High Functioning Autism Symptoms

Children and young adults with high anxieties, difficulties with socializing, empathizing, reasoning and learning skills might be showing High Functioning Autism Symptoms.

Identifying the symptoms is just the beginning, understanding how diagnosed individuals deal with high functioning autism would be helpful for all of us to understand their situation.

Let’s identify other high functioning autism symptoms so we may determine whether our family members, friends or students might have this condition.

These symptoms are rarely detected from early childhood, unlike other forms of autism, which can be identified from as early as the 1st year up to the 5th year of a child’s age, High Functioning Autism are diagnosed only from among 5 to 35 year old individuals.

High functioning autism symptoms could be:

1. Regular feeling of irritation and frequent sudden discomfort from clothing, personal items and other apparels.

2. Anxiety and occasional OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), feeling discomfort from other people and gets irritable and angry and violent when this happens.

3. Problems with Executive Functions – always having a cluttered mind when planning.

4. Have problems processing and executing multiple written or verbal instructions, abstract use of languages, comprehending poems and riddles.

5. Have problems socializing, understanding, relating, identifying and sharing emotions with others.

6. Have average intelligence but sometimes have difficulties in choosing words, losing thoughts, complete his speech and is occasionally forgetful.

Children with high functioning autism may have problems in their cognitive development. They often lack focus understanding and memorizing lessons, thinking of words to use and lack social skills. They may seem normal infant children but their difference is they do show lack of emotions towards others, lacks interests in anything too quickly, but sometimes gets extremely fixated on particular words, objects and topics.

Adults with this problem may have low social skills, does not feel empathy and cannot recognize other people’s feelings. They sometimes get too obsessive on particular words, objects and topics which does not seem normal to others. And aside from occasional high anxiety, OCD can also be some of their symptoms.

Individuals diagnosed with high functioning autism should be treated with special care, not only from their parents and guardians but also in school. Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication for Handicapped Children or TEACHH is a well-known and proven structure of educational system for teaching individuals with high functioning autism symptoms. TEACCH is structured to focus on developing the individual’s language & communications skills, improve visual and memorization skills.

Other ways of dealing with high functioning autism are:

1. Finding a personal mentor who can understand the individual’s personality and focus on measuring and improving the individual’s development.

2. Enrolling in physical therapy sessions with a professional occupational therapist to improve motor movement problems, and which would educate the individual to act like normal individuals.

3. Include an additional personalized speech and language therapy (but optional), if the individual has deficiencies or difficulties in his communications skills and development.

Men, women and children from any age may show High Functioning Autism symptoms, there may be hundreds of people living with a mild condition of this autism but are not yet diagnosed and being treated. Doctors and Psychologists are still unsure what causes this type of autism, but environmental factors, psychological problems or our genes are the common suspects of current autism experts. If you suspect that you yourself, a family member or a friend have this condition, have yourself or your peers tested to start getting treatments for the condition immediately