Case Study 10 – The Children who leave Autism Behind

The Children who leave Autism Behind

I was expecting a cute smiling face of the little chap on his first day. The little chap was yelling like anything. When this case was assigned to me, as an initial step, I had gone through the case file and I found that he was having many difficulties such as lacking eye contact, name call response, listening, communication skills social interaction, poor sitting tolerance and also he was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. He was communicating his needs through autistic leading method. I have tried to build rapport with the child and I found it difficult to work for around 1 month due to his adaptation issues. For this purpose, I started singing rhymes & engage in play during the sessions. He gradually started to understand the situation and got adapted to the sessions within one month. Since the mother was motivated she also helped me to interact with the child.
As I have told before, he was aggressive and was difficult to manage him. This was the major concern of the mother. He exhibited his aggressive behaviors mostly when his needs were not satisfied. So in order to reduce it, I tried calming strategy, I started to prepare him by giving joint compression and tight hugging during the behaviors. Slowly I could bring drastic improvements in the child using this calming strategy. For my surprise, I found that it was really working for him and I could focus better on my goals. After rapport was built, things became easier for me. He underwent therapy at Jewel for around 11 months. During the day of their happy discharge, all his therapists and parents were literally on tears as that was the level of change and satisfaction they got from Jewel. The child was now able to do all his daily chores individually. When CARS (Childhood Autism Rating Scale) test was done, he was shown to be out of the spectrum.

Chinchu Mariam Thomas (BOT)

Occupational Therapist