectually slow and needed considerable help.

She runs an autism clinic at Victoria University where the number of families with autistic children have increased from nine in 2017 to nearly fifty this year.

Dr Waddington advocates the use of the Early Start Denver Model to help children to learn and the clinic trains parents, teachers and therapists to use this approach. She said it was a “routines based naturalistic developmental behavioural intervention,” and worked better the early the intervention started.

For example, if a child liked blowing bubbles the adult would engage the child by making a sound, and encourage the child to copy the sound. If the child did so, the adult would blow bubbles in a simple behaviour- reward approach