Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder which causes impairments in the way individual’s process information.
Autism is characterized by social, communication, imagination and interaction skills deficits which are often referred to as autistic social skills deficits.
Generally all autistic individuals will have difficulties in verbal and non-verbal communication, social interactions. Autism spectrum disorder can make it difficult for autistic individuals to communicate with others and relate to the outside world. In some cases, aggressive and/or self-injuries behavior may be present.
Autistic individuals may also experience sensory sensitivities in the five senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.
Generally autistic children and adults tend to be hyper-sensitive or hypo-sensitive.
Deficits in autistic sensory sensitivities: Touch, autistic children may have difficulties in discriminating between objects by touch alone, for example they may be unable to locate an object even if it is in their own pocket.
Sometimes autistic children will have a high threshold for pain and may injure themselves without realizing they have done so, which can be quite alarming for parents.
Some autistic children will appear clumsy and have poor body awareness which can make them bump into objects and people. Sometimes they may fall down a lot. They may use too much or not enough force when pushing, pulling, lifting or holding on to things even people!
They may have poor gross motor movements and poor upper body muscle strength. Some autistic individuals will have difficulties with fine motor skills they will struggle to hold coins or use a zip.
Some autistic toddlers can be confused and interpret their mother’s body as part of their own.
Some autistic children are sensitive to the feel of certain fabrics and substances they will dislike the tags in their clothes, as well as being touched etc.
These are all commonly reported autistic sensory sensitivities issues by parents of autistic children.
Parents of autistic children report significant autistic social skills deficits in touch with their autistic children. Social skills stories have been used as a means of helping those individuals with autism that have sensory sensitivities issues find ways of coping with the affects of sensory dysfunctions appropriately.
Social skills stories can be used for issues with touch for example an autistic child may be unaware of their own personal and other people’s personal space and insist on standing too close to other people, which can make others feel very uncomfortable using a social story in this situation can be very beneficial.
A social story for touch, for example appropriate touching, when it is ok to touch and not ok to touch for example keeping hands to your self and so on.
Also, social story touch for sniffing someoneâ€™s hair, hitting, dentist and so on all useful for autistic kids with sensory issues.
Social stories are widely used by parents of autistic children, teachers and other professionals to help teach and re-enforce essential and daily life social, communication, interaction and imagination skills to children with autism.
And gain immediate downloads of social skills stories for children with autism like appropriate touching, personal space and lots more autistic kids benefit from the implementation of social stories.
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