Children with Autism

Children with Autism

Introduction

Autism is a common neurodevelopmental condition caused by either a defect in brain structure or its working or by either genetic or environmental factors or certain prenatal viral infections, which lead to a growing disorder. Autistic signs and symptoms in a child are noticed during the first three years of life and may include impaired communication, poor eye contact, unusual body posture, repetitive movements, self or other people harming actions, and social withdrawal, among others. Symptoms continue to develop gradually with neither reduction nor disappearance. The degree of impairment differs in individuals and different respects.

Autistic children are a special group of children who face significant communication, communal, and conduct challenges requiring specialized interventions as symptoms may be severe and inhibit daily tasks. Community members with any form of disability meet a host of hindrances in carrying out personal or communal activities due to stigma from non-disabled people (Collier, Rothwell, Vanzo, & Carbone, 2015). While demonstrating an understanding of therapeutic recreation intervention concepts demonstrated in covered units, this report will research and discuss therapeutic recreation intervention as a point of interest in future therapeutic recreation practice.

According to Lebersfeld, Brasher, Biasini, & Hopkins (2019), recreation therapy provides much-needed help to improve cardiac fitness, reduce body size and tackle seclusion while building social, physical, and cognitive skills. Autistic children need specialized activities therapeutically proven to help their unique condition due to many factors among them the age when the condition manifests and how it progresses.

Recreational therapists assisting autistic children should aim at improving their social, emotional, and cognitive development qualities as well as seek to ease stress, dejection, nervousness, and recover undeveloped motor action. Early intervention is crucial in reducing the incapacitating impact of autism. The younger the child with autism, say before age 5, the quicker the gains of intervention. A therapeutic clinician works on a one-on-one or group arrangement involving a training mate or family member for apt interaction with a child aimed at active emotion recognition. This activity promotes mutual responsiveness, social communication, as well as interactive interface and imitation. Should human social interaction provoke anxiety, the use of a social robot with features of a human face is an option as it enables the child to recognize emotions accurately.

The Four phases of Therapeutic Recreation process

Recreational therapy involves delightful activities equipping the child with knowledge of imagination and learning new skills while building meaningful associations. The place where therapy is offered depends on the child’s needs and capabilities that may include hospitals, community locations like swimming pool, aerobics studio, art theatre, or roller-skating arenas. Phases of therapy include assessment whereby a child’s interests, strong points, and limitations are evaluated to gauge areas needing improvement and draw a recreation program that best meets these needs. This phase is critical to monitor and measure changes and improvements. The second phase is the planning phase, when a specialist develops a customized program dedicated to meeting set goals and objectives and to positively choose recreation activities that will achieve their desired purpose. The third is the Implementation phase that involves carrying out the program plan while noting and recording the impact of therapy. Evaluation is the final phase, where the child’s response to therapy and program effectiveness and success is evaluated. Recommendations are made, and a decision to continue therapy or discontinue is reached (Naeeni & Chowdhury, 2018).

Therapeutic recreation models

Recreational therapy is a form of management action, aimed at reinstating normalcy and personal wellness as well as enhance self-freedom in performing everyday undertakings. It helps to uphold the well being and removes barriers and constraints in life activity participation resulting from disability or sickness. The therapeutic recreation model is vital in designing and setting a therapy program with responsibility while ensuring a sound structure of Recreational therapy service delivery.

According to Mobily & Dieser (2017), a careful choice of the model is crucial as it must be in line with laid down medical rules and regulations, putting into consideration a possible need for co-existence with other delivery models under the same umbrella. There are several recreational therapy models including, leisure ability, health protection/health promotion, leisure, and well being, flourishing through Leisure models.

The Leisure Ability Model (LAM) stands out as a pure leisure outcomes model comprising three categories of services, namely; functional intervention, leisure education, and recreation participation. All focusing on a client’s needs, choices, control, and affords him an enjoyable holiday like lifestyle as long as the client has an efficient ability for leisure. LAM is user-friendly as it can be used in a group or one-on-one recreational therapy setting.

Opinion Statement

Practicing therapeutic recreation intervention is exciting, gratifying, and noble as it is a process that allows autistic persons to take part and possibly shine in normal and enjoyable activities that they would ordinarily not do. It is a significant promoter of health and overall wellbeing, eliminating or minimizing impediments to living a full life like an average person. Emphasis has been mainly on speech, occupational, and interactive therapy, but recreation deals with the emotional state, which brings about pleasure and gratification.

Children with autism

Wellness through Leisure Success Story

While offering volunteer therapeutic recreation services at The Owen center, whose mission statement is; “Presenting our residents and clients with life inspiring leisure to heal” A therapy center located in the leafy suburbs west of the capital city. I met a seven-year old boy with autism in the company of his mother. Despite the shortfalls of his condition, Allan is excellent in playing computer games far above children of his age. On assessing the young boy, I discovered a brilliant boy with behavioral disturbances, carrying out some dangerous acts that would scare an ordinary person, shied away from bright light, has an excessive love for heights, is hyperactive, socially withdrawn and has a challenge in communication.

As a therapist, my first obligation was to carry out an assessment through physical observation, medical history, and the environment to plan a client-based therapeutic procedure. Any form of disability in a family member affect not only the individual but all those around him. For effective therapy, a therapist needs to first create a good relationship and understanding with the client and his relations. Allan is the third born in a single-parent family and has three siblings. The parent owns a small scale business and is not financially stable. Therefore she relies on her parent’s support. Just like many other parents with autistic children, the discovery that something is not right with her son at a tender age of three was not only devastating but extremely depressing for Allan’s mother. A significant challenge of autism is that it is a rare condition with unique challenges that require a personal oriented therapy approach.

Having engaged with Allan’s family together with my assistant, who would help me assess our progress regularly, we drew a list of measurable goals and objectives as dictated by his current condition as well as identified needs. Allan required all available therapeutic services to help him cope physically, emotionally, as well as socially, and attain optimum health and wellness. I was pleased by the family’s willingness to help and support him through a loving, and caring support system created and strictly adhered to. Allan had gone through speech therapy and could speak, albeit slowly and sometimes repetitively. These made planning recreational therapy activities easier. Other than computer games, a relatively anti-social activity, Allan needed to go out and discover other leisure activities as well as meet and interact with other people besides his family to boast his social skills.

With the sole objective of helping Allan, a six-month leisure recreation therapy intervention program was drawn to include social interaction, physical fitness, and emotional uplifting activities. In consultation with other recreation therapists at the center, we arranged for Allan to join other clients with similar conditions for group activities as he walked without support. Activities involved social interaction by attending a two-hour session per week of playing board games for one month. During this period, we observed and recorded that his social skills had improved significantly.

For the next three months of implementation, with slight adjustments, Allan attended one hour each of indoor and outdoor games, swimming, and horse riding each at different times of the day. My assistant took daily reports on Allan’s performance, responses, and all other notable observations. In the final two months, Allan participated in sports, attended music and dance lessons, and went on group outings. Allan performed activities willingly and with pleasure, something that made all of us happy.

On evaluating set goals and objectives, we were delighted to note that Allan was now confident, could communicate, and interact with everybody comfortably, and he had become more responsible and sensitive towards his peers as well as family members.