Imagine moving to a new country that has a different culture and different language that you are not familiar with. It’s going to be pretty hard to do normal everyday tasks like ordering food from a restaurant or even saying hi to someone because you don't know about the country's social cues and mannerisms and they don't understand yours. People will judge you before they even get to know you because you are not like them. This is what it feels like to live in America with Autism. Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD is a complex brain development disorder. ASD has varying degrees of severity and many sub groups, including Asperger's syndrome. Most people with ASD are born with the disorder and can be diagnosed as early 2 years old, although symptoms …show more content…
Most autistic children and young adults have a very rough time in school. Apart from the poorly trained teachers, ASD makes learning a difficult, frustrating, and even embarrassing experience. “The parents and the professionals all agree that it takes lots of hard work to help a child with autism get the most out of the classroom experience. It also takes, they say, a good dose of structure and the understanding that every child with an autism spectrum disorder is unique. That means each child has different symptoms as well as styles of learning. ‘Autism isn’t like diabetes,’ psychologist Kathleen Platzman tells WebMD. ‘With diabetes, we have two or three things that we absolutely know about every kid who has it. But since it’s not that way with autism, we need an educational model wide enough to take in the whole spectrum. That means it’s going to have to be a fairly broad model.’” (Feature) With symptoms like being non-verbal, intense interest in one topic, delayed speech, and poor conversational skills, school is a confusing and scary place for Autism. It is also a place of wrong misconceptions. ASD individuals are often thought of as unintelligent or “not smart in school” for a number of reasons related with the …show more content…
Because it is hard for ASD individuals to pick up on social cues and hints, show emotion, and sometimes even speak they are labeled socially impaired or awkward. “The most striking feature of autism is social disconnection. People with autism may appear neither to be interested in nor able to “read” the social world. It is as though they are blind to the boisterous, complicated, emotionally loaded give-and-take of human interaction.” (Autism: Impairments in Social Interaction) One of the symptoms of autism is being mute. Autistic individuals have to find different ways to communicate their feelings and what they want. This creates a barrier that not many people are used to and it makes them uncomfortable. To avoid the awkwardness of the situation, most people chose to just ignore autistic individuals instead of treating them like the humans they are. “Typically developing infants are social by nature. They gaze at faces, turn toward voices, grasp a finger and even smile by 2 to 3 months of age. By contrast, most children who develop autism have difficulty engaging in the give-and-take of everyday human interactions. By 8 to 10 months of age, many infants who go on to develop autism are showing some symptoms such as failure to respond to their names, reduced interest in people and delayed babbling. By toddlerhood, many children with autism have difficulty playing social games, don’t imitate the actions of others and prefer