“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” written by Mr. Mark Haddon. This book won both the Book of the Year and Whitbread Novel awards. This book says, Who is on Earth would want to read about a fifteen-year-old boy called Christopher. While he was making this book. Little did he know that it was exactly the fifteen-year-old disable boy, that made his book stand out, able to win awards and become a bestseller of the world.
Christopher is an autistic-savant. He can name all the countries and cities in the world. He has a virtual photographic memory and a genius in mathematics and science. Due to his intelligence, he cannot imagine, understand figures of speech and language. He also does not like places with many people touching him. People who are autistic-savants exhibit both the characteristics common among those with autism and those with the Savant Syndrome. Autism is one developmental disorder among the group of Autism Spectrum Disorders. This condition is mainly characterized by impairment in socialization, imagination and communication. Savant Syndrome is characterized by very low-level general intelligence but extraordinary sharp intelligence usually in the fields of mathematics, music, artistic and memorization.
Story described that Christopher’s parents are separated. His mother separated from Christopher and his father because she cannot cooperate further more with an autistic child. Parents who take special care of disable child such as those with autism may probably have a most stress compared to most of the parents. This is mainly because their children have required special care and demands, unusual behaviors and different abilities are much different from other kids of the same age. These type children will requires finding it difficult to communicate, thus, resulting in unusual behavior. An example of this is when, an autistic child cries for no apparent reason and begins hitting himself/herself. Most likely, somethings are caused him/her to feel upset but cannot convey his/her feelings to others. Some autistic children with sensitive integration problems may either be hypersensitive or hyposensitive touch, pressure, movement and sound. They will react certain behaviors that are sometimes difficult to understand by his/her parents. Thus as avoidance of certain types of food and drinks, pinching or hitting, repetitive movements. Some of them could not adjust with new places or people. To accommodate and adjustment, the needs and cope with the these types of children is not easy. Therefore, it can result to a lot of tension and stress.
Despite of it, seems to be a difficult to adapting and coping with autistic type special children, a lot of already been studied and published regarding proper arrangements that will not only lessen the children’s anxiety but also their parents’ stress and difficulties. Different type of methods such as Cognitive Behavior Modification, Behavior Modification Techniques and Environmental Modification Techniques are effective to proven effective in changing the unusual behaviors and improving the knowing skills of children with autism. Some, having compounding conditions other than autism behavior, may need additional special treatment by the special child/ psychiatrist specialists. Autistic children are also have panic depression by their sadness with being involuntarily trapped in their self-protecting behaviors may need more special therapy which were mentioned earlier. Consult with a psychiatrist is highly advised in this situation and other medications from other medical specialist may be prescribed.
This story ended with Christopher being able to overcome challenges of life that have caused him too much anxiety. After looking struggle of Christopher his mother deciding to return in Christopher’s family to take care of him. This fictional novel tell us, the same can be achieved in real life in terms of dealing with stress and anxiety among families who need to cope with the condition of his/her behavior child. Special care and good management, medication or treatment, stress and anxiety among parents and autistic children can be achieved effectively.
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