My 2 year old daughter has been diagnosed with autism.
For me this is challenging because autism remains poorly explained. I like everyone else remotely associated with autism have been trying to work out a theory behind it.
My daughter doesn't exhibit the social impairment. She's affectionate, happy, independent, willful, generally engaged with her environment, and shows no repetitive behaviors, nor really any sign of developmental delay other than the fact that she doesn't talk. Beyond that she shows great mechanical skills, impressive physical control in both find and gross motor control, and she anticipates our actions well. In fact, she often picks up queues from our behavior or reactions that she uses to figure out what we're expecting from her when the verbal isn't enough.
For a long time the autism diagnosis hasn't made sense to us, we've just felt like she's likely a late-talker. But as she's approaching 3 now and still doesn't talk, we've become both more concerned and more accepting that she is on the autism spectrum.
What has become clear more recently though is that she simply can't do object identification on demand. If you ask her to pick up the ball, she'll try to key off our body language to know which thing she's supposed to pick up. If you ask her to point at a picture of Curious George, her favorite TV character, in a book she can't do it. If you ask her to point at her belly-button, she'll again try to queue off of where you're looking or other signal to know where she's supposed to point. She has an iphone game she enjoys where it speaks the name of a shape and she has to pick out that shape. She just guesses every time.
She has trouble with attending and engaging, though so do many 2 year olds. I'm starting to wonder if the lack of attending and engaging is because she's not sure what we're talking about and because she can't identify objects, she's not as likely to do showing or other play interaction behaviors.
The interesting question, and one I'm still struggling with, is why would object identification which is so natural to so many kids be hard for my daughter. Obviously there's something neurologically different about her.
I tend to believe that autism is likely a manifestation of an increased rate of brain evolution in response to the changes society has undergone in the last 50 years. Very high intelligence is generally a more desirable trait in a mate than it was even 50 years ago. There's research to suggest that a longer childhood and more nurturing development are required for higher intelligence. So what I'm wondering is if we're seeing both changes in the brain and changes in the order in which the brain organizes itself that require longer developmental lead times?
I don't know. I know my daughter is very intelligent, but I also know her brain works differently than other kids. My wife and I are both someone unique amongst our peers in how our brains work and in many cases we can observe those same unique traits in our daughter. But what I can't explain is why the particular task of object identification is so difficult for her.
For me this is challenging because autism remains poorly explained. I like everyone else remotely associated with autism have been trying to work out a theory behind it.
My daughter doesn't exhibit the social impairment. She's affectionate, happy, independent, willful, generally engaged with her environment, and shows no repetitive behaviors, nor really any sign of developmental delay other than the fact that she doesn't talk. Beyond that she shows great mechanical skills, impressive physical control in both find and gross motor control, and she anticipates our actions well. In fact, she often picks up queues from our behavior or reactions that she uses to figure out what we're expecting from her when the verbal isn't enough.
For a long time the autism diagnosis hasn't made sense to us, we've just felt like she's likely a late-talker. But as she's approaching 3 now and still doesn't talk, we've become both more concerned and more accepting that she is on the autism spectrum.
What has become clear more recently though is that she simply can't do object identification on demand. If you ask her to pick up the ball, she'll try to key off our body language to know which thing she's supposed to pick up. If you ask her to point at a picture of Curious George, her favorite TV character, in a book she can't do it. If you ask her to point at her belly-button, she'll again try to queue off of where you're looking or other signal to know where she's supposed to point. She has an iphone game she enjoys where it speaks the name of a shape and she has to pick out that shape. She just guesses every time.
She has trouble with attending and engaging, though so do many 2 year olds. I'm starting to wonder if the lack of attending and engaging is because she's not sure what we're talking about and because she can't identify objects, she's not as likely to do showing or other play interaction behaviors.
The interesting question, and one I'm still struggling with, is why would object identification which is so natural to so many kids be hard for my daughter. Obviously there's something neurologically different about her.
I tend to believe that autism is likely a manifestation of an increased rate of brain evolution in response to the changes society has undergone in the last 50 years. Very high intelligence is generally a more desirable trait in a mate than it was even 50 years ago. There's research to suggest that a longer childhood and more nurturing development are required for higher intelligence. So what I'm wondering is if we're seeing both changes in the brain and changes in the order in which the brain organizes itself that require longer developmental lead times?
I don't know. I know my daughter is very intelligent, but I also know her brain works differently than other kids. My wife and I are both someone unique amongst our peers in how our brains work and in many cases we can observe those same unique traits in our daughter. But what I can't explain is why the particular task of object identification is so difficult for her.
posted by IdeaMan at 6:46 AM
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