Inclusion Of Asd Children

Introduction

Autism is a neurobehavioral condition that is quite complex that includes impairment of communication skills, developmental language, and social interaction, all these combined with behaviours that are rigid and repetitive. Children with autism are observed to face difficulties in their communication. Their understanding of what other people feel and think is troubled. That makes expressing themselves wither through touch, with facial expressions, gestures, and words hard (Gavin, 2018). We settled on this topic because we felt that autistic children from time to time do not receive the adequate understanding they so need. In the development of the presentation I worked on the conclusion and also developed the quiz.

Key Issues

Children with autism are often susceptible and may from time to time be troubled at times even pained by sights, smells, and touches which would seem very reasonable to other ordinary children. Stereotyped and repetitive body movements for example hand flapping, pacing, and rocking are quite common amongst these children. From time to time, they are observed to respond unusually to attachments to objects, changes in their routines, and aggressive towards behaviours that are self-injurious. There are even times they may appear not to notice objects, people and activities in their surroundings. Seizures are observed in some autistic children. In some cases, these seizures may never occur until the children are adolescents.

To some specific degree, autistic people tend to be impaired cognitively. They show uneven skill development which is in contrast to more typical cognitive impairment. Delays that are relatively even in development characterize typical cognitive impairment. Also though autistic persons may face challenges in certain areas and most commonly in their relation and communication to others, they tend to unusually have developed skills in other different areas like solving mathematical problems, the creation of music, drawing, and memorization of facts.

The most challenging aspect of the lived experience was the exhaustion and constant worrying that came with looking after autistic persons. Coming up with accurate information and suitable interventions is also not easy and tends to be frustrating.

Typically, autistic symptoms appear during the first three years of life, even though some children show signs from the time they are born. There are also others who seem to develop normally at first, only to slip suddenly slip into symptoms when they are 18 to 36 months old. In other cases, other individuals won`t show autistic traits until the demands of the environment exceed their capabilities. In comparison to girls, autism is up to four times more common.

Support Strategies for Inclusion

It is necessary that educational practitioners provide education that is meaningful and fully inclusive that has the capabilities of catering for the individual needs of different children; especially for autistic children (Majoko, 2016). In recognition of existing diversity in learners, all individuals involved in educating children need to always respond flexibly for purposes of eliminating any potential barriers learning and achievement, participation and promotion of equality.

According to Symes and Humphrey (2010), mainstream classrooms are in better positions to support learning and social interactions because the opportunities they provide for practicing new skills and learning are not staged but natural. Further, in mainstream classes, there would be more opportunities for children to learn from their peers and that is because classmates whose development is typical would act as positive role models assisting in the acquisition of acceptable behaviours and new skills. Additionally, inclusion also offers social benefits because it provides opportunities for sharing of experiences amongst a range of students that is wider and also to foster friendships with them. Ferraioli (2011) posits that children whose development is normal could also benefit from interactions with autistic children because through their interactions, they acquire more significant understanding of the autistic children and get to respect and appreciate their different attributes and skills and that ultimately prepares them for life in societies that are diverse.

There are however some disadvantages to inclusion. Over-emphasis on socialization could come about from inclusion and neglect of academic quality. In mainstream schools, quality of provision also tends to be lower, and that is because the members of staff in those schools do not have the requisite specialist knowledge to handle such children: specialist settings tend to have higher pupil ratios. Additionally, rather than foster friendships, there is also a possibility that greater isolation could come about from inclusion where their peers could fail to accept them, and that would lead to lowered self-esteem (Eldar, Talmor and Wolf-Zukerman, 2010). Additionally, in such instances, rather than being real friends, sympathy tends to cloud the normal children and they take up the roles of helpers.

For useful inclusion of ASD students, their teachers would first and foremost need to be adequately trained to get a proper understanding of the condition and the different complexities it presents (Crosland and Dulap, 2012). When teachers gain the first-hand experience, their values and beliefs tend to change consistently with inclusive school philosophies, and that would make them more comfortable and positive about the inclusion of any such students with disabilities. Training of teachers would be centred on gaining a proper understanding of the disorder, its diagnostic criteria and recognizing the most suitable communication learning styles of ASD students (Mesibov, Howley and Naftel, 2015). Training would go a long way in making teachers feel less apprehensive whenever autistic children are included in their classes.

There is also a need for all the different stakeholders involved in inclusion to work together. These include paraprofessionals, general and special education teachers, specialists, and families. All these people need to work together to ensure consistency for the students. Involvement of either parents or guardians in the academic programmes of their children has been found to assist in the generalization and maintenance of those skills children acquire in schools (Pellicano, Bölte, and Stahmer, 2018). When the family is involved, the autistic child will be reinforced and reminded to incorporate the learned behaviours and information at home. Additionally, because autism is a behavioural disability, there is a myriad of challenges it can present to school environments, and that makes it necessary for all persons involved to have high consistency levels and understanding whenever they address certain student behaviours (Sainato et al., 2015). When consistency is ensured, the autistic child gets to learn what is expected of them throughout their education and other different aspects of their lives in terms of how they should behave.

For inclusion to be successful, it would also be necessary to modify lessons and instructions. The most beneficial thing about the adoption of strategies is that they always present benefits to students as different students have different learning styles. In classroom settings, adoption of different teaching methods is effective and is always recommended.

Another strategy that would improve engagement of ASD children is engaging them through their auditory senses, for example, during events that tend to be mostly instructional like extended listening activities and transitions (Schuller et al., 2015). There are ASD children who tend to be more engaged if songs are used to present languages. Transitions are not easy for autistic children and as such playing songs that are familiar to the children during such times could help cue them to the behaviours desired, a good example being switching activities. It is prudent that teachers select specific songs for transitions that are common so that students can be able to learn about the transition occurring to increase consistency of routines and also make them more predictable. That goes a long way in reducing the student's anxiety and further helping them prepare adequately for such transitions.

ASD children are observed to be unique and gain sensory inputs through various self-stimulatory behaviours. Examples of these behaviours are; Visual (closing or covering eyes, flapping hands, looking at things out of the corner of eyes, and blinking eyes rapidly), Audio (covering ears, vocalisations and noisemaking), Gustatory (ruminating, kicking things) Tactile (mouthing items, rubbing things, biting/pinching self) Proprioceptive (squeezing and crashing into things and people, chewing on things, grinding teeth and biting self) and Olfactory (holding nose and smelling items). Whenever children engage in these kinds of stimulatory behaviours, their engagement to instruction diminishes. The impact of these behaviours on the children is, and that necessitates the need for replacement of these self-stimulatory behaviours with other behaviours deemed appropriate (Lindsay, Hounsell and Cassiani, 2017).

To effectively do this, a teacher would need to conduct a Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA) for purposes of determining the behaviour’s function. For that to be achieved, there need to be at least five observation sessions of the behaviours every time they occur (Mesibov, 2018). From the observations, it should be possible to gather complete descriptions of the behaviours that the students engage in for purposes of reducing environmental overstimulation and gaining sensory inputs. Students with ASD tend to experience these types of sensory sensitivities. Appropriate replacement behaviours can be determined following the completion of the FBA. It is necessary that the replacement behaviours serve the same functions as the behaviours that have been replaced and should also be sensory interventions and activities that provide moments in ways that are more appropriate.

With sensory interventions like these, students will be able to register and further modulate their responses to sensory stimuli which will allow them to overcome their under reactive and over-reactive reactions to sensory stimulation (House et al., 2016).

Conclusion

It is necessary to treat autistic children with due care for they tend to be a fragile lot. Appropriate inclusion of autistic children into systems of education would expose the children to learning environments that are enriched, and that goes a long way in affording greater stimulation and further creating environments of higher academic expectation. That encourages children to take more responsibility for their learning which enhances their self-esteem (Engstrand and Roll-Pettersson, 2014).

References

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