Every child can do better

The word autism evokes multiple reactions and conjures images ranging from the brilliant savant in Rainman to the lead character in My Name is Khan to Antara from the serial named after the little girl. In essence, autism ('aut' here means self or towards self) is a variation from normal development that has a variable impairment in social Interaction and communication with repetitive stereotypical actions and intense fascination with certain interests.

Since an autistic child's development happens on a tract deviant from the normal development, the crux is in identifying concerns as early as possible. Suspicion is raised in the first year, when a child does not reciprocate when shown affection or communicated to, does not respond when welcomed with arms outstretched for a hug or does not respond to "show your tongue".

The child may not participate in joint activities with parents or siblings or prefer being on her own and be engrossed in her own interests, ignoring all else. In the second year, parents often raise a red flag over delayed speech but it is important to remember that verbal communication can develop well only after social recognition, meaningful eye contact, social orientation and non verbal interaction.

Intervention is based on enhancing the skills that haven't been developed naturally in a step by step skill development and enhancement programme in affected domains of development. This requires experts in different domains to work together to provide a programme that is child-centric, rather than based on individual or conflicting views of experts. Since this varies with the progress of the child, the programme needs to be dynamic. All intervention must be outcome based. Hence documentation is essential for improvement. Parents need to ascertain these professional necessities.

The eventual outcome is optimal inclusion of the child in society. Education and careers need to be built around this aim. This can be achieved with planning, consistency and persistence. "Every child can do better" is our guiding principle and that is possible if we reorient from label to enable.