“Good evening, I am the mother of a 2-year-old and 9-month-old girl who shows many signs of autism. I want to point out that he watched cartoonsup to 8 hours a day from 6 months to 2 years and 3 months, I made a huge mistake without realizing that I was harming him. He grew up almost exclusively with me without coming into contact with other children or people, he played somewhere every 30 minutes with his father in the evening and that was it. I saw that she was having problems at 2 years and 2 months because I started taking her to the park and I saw that she was very different from the other children. At that time he didn’t respond to names, didn’t react to noise, didn’t make eye contact, didn’t play with toys properly, didn’t notice objects passing through his field of vision, didn’t do anything on demand, cried badly at night… The only good things were: he kissed us, said “Bibi” to the bottle and “mama”. I went to 4 hospitals in… (where we live) plus to 7 other doctors to find out if he has autism or not. The opinions were very different from “there is nothing wrong with the child, it’s just a lack of brain stimulation due to excessive drawings “up to “classic autism”. So far he has corrected the following: He responds to names almost always, has average eye contact, understands the commands “give me a hand!”, “give a kiss!”, “give me a hand!”, “clap your hand!”, sleeps more well, he notices everything you show him, he has preferences in clothes and wants pink or with Minnie, drinks from the glass, laughs a lot, greets me when I come home, points, makes lego, kisses other children in the park… He is doing psychotherapy and learned: to throw in the trash, take the milk to the fridge, take the fork to the drawer, ……….The biggest problem is that she doesn’t understand, for example, if I ask her “Who is daddy?” or “Where is the garbage, the refrigerator, the table, the hand”? Basically, they associate a piece of paper with the trash, but on request, they don’t show things from the house.”
“Good evening, I am the mother of a 1-year-old and 9-month-old boy and he has many signs of autism, I went with him to several specialist psychologists and psychiatrists, but they all told me the same thing: “he has some signs but it doesn’t really seem to be classic autism”, believe me I’m desperate I’m in a fog, that’s why I’m writing here in the hope that someone can help me with an opinion or advice please from the bottom of my heart …..I will write here the good and bad behaviors of my child :
Bad behaviors: doesn’t respond to names, doesn’t speak, doesn’t seem to understand anything I say to him, runs a lot around the house sometimes on tiptoes and laughs as if he’s having fun, doesn’t really point the finger except very rarely (2-3 times per day) otherwise he takes my hand and leads me to open the door for him, if he sees lint on the carpet he picks it up and looks at it, he doesn’t really play properly with toys, sometimes he turns a car around and spins its wheels (1-2 minutes) but sometimes he gets into the car and pushes his feet on the floor to move it, sometimes he carries certain toys or objects in his hand while running, shakes toys and knocks them over (not too often), combines certain syllables, does not play with other children but he seems to be happy when he sees children, he doesn’t really imitate my activities with the exception of a few, for example, if I wipe the dresser he also takes a cloth and wipes….
Good behaviors: he makes eye contact especially when I sing him a song or tell him a story, reaches out to hold him, and is very affectionate, fussy, and jealous (if I hold another child he pulls on their clothes and screams until I put him down), if I play A game, he likes it, he has a lot of fun, he puts his hands over my eyes to repeat the game (but he doesn’t play the game alone)…
Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart, I also received this answer from his therapist, who claims that she has had many children in therapy, but that my little boy has something different, even if he has signs of autism, he seems like a normal child because he is very affectionate and he has eye contact, and the coordinator said that it is possible to be something virtual, I was afraid to get my hopes up because I don’t know if it is true with this virtual autism, all the psychologists and psychiatrists I went to with the child told me that he shows some signs of autism but still he has something different and no one has diagnosed him! I turned off the TV and didn’t allow him to use the phone, tablet or laptop for anything at allbecause the child used them excessively all the time, even at night when he woke up to ask for milk, he took his phone and put on drawings and fell asleep so, I never thought for a moment that I could harm him.”
The above cases are just two of the many cases that are increasingly common in pediatric psychiatry and psychology offices.
The so-called “virtual autism”, produced by the exaggerated use of electronic systems such as smartphones, tablets, and TVs, has more and more victims. The phenomenon is easy to follow: around us, we see extremely young children absorbed by the phone or tablet screen. Those who facilitate this situation, often just to “be able to sit quietly for a while” do not realize the effects they produce. Often their peace turns into big problems.
How does a child develop neuro-psychologically?
It is essential to understand, first of all, how a child develops from a neuro-psychological point of view.
This development is done on several levels:
– Through interaction with the environment: the child interacts with the environment through the sense organs. He needs to touch, smell, taste, and hear “the environment”. All these interactions both develop the quality/fineness/accuracy of his senses but enrich him with information constantly, which leads to neural development. On the other hand, these interactions are just as many experiences that enrich the little being with data, knowledge, sensations, and emotions.
– Through imitation: the child unconsciously imitates the behaviors he sees around him. The still undeveloped mind of the child takes in almost automatically what it perceives through the sense organs. It is considered that imitation is the most primitive but also the most used way of learning of beings.
– Through observation: often the child seems just an observer not involved in the interaction with the environment. It just seems, because, as I wrote before, the information is deposited in the child’s mind even if he does not seem directly involved in the action. The child is a good and fine observer of the environment, he almost continuously retains information about what is happening around him.
– By learning: this means the transmission of information by the significant people in the child’s life (and not only), in an organized, constant, and continuous way. The learning process contains all the three previously mentioned levels, carried out in an organized, constant, and coherent manner. A piece of information is presented to the child again and again until it is retained. This involves interaction, communication, emotions, etc. And it encompasses a lot of action in a lot of directions.
Principles of human brain development
We can focus all the above statements on a general principle of the development and functioning of the human brain: it perceives any action as solving a problem.Solving a new problem is done by developing new neurons and a new neural network.
Analyzing the child’s interaction with an electronic device through the lens of what is written, we notice that the child’s interaction with the object that transmits the information is rather poor in terms of both the stimulation of the sense organs and the response (feedback) given by it. The child very quickly becomes a PASSIVE receiver in the interaction with the device. If he is initially stimulated by the multitude of colors, sounds, and movements unfolding on the screen, very quickly he becomes only a spectator of them, passive and uninvolved. He receives information that he cannot taste, smell, or touch, and that does not respond to him. He doesn’t know if the information he sees is good or bad, useful or not, he can’t play with it. He cannot “test” it and no one organizes it. The brain has no problems to solve, does not interact with the environment, and does not experience much as it develops only minimally. The longer the interaction with the electronic device, the more the development process does not take place, wasting precious time.
An important principle characteristic of children is thattheir time runs at a different speed than adult time. A child learns many more things per unit of time than an adult, which means that just one month lost in his development requires months of recovery.
Another principle of brain functioning saysthat the most important period from the point of view of neuro-psychological development is between 0 and 7-8 years. It is the period of maximum accumulation of information and, respectively, of maximum plasticity (ability to change, and adapt) to information. After this age, the brain’s ability to form decreases significantly, until the end of adolescence when it tends to stabilize.
There is another important perspective in the whole discussion of the child’s neuro-psychological development. The one that looks at the emotional part. Child development is not just about accumulating data and information. The interaction with the environment, with the people around enriches the child with experiences full of emotions, moods, and feelings. By interacting with the people around him, the child learns love, attention, trust, care, help, and the whole range of emotions and feelings characteristic of humans. From interacting with a device the child cannot learn all this (human warmth). Let’s not forget that interaction with people in the child’s family creates the first relationship models. What kind of relationship can the child learn from interacting with an object? Only an isolated, lonely one, in which he is the weak one, the helpless one, the passive one.
How many times do we see young children engrossed in the multi-colored screen? But for how many times do we see grown children being fed by their parents like babies even though they are perfectly capable of eating on their own? But they are still absorbed by the screen of the device…
