A parent asked, are autistic children born "dumb"? No, this is a big misconception.
In the eyes of the public, "dumb" is born unable to speak, how to teach, is an incurable stubborn disease. They are born with the ability to speak, and apparently, children with autism see it as well.
If it is easy to label a child with autism as a "dumb", then many rehabilitation institutions for autism may face more questions.
Autism is by no means "dumb"
Studies have shown that 25% of children with autism are non-spoken. Of the remaining 75 percent, many children speak but face severe communication barriers
Whether it is no spoken language, or spoken language, it cannot mean that autism is "dumb", but this type of child lacks the awareness and desire to communicate with others, misses the precious age of learning to speak, and lags behind a lot in language synthesis.
In fact, if autistic children do not have other organic defects (such as speech organ defects, impaired pronunciation function, language central lesions), after training and guidance, they can learn to speak, but because of the three core barriers of autism, the difficulty of learning language is greatly increased, and the overall language level is greatly different from that of their peers.
What does an autistic child look like?
Clinical manifestations of autism include social interaction disorders, narrow interests, and stereotyped repetitive patterns of behavior. Language is not the only basis for a diagnosis of autism.
Children on the autism spectrum vary greatly from language to individual, with most languages lagging behind and usually not speaking at age 2 to 3. Some children have language regression or stagnation after normal language development.
Some children have certain language skills, but the language lacks the nature of communication, manifesting as meaningless language, repetitive stereotyped language or self-talk, and the language content is monotonous. Children with certain language skills often use imperative statements, and rarely use question sentences or statements for comment. A small number of children have too much language and talk endlessly, but the language is mostly one-way communication, and the self-centered characteristics are obvious.
Therefore, being able to talk is not the same as being able to communicate. In contrast, even if you can't speak, if you can understand, you can imitate, you can interact, and you can basically rule out autism.
Why do some parents think that autism is associated with "dumb"
It is because the first problems that parents find are usually differences in language function. At the time of the first diagnosis, the description of the child's basic symptoms is often in the expression of oral function. In fact, the assessment and diagnosis of children with autism pay more attention to the difficulty of communication between spoken and non-spoken language, and the difficulty of social interaction.
But we cannot make oral expression a central issue for children with autism. This is because children with autism speak abnormally, often due to communication disorders.
Children with autism have insufficient language skills that prevent children from communicating normally. In the process of children's learning, there will be a backwardness in language development, which will affect the acquisition of children's social interaction skills, language defects are not unique to autism, nor do they appear in all autistic children, so we cannot simply equate autistic children with not being able to speak.