Autistic Pride Day was June 18. Dr. Tisa Johnson-Hooper to discuss all things autism.
What triggered your inquiry about your child’s health and development?
Royale Watkins: Ross has a brother Roy, who is 21 months older than him,and it became very clear to us probably around the 18 month marker that some of the things that we had noticed that Royce was excelling in Ross was kind of delayed in. And certainly his speech was the biggest marker. We had Ross tested and, and it became clear to us that yes, Ross was diagnosed with autism and on the spectrum. In terms of one to 10, he probably was in the six to seven area.
What is autism?
Dr. Tina Johnson-Hooper: Most folks have heard of autism, but really don’t know autism because I’ll tell you, there is a saying, if you know one person with autism, you just know that one person with autism, because you’re gonna meet folks with autism and they look different. They look different because it’s a spectrum disorder. But the one thing about the diagnosis, it has two characteristics that you look for. One bucket is where you have some deficits in social intention, social communication. The other bucket is the presence of behaviors, repetitive behaviors, restrictive behaviors. Those are the two buckets that you’re looking for to make that diagnosis. It’s a spectrum because children with that diagnosis may have varying levels of severity of their social intention, their social communication and the presence of these repetitive restrictive behaviors.
What is the Peck system?
Dr. Tina Johnson-Hooper: Peck (picture exchange system) system, as we talked about with autism, that social communication, social intention are oftentimes associated with kids with a language delay. So a speech pathologist will come up with ways to allow children to communicate. And it’s not for the intention of doing something like pecks, which is a picture exchange system. So if a kiddo is nonverbal, meaning they don’t use their words to communicate, but they may understand something. If they want a drink of water, you could have a picture of water or a picture of milk. And when the kiddo wants milk, they would go to their picture of milk and present that. So it’s an exchange for using your, your, your words now, because we’re in the tech world, there’s a lot of apps where kids will have this on, you know, and they’ll exchange using pictures.
There is much more information about autism in this facebook live. Click the link to hear and see more. https://www.facebook.com/BlackDoctor.org/videos/407864234589094
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