Autism

Personal Interest Paper
“Life with Autism”
Toinette Thibodaux-Matthews


Autism is a mental disorder that I experience and explore on a daily basis. There are variety of symptoms and causes, which made it extremely hard to determine if this was truly a factor in my son’s developmental delay. For the first two to three years, no noticeable signs in my son’s behavior or social abilities lead me to believe something was wrong. In the later years, speech delay is what initiated the first visit to neurologist.

Neurologists are one of the health care professionals who use a rating scale that observes and evaluates the child’s language and social behavior between the ages of five and seven. They perform interviews with concern parents who believe their child may have some form of autism. Both the doctor and parents discuss early childhood development buy viewing home videos and photo albums. This helps determine how and when the possible developmental delay began.

Autism,...