Care4autism

We are back to go square one. One month of being on non gfcf diet, things began to go awry. It was like watching the trailer of a beautiful movie that never saw the light of day. We had a rollicking time eating pizza, ice creams, pizzas, pani puri….. The first half of the movie was racy, fun packed but somehow the second half the script began to flounder. Ramam began to get not so good reports from school, therapists. It was a huge disappointment. We had observed earlier also when Ramam was not on the diet, and we used to treat him to pizza, his behavior would be exemplary the next day. There is no logic to it as it is to so many things with autism. So the first fifteen days of the trial seemed to have gone smooth and easy sailing.                    He is back on the diet last 3-4 days and let’s see how thing go. He already is asking for rotis, curds and pooris. But maybe he understands as I have ...

As I was slugging it out with yet another questionnaire, many thought crossed my mind. To begin with, the umpteen number of questionnaires that we had filled since his diagnosis. I remember earlier it used to be a shared experience for me and my hubby dear. We used to mark it with pencils and cross check whether     there was consensus between us. Not to mention the length of each questionnaire. Slowly with the drift of time it was purely my job. In due course, I was subtly reminded that he had a job to keep. So now I take it in my stride quite sportingly.                  Answering a questionnaire on your child’s mile stones however can be a truly learning experience. (No pun intended). It kind of toots your child’s deficits and there is no denying it. These honest appraisals help you get your act together. Every assessment shows you where the child is on the learning curve. It gives you focus. ...

Here are the answers to some of the questions that have evaded you since the time you had a child on the spectrum Why is a social smile so difficult for our children?                                  I have snaps of Ramam when he was small, holding his lips when asked to smile for a photo, which means he has understood the social context but a smile is not an easy one. As Soma explains “In a social situation, there is a stimulus which begins in the hypothalamus, from there the impulse goes to the body to create physical changes, such as muscle contraction  as neurotransmitters are released. The changes are then fed to the somatosensory cortex of the brain, which sends the emotion forward to the frontal cortex where it is interpreted as hey! We have an emotion here”. In simpler words the neural pathway is a long one and a str...