What is Autism

• Social Communication: May include difficulty understanding non-verbal communication, such as body language, difficulty understanding when and how to appropriately respond in social interactions, and trouble developing, understanding and maintaining relationships with others.
• Repetitive patterns of behaviour: Characterized by the autistic individual’s repetitive use of movement, speech or objects, or easily upset by changes to routine, environment, and the familiar, and displays very narrow and intense focus on limited areas of interest.

Autistic people tend to behave in an unfamiliar manner and can have a reason behind it. Medical researches suggest that unusual behaviour from autistic individuals relates to their lack of ability to focus with the person who is talking to them, or because the autistic individual is trying to send a message to the other person but is not able to express it, and that is due to lack of focus and the tendency for the autistic person of not making eye contact with the person they are talking to.

Many autistic people may experience something called a meltdown, which literally means the autistic person, when overwhelmed with a matter, tends to scream and have temper tantrums. This meltdown can be expressed verbally such as shouting and screaming, or physically in ways such as lashing out, kicking and even sometimes biting.

Another form of behaviour that accompanies people with autism may related to not being able to cope with a situation that promotes anxiety, and may lead to unusual conditions and behaviours, including, but not limited to, easily losing patience, difficulty concentrating, sleeping difficulty, depression, or being obsessive about a single subject.