Does My Child Have Autism and What it’s About?

Hey guys, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com alright, so today we're talking about autism, whether your child has it or what's it about and so on. And we can stop this video here because I don't know, I don't know if your child has asd, autism spectrum disorder or not. And that's because if you're worried, you should go get an assessment. If you tell me over the Internet and I tell you that yes or no, that's illegal, I cannot do that and it's unethical to do so and I'd probably go to jail and a few countries around the world for giving this kind of advice over the Internet. Okay? I'm a speech therapist. I cannot give a diagnosis even if doctor or clinical psychologist cannot answer a question of whether your child has or has not autism. Okay? And I, I know that you, what you're doing right now is that when you're searching about this stuff, you go online and you find this video is because you already seen some of the red flags for autism, right? You've seen not enough eye contact, you know, lining up toys, spinning stuff, not responding to name it, doesn't follow instructions, this kind of things. Well, these are risk factors. And red flags for autism doesn't mean it naturally correlates. Like naturally equals to autism, right? And as an actual fact, other types of disorders may have these problems as well, which is not autism, might be a language disorder, might be just something to do with hearing or a blocked ear or something, right? So all these things you have to clear out if your child is old enough and there's service, go get an assessment, okay? No one else can tell you whether your child has or has not if there isn't an assessment. Okay? I need to tell you like three times probably in this video to drill it into all parents brain because usually what we get at the email of agents of speech.com or just like through Facebook messaging and whatnot, what we'll see is like, oh Ming, my child is three. Does he have autism? He's not talking. I don't know. I cannot give you an answer. If I give you, I would be the one who's wrong. Whether your child has or has not, ok? I would be the person who did the wrong thing. Okay? So don't worry about it. If you're worried, go get assessment. If your child isn't old enough to get a autism assessment, then wait. Obviously there are some places in the world that autism diagnosis might not be as accurate as other places. I'm talking about Southeast Asia in general, because I, right now I'm living in Southeast Asia. So I kind of understand why parents are so paranoid about that because they cannot find someone who they can trust. Right? Okay. So let's talk about what autism is. I'm not going to give you an official definition. This is me as a therapist who has worked with, therapy with, with children on a spectrum since 2000, 2014, which is how long now? Seven years. So autism is kind of like a different operating system, right? It's different. Their brains are wired kind of differently. How they see the world and sense the world is very different from us. Something that we might feel like, it's no biggie. They will feel like it's very annoying. So, for instance, some autistic children do not like, like sticky surfaces in general. Some love it, right? Some cannot stand it at all. Someone will punch someone if they are forced to touch that kind of stuff, right? Some children are very, very sensitive to noises. Some do not care. And for us neurotypical people, meaning people who are not on the spectrum and have typical brains, our tolerance for things are in the range as well, right? Some people are tolerant of hearing like the knife scratching the plate or a fork and go, I am one of those people. I hate those noises. But some people are totally okay with it. But the autism spectrum is like a whole spectrum, right? It's a different operating system. Their tolerance level can be hugely different. Some people, when they hear it, they go crazy. Some people when they hear it, there's like nothing to them. So it's very different. Each individual in this on the spectrum is very different. All of them have a different operating system than that's most probably they think differently, they feel differently, they sense differently. And it just creates a whole communication barrier because let me give you an example. Most people can HEAR the old TVs, you know, the big boxy ones. So if you're a millennial, you probably like myself, you probably know. But if you're in like a Zen Z or Gen Z, then you probably don't know about these big boxy cr. What cr? Vcr, whatever. Vcr. I don't know. Those big TV boxes, you know, when you turn it on, you can hear it, you can sense it. There's like a faint sound that you can hear, right? So if you were to tell and describe that sound to someone who has never heard it before, couldn't sense it, it's very difficult. But if you can, if you talk to someone who knows that sound, oh, you Know, you know, that turning on TV sound, and then they're like, yeah, I know about that because I've sensed it before, right? So it's that kind of discrepancy. So therefore, that's why a lot of ASD people, they get very mad because though how they hear something or how they sense something is so different from us, they cannot tell us with language because no neurotypical person has ever described it in words for them. So therefore, when they're trying to tell you, oh, I feel really bad because, you know, the texture is just too, I don't know, slippery or whatever, right? They can't put it in words. They just tell you that they want it to stop. Right? So that's what I think autism is. Obviously, there are loads of people who would disagree with me or whatever, but this is what I hear from my autistic students and from working with them, okay. Over the past seven years. All right? And obviously there will be people who say that, no, that's not the case. Yes, that's the case, whatever. But at the very least, that's my opinion, all right? And autism itself, it's. It affects a whole load of aspects, not only just communication and behavior or whatever, right? So there's like language, play, behavior, social, all these kind of aspects that will be affected is if someone is on the spectrum, okay? So if you. If you see your child that the. The language is pretty good, their play is pretty good, they have some disruptive behavior, the social ability is not on par. Does that mean that they have autism? Maybe, maybe not. No one knows, okay? Each autistic person has their strengths and weaknesses, all right? But a lot of times, whether a child has autism or not, what you're doing is that you're focusing everything on the weakness you're seeing, that you're focusing on the things that they have a deficit on, right? You're thinking about, oh, no, my child doesn't look at me, so therefore, I'll teach them to look at me. That's working on weaknesses, right? Oh, they're not answering my name, so I'm going to teach them to look at my name. Working on weaknesses again. How about let's switch it up and think about how to work on their strengths to help on their weaknesses, right? So for instance, what we do in therapy a lot is that if they can use a sound or use it, they can copy gestures and so on. We're going to use that to help them get what they want. For instance, if they get really angry at when they cannot get like a biscuit from you. Well, use their strength and teach them to use what they know in order to request for that cookie from you without having to throw a tantrum. Okay? So you have to shift your thinking. It doesn't matter if your child is on the spectrum or not. If you're doing this kind of training with them or going to therapy or whatever. Think about what they have right now in order to teach what they don't have. Okay? Don't try to teach something that they don't have from nothing. Okay? That's gonna end in a disaster. Okay. That's all I'm gonna say. Okay. And I know that most probably you came to this video to know more about autism and what is it about? I hope I've given you some insight about it. There are loads of information online nowadays about autism. You can go down that rabbit hole or you can go ahead and start doing something about it. Whether you know or you don't know, your child is on the spectrum. All right, wait. If you have the patience to. And actually you must and do not try to self diagnose or anything like that, because that's not the right way. That's what I would say. All right, so if you haven't, you should go to agents of Speech.com checklist to grab a checklist of a list of all the tools and toys we recommend parents to use when they start home therapy. Okay? So this is all for this week's video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.