Loneliness and Autism: The Importance of Understanding their Situation

Loneliness is much more serious and much deeper than a simple victim attitude or a continuous complaint.

Having autism can condemn you to loneliness. Today we try to explain a feeling born of a lived reality: loneliness or “ghosting,” which many people who have ASD suffer daily. The word “ghost” is used to express a situation in which you feel that you are treated like a ghost, as they don’t see you.

In this article, you’ll know the great importance of being included in society for children and people with ASD.

Loneliness and Autism

The fact that there are people with ASD who suffer from ghosting or loneliness is something much more serious and much deeper than a simple victim attitude or a continuous complaint. This can begin in childhood and come to last throughout their lives.

Many times parents leave the family to avoid having to bear a child “who doesn’t meet expectations” and leave the other one alone. This could be considered ghosting, which can happen in many cases, but when it happens in a family with a member with autism, is the beginning or continuity of a social attitude. Loneliness can become a very influential factor in the person.

The most common is that in a group of friends the person with ASD is not accepted and ends up being excluded from any activity they do. Why? Are they bad people for them not wanting to include them? Do they have to be banned for life? What did they do wrong?

These exclusions can cause a lot of damage to your child:

• Lack of self-esteem.
• Insecurity.
• Withdrawn attitude.
• Further refusal at future interactions.

These situations can lead to depression, general malaise, hatred towards the world, and other concomitant pathologies that can’t be helped with medication or psychotherapy. Even the person can consider taking his own life because he is doomed to loneliness and has no hope.

Telling a child not to go with his classmates, telling teachers to put him in an ASD room, separating children just for fear of having autism is a bad idea. We would be taking away the opportunity to relate with your classmates and your classmates to find out what autism really is.

Education must be strengthened in the values ​​of respect for everyone. If we keep excluding children with autism by the system, we’ll get adults who are excluded from the system, who lack basic tools to relate and who end up alone without knowing how to face the day to day there outside.

If we don’t stop the exclusion, we’ll have an increasingly larger group more separated from society.

Autism Soccer offers you an inclusion program for your child, where they can share and develop with other kids, creating stable friendships through sports. Having a good time!

Loneliness is discrimination based on the invisibility that covers the lives of people with autism and their families.

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Autism: The Difference of Being and Having

Autism doesn't define the person. You are not autistic, you are a person, and you have autism.

Nowadays it is very usual to refer to people who have autism as autistic. "My son is autistic," "he is autistic," and it is curious how "having" has been replaced by "being." Autism does not define the person; you are not autistic, you have autism, and you are a person. However, it seems normal to define a person as autistic, in addition to pigeonhole in a behavior that has little to do with the reality of autism.

Autism doesn't define the person

We must begin to banish that stigma; people are not autistic, they have autism. We already put things too difficult for people who are in the Autism Spectrum Disorder to also mark them as something weird with a word.

Society has a great ignorance, which leads us to be conditioned by absurd messages. Autism is something much more complex, affects one in every 175 children, causes terror in the parents of children diagnosed precisely by that way of pigeonholing society.

People can be tall, skinny, or even blonde. Although such definitions are only intended to define certain particularities, however, the term “autistic” has been extended to define, classify and label people who have an Autism Spectrum Disorder.

It is, in short, a way to establish boundaries between the social group and people with autism. Although it may seem a vulgar question of the lexicon, finally the definition confuses and stigmatizes the person suffering from the syndrome mentioned above.

We must begin to demystify autism. In the world there are more than 1,000,000 people with autism and deserve all our respect and support, beginning by not looking at them as something outside the world or defining them as special beings.

We must start to demystify autism, starting by not looking at them over our shoulders or defining them as "special" beings.

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Good Night's Sleep: Guide for Parents!

Any underlying problem may be affecting sleep: from allergies, environmental intolerances, to the medications the child takes.

Most parents have difficulties with their children at bedtime. In children, the problems for sleeping are a common phase in their development. But, if these problems persist, they can have adverse effects on the child, the parents, and even other family members. Children with ASD seem to have these problems for sleeping more frequent and even more intense than neurotypical children. Bedtime can become a daily challenge for parents.

First of all, you should identify the reason for the child having trouble sleeping. Consider allergies or food intolerances, gastrointestinal problems, and seizures, or even the environment. All of these can occur in people with ASD. These problems may also be caused by medications and their side effects.

Environmental Variables

Maybe the environment where your child sleeps is being uncomfortable for him or her. You may need to make some adaptations, so the child can relax at bedtime.

• Temperature. Consider if the child is very hot or cold. Examine the temperature of the room, sleeping clothes or bed.

• Noise. Consider noises that may be affecting your child. In the process of sleeping, the sounds that your child hears can be impossible to ignore. Some children within the autism spectrum disorders may prefer dark places during the day, but that’s very different from sleeping in a large dark room at night. Street lights, the moon, or car lights that illuminate the room at intermittent intervals can affect your child's sleep.

Bedtime Routines

Establishing a bedtime routine is a good way to generate a positive pattern in the child's sleep. However, the children with ASD they are extremely critical.

If you set a fixed time to go to bed, your child will benefit from that. Choose a reasonable time for your child and you to begin to apply a routine sleep system.

A bedtime routine can help the child to calm down, relax and prepare to rest. This routine should include activities that are pleasurable and relaxing, as well as special and individualized that fit the needs and interests of your child. Read a story, go to the bathroom, put on the pajamas, brushing teeth, have a glass of water, sing a favorite song or pray, listen to relaxing music or participate in a relaxed sensory integration activity.

In children within an autism spectrum disorder, it’s very common to have problems with sleeping. These bad sleeping habits are easily created and difficult to change. It can take time to solve this problem, but the family must do their part, so these routines and these changes have good results. A priority that deserves effort!

Routines and bedtime rituals are essential for most children to establish positive patterns in sleep, but they are extremely critical for children within the autism spectrum disorder.

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Sensory Diet: Is It Important for the Child?

This will help the child with sensory difficulties to perform better in the environments in which they interact.

A sensory diet is not a diet, but an individualized program of activities or environmental modifications that help the child with sensory difficulties to perform better in the environments in which they interact: at home, at school, in the park, in the supermarket, thus allowing its finality and participation.

To understand better: a sensory diet is another tool in the child's treatment, composed of activities and environmental modifications to keep the nervous system organized and calm in the daily routines of the child.

Activities or modifications within sensory diets may include:

• Adequate alert level. Activities that help the child by introducing reassuring activities to help him if he’s very hyperactive or offering stimulating activities if the level of the alert is low.

• Stimuli. Supports so that the child learns to recognize his own level of alertness and is able to self-regulate. Visual strategies are a great strategy to use together with these.

• Sensory breaks. Times in which the child can rest or stop to self-regulate.

• Sensory shelter. Place where the child can go and calm down when he has received a lot of stimulation and showed signs of overload.

How to make a sensory diet?

The occupational therapist, the other professionals, and the family have to form a team to determine together the possible adaptations to be made. On the other hand, it’s not about filling the child's routine with activities, but about analyzing the child, its context and from there using the available tools to improve their autonomy. Registering the adaptations we make will be a good idea, as it will help us to verify its effectiveness. If after a few days we don’t see the expected results, we will decide if it’s necessary to change the strategy.

Why use a sensory diet?

Sensory diets aim to help the child to be in the best disposition to face the different routines of his day to day, to improve his attention, learning and to be self-regulated.

The sensory diet provides the child with opportunities to receive the sensory stimuli he needs in his daily basis.

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"You Have a Condition, So You Can't Do It!": The Importance of a Simple Word

Being incorrectly considered "special" or a "child with a condition" for living with autism, generally becomes the ideal justification to stop being and doing, which hinders the implementation of the process of inclusion in the social and educational field.

The human being has always had the urgent need to name, catalog, classify, order and rationalize the world and everything that it comprises.

At present, social struggles are planting the discourse of diversity as a banner. The awareness campaigns on Autism Spectrum Disorder do not escape this trend, a constant debate about the correct way to refer or name certain topics.

No diagnosis can nor must suppress the capacity to be; to be considered a person, a human being with the same rights as any other. Rights that, not because they are universal, must cease to be diverse in the ways in which their implementation is conceived.

The Importance of a Simple Word

In the area of ​​education, to speak of disability is to close the doors not only to the recognition of the capacities and opportunities that the person does have, but also to close them to change. A change that is becoming increasingly evident and necessary in the schools of the 21st century.

However, there is another problem in educational inclusion where the meaning of a word makes it an impediment to the successful development of this process: a diagnosis of ASD and be automatically cataloged "special," and not in a good way.

In school, being considered "special" for children with autism, usually becomes that reason to stop doing, which hinders and delays the process of inclusion in the educational field, for several reasons.

When an adult justifies or associates inappropriate behaviors with the "special" character of the child, ignores the explanation and the taboo reason of the topic, but immediately gives a negative label to the fact of being considered "special" before the eyes of the rest of children. And at the end of the day, because of the understanding that children usually have, being special is equivalent to behaving badly.

Then they will begin to wonder “Am I special? Do I have something that makes me special? Do I want to be special?”

If the teachers have no measure to refer to our children with ASD and call them incorrectly, it becomes a definition that instead of explaining and accompanying the process, segregates and hinders it. This moves us away from the goal of working for an education where there is tolerance, acceptance, and respect for the different. It hinders the way to build and transform subjects and mentalities capable of respecting and living in a diverse society.

Build and transform subjects and mentalities capable of respecting and living in a diverse society.

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Divorce: How Are Children with Autism Affected?

It can cause two different reactions in couples. A bulletproof union, or separation and even divorce.

The arrival of a child with any type of unexpected condition, can cause two different reactions in couples. Union proof of everything, or separation and even divorce.

Couples can join more than ever and strengthen themselves in the challenge, assuming together the natural feelings that this situation implies.Or otherwise, couples can divorce as a result of the high stress that this experience brings to their lives, and that accentuates the differences that already existed.

A son is never the reason for divorce, but sometimes the experience becomes the trigger that puts an end to the relationship. Divorce rates are high, especially in those who have received a child with special needs.

How divorce affects children with Autism?

For every child it is a painful experience, but in the case of children with developmental challenges it can be even more difficult to process the emotional difficulty involved in understanding that one of the parents has left the house.

Even typical children have difficulty expressing their feelings in this situation, so it is to be expected that children with disabilities will face even more challenges because of their inability to ask questions, or express what they are feeling. By not developing the typical reasoning can live this separation as a constant loss, which causes stress problems and behavioral changes that are seen in the behavior, and are reflected at the time of sleep, school performance, or meals .

How to make this process more easy?

Sometimes the words are not enough to explain the situation. This is a moment where the reinforcement of communication becomes more important than ever, and it helps them to recover their security through techniques that will make them visually identify what is happening, showing them that they have not lost the absent father.

-Helping them to have independence to feel that they can communicate with their father at any time is also important. Programming your phone with a key dial to make a call when you like on your own initiative, is an excellent idea that gives you the freedom to feel close and connected.

-Regardless of differences as a couple, parents have to do their best to share together the special days when children need a family model, birthdays and special occasions. Both are equally valuable to the child, and in the hands of the absent parent is not to lose this gift.

-Divorce should not be the beginning of a war, but the beginning of a agreement in which both parents commit themselves to do their best for the good of the children. Something that we must never forget is that our main task is to make our children happy. We can think that a marriage was a failure or a bad decision, but a child never is, and it will always be the gift that gave us love and that we must respect forever.

Divorce shouldn't be the beginning of a long-term war, but the beginning of a peaceful agreement in which both parents commit themselves to do their best for the good of the children.

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