November 6, 2008
Look Into My Eyes
One of the things I noticed about Zoe when we first suspected she had autism was the lack of eye contact. When the neurologist and the developmental pediatrician evaluated Zoe, frequency of eye contact was one of the many things they asked about. Ask most parents of autistic children and they’ll tell you that getting their kids to look at them when they’re speaking is a challenge. Eye fixation has been found to be an indicator of the level of social disability: the children with greater social challenges are the ones who spend the least time looking into people’s eyes.
A recent autism research study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that, when shown videos of adults looking directly into the camera, autistic children spent approximately 40 percent of the time, compared with 24 percent for children in the children in the control groups (which included one group of neurotypical children and a group of developmentally disabled—but not autistic—children). The children studied were are 2 years old, and doctors are optimistic that eye-mapping technology can lead to earlier diagnosis and earlier intervention. Earlier intervention can be crucial in improved outcomes for autistic children.
Some of the common signs of autism include:
-Avoids cuddling or making eye contact
-Does not respond to voices or other sounds
-Does not respond to his or her name
-Does not talk or does not use language properly
-Rocks back and forth, spins or bangs his or her head
-Stares at parts of an object, such as the wheels of a toy car
-Does not understand hand gestures or body language
-Does not pretend or play make-believe games
-Is very concerned with order, routine or ritual and becomes upset if routine is disturbed or changed
-Has a flat facial expression or uses a monotone voice
-Injures himself or herself or is unafraid of danger
Details of the study are available online here. Additional information can also be found at the National Institue of Mental Health website.
What were some of the signs you noticed which led you to believe your child may be different? Email me at flamencomom@gmail.com or leave a comment. Thanks!
It's Your Turn To Help...
Thanks! Kirtsy is our Favorite. :)
4 Comments on Look Into My Eyes »
#1 - Jen @ 5:58 pm
From very early on (about a year and a half old) my son was obsessed with lining things up in rows. It was how he played. Around the age of two he had started doing things like flapping his hands when he was nervous. He also had a photographic memory and could memorize movies, books, songs and commerical jingles after hearing/seeing them once.
He's my oldest child and back then I didn't know what to look for so it never really occured to me that anything unusual might be going on. It wasn't until he was three that a teacher of the early childhood education program he was in suggested we have him evaluated. When the results came back that was the first time I ever heard "Aspergers" in relation to my child and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I still look back and wonder why I didn't know better, why I didn't see it. It was all there in front of me, I just didn't know better.
#2 - Ecki @ 7:46 pm
Well, with my older daughter, my SIL (who works with special needs kids) mentioned that she seemed on the "edge of normal" when she was 2 years old. And then when she went to preschool, the teacher suspected that she might be on the spectrum since she had like 30 meltdowns a day! She'd line stuff up, stare at ceiling fans endlessly, constantly touch various textures (she wore out the corners of all our throw pillows) pace back and forth or spin in circles, recite lines from movies that she would watch over and over again, answer questions inappropriately, laugh when another child got hurt, have absolutely no expression when she was happy….is that enough?
Do you know what's really weird, though? Nearly all of those things I mentioned are gone now and she's 7. There are a few "quirky" remnants — she still cries a couple times a day if she feels she has been treated unjustly or if she can't find something that she's looking for. She still struggles with the social stuff. She becomesBut otherwise, I don't even think she'd still have the PDD-NOS if she were to be evaluated now.
#3 - Danette @ 9:05 am
Well I just started to answer and realized it was becoming awfully long so I'll write a post and come back to link to it.
For what it's worth, I have read from adults with autism that they truly have difficulty with both looking and listening at the same time, essentially they can look at you or they can listen to you but they can't do both at the same time. So even though we often ask our boys to look at us briefly just as a way to acknowledge that they know we're talking to them, we don't expect them to keep their eyes on us while we're talking. They typically don't keep their eyes on us when they're talking to us either, which is fine with me. They do make intermittent eye contact which has come with some effort, but honestly I'd rather hear what's on their minds than force them to make eye contact which would distract them to a point of making it hard for them to tell us what's on their minds. Hopefully that makes sense.
#4 - Trish @ 9:15 am
My son was fascinated with spinning - both himself and his toys. He would line up all his toy cars upside down and walk down the line to spin each one's wheels and then go back to the beginning and do it again. He would also get close to things (or us) and look at them out of the corner of his eye.
Not responding to his name, not being able to communicate what he wanted, not talking, not being able to play appropriately with toys, not staying with us, not responding to pain.
So many signs, but we didn't really suspect, we were just confused and trying to figure out what we were doing wrong! Thankfully, someone pointed us to Early Intervention. I'm so glad to hear that they are finding ways to use this information to help identify kids who need help earlier.