If your toddler is showing some of the early signs of autism, now might be a great time to start with a form of treatment. You might find it difficult to select from the treatments that you are aware of, unsure which will be the most effective for your child. A study finds that the level of interest that a toddler has in toys is a good indicator for how responsive that child will be for a certain kind of parent-guided treatment program.
When a child has a special need, it is generally beneficial for the child to have access to treatment programs. Treatment could take the form of physical therapy, cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy, or all of the above, depending on what special need, or needs, a child happens to have.
Many children benefit from having some kind of instruction in, and practice with, social skills. Early intervention programs often are extremely beneficial. The sooner you can start working on a particular skill, adaptation, or technique, the sooner those things can be used by your child when he or she needs them.
It can be difficult to decide which form of treatment you should start with, especially when your child is still a toddler. Is the child ready for it? Will it work? Could your child resist it completely? One way to find out is to take note of your toddler’s interest level in toys.
A study finds that the amount of interest that a toddler who is on the autism spectrum has in toys is a good predictor for how well that toddler will respond to a parent-guided treatment program.
This study looked at 51 boys and 11 girls who were younger than the age of two. All 62 toddlers met the criteria for autism disorders. The group of children was randomly assigned to be in one of two smaller groups. One of the smaller groups received something described as “standard treatment”, and was the control group.
The other of the smaller groups was put into the Hanen’s More Than Words program. This program was designed to help promote skills in communication, language development, and social skills. Hanen’s More Than Words program required parents to encourage their toddlers to make eye contact. The parents used simple sentences that were delivered from the child’s perspective. The idea was to help the toddler learn skills that would help them communicate.
Overall, there wasn’t much difference in improvement between the toddlers in the control group and the toddlers in the other group. The exception was that toddlers who played with fewer toys when the study started, and who were in the group that was enrolled in Hanen’s More Than Words program, showed more improvement than the entire control group. These toddlers were now making eye contact more frequently, pointing or reaching for things they were interested in, and sometimes showed or gave a toy to a researcher. These improvements lasted for four months after the program was over.
Image by David Goehring on Flickr