Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Autism

I have quite a few students who are autistic or having autistic features. They are lovely kids and living in their own world sometimes. Most of them are good looking children. There are more autistic boys than girls.

The common characteristics found in them are i) they are insistent, once something is stored in their memories, it is very hard to delete especially their unhappy experience, ii) they have their own routine, e.g. walking in circle on their own in the playground during recess or lunch time. You can see that they are enjoying it, iii) some are very good at drawing, once they saw something they are particularly interested, they can draw it precisely on a paper, e.g. the routes of the MTR or the setting of a particular room, iv) they say to you the same thing every time they see you, they won't go away if you do not give any response. But whatever response you give, it won't bother them :-)
v) they are not adaptable to changes, once there was a girl sticking to her seat when she was asked to go to another classroom, vi) some have never smiled in their lives. These are some of the characteristics of the children with autism.

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