Autistic Children Research Paper

Mullane - Project 1 This video has several different parents discussing their autistic children. Many of these parents did not realize there were problems with their child, but they discuss how this was detected. The reason for this lack of awareness was that many of these autistic children were first kids so the parents did not have a reference point for milestones. Due to this lack of a comparison, they would realize their child was not meeting goals when answering questions of the pediatrician. In fact, one conversation involved the doctor asking how many words the child knew. The parent said none. This was a startling realization that something wasn’t normal. Another way these parents discovered there were problems is seeing children of friends and realizing their child was not acting the same way. Fortunately, in these examples, a diagnosis was obtained very early in the child’s development, which is a critical time for interventions, so that child will be able to meet their full potential (Boutot 2017, p. 43).

Many of their ventures include doctor appointments, occupational therapists, speech therapists and others, which are very costly and time consuming to these families. In addition, they can’t leave their child alone because there isn’t anyone who can watch them to give the parent a break. Also, these parents don’t have time to feel sorry for themselves or process their emotions, since this time is taken by their child. The issues of financial and emotional assistance along with a break from child care duties are common needs of these families (Boutot 2017, p. 47). However, this video makes these issues so much more clear by showing how these parents are facing very difficult