Autistic kids’ parents can help reduce their symptoms’ severity: study

Parents of autistic children can help reduce the severity of their symptoms and enhance their ability to communicate by working with them from a young age, a new study suggested.

In the Pre-school Autism Communication Trial, the researchers found that parents who get involve with autistic children can reduce symptoms like repetition and improve their communication skills.

Dr. Jonathan Green, a professor of child & adolescent psychiatry at University of Manchester, noted that autism is a really devastating diagnosis for families, who often question what to do next.

Speaking on the topic, Dr. Green added, ‘When we change the parental interactive behavior ... that leads to child initiation with the parent, and that change in child initiation with the parent is related to the child changing symptoms.”

The encouraging findings of the new study appeared in the most recent edition of the Lancet, a British medical journal committed to applying scientific knowledge to enhance health and advance human progress.
Autism, a spectrum disorder, is believed to affect 1 in every 68 children in the United States, with nearly half of them having intellectual disabilities and roughly 10 per cent never learning to speak.

The list of common symptoms of autism includes problem with communication, obsessive interests, repetitive behaviors and difficulty in making social interactions. Currently there is no pharmaceutical treatment to cure the disorder.