Infographic: Aneri, Kusha, Mariya, Huma, Rashmi

In this infographic we have tried to convert 2 cant's into ONE CAN.

Autistic Can't: Can't Socialise

Neuro typical Can't: Can't be compassionate

Common Goal: Social Interaction

Steps for Autistic Spectrum to fulfill this goal:

1. Awareness:

 Parents of Autistic Children need to recognize, understand and accept autism in their children. They shouldn't hesitate to get help.

2. Sending child for help:

a) Therapies:

     • Speech therapy: helps non-verbal children esp. through PECS- Picture Exchange Communication System. Use of Picture cards might encourage them to speak and interact with other children. 
• Occupational Therapy: Through things like anger management, physical co-ordination etc. it helps the child with skills to lead a more independent life. 
• Lego & Therapy through multi player games: These therapies are mostly for high functioning autistics. In lego therapy, there are sessions held for these children where they are given joint and interactive tasks by their coaches in a specially designed lego room. They are urged to come up with their own solutions for the tasks given as well as interact with others. This naturally leads them to build on their social and communicational skills. There are multi player games designed for autistic children to help their social skills. There is an interactive game environment set up so that they can collaboratively play games and try to crack problems. For e.g. Collaborative puzzle games

. b) Educational Programs:
• TEACCH Approach: This approach allows customizing educational programs based on the child’s strengths and weaknesses. Also, visual clues are enabled for better learning purpose. 
• Peer Modelling: This is an activity introduced in schools where teachers and peers help the special children to work on their social skills. Here the peers play an important role because they can help the other children fit in to the social environment. This also helps autistic children initiate conversations with them.

c) Other Treatments:
• Applied Behaviour Analysis: Children with autism need a structured environment to really grasp things. ABA works on setting up the right kind of environment for them to improve their learning. They are given rewards for answering social questions correctly etc. 
• Relationship Development Intervention: This is a program where parents get suggestions for their children to help them how to adapt better in the environment around and be more open to interact with others.

3. Self Management and Independence:

The techniques given above all help the children to become independent and regulate their behaviour and act appropriately in various day to day situations.

4. Social Interaction:

In this way, there is ability in the child to socially interact with others and not feel awkward.

Steps for Neuro Typicals to fulfil this goal:

1. Awareness:

 Other People, not associated with autistic children, should be aware of their condition. Only when they know about their behavioural patterns, they won’t react to it badly, and the autistic children won’t feel uncomfortable living in an outside environment and interacting with them.

2. Empathize:

  Once people know about the condition these children go through, they should try putting themselves in their shoes, try realising the kind of trouble these kids have to face. Only then will they be able to relate to them and understand their situation.

3. Understand:

    Once they know what the autistic children have to go through, they will be able to understand their situation, which will in turn help them be more sensitive to their actions and behaviour.

4. Be Sensitive:

     Understanding their situation helps people become more sensitive towards the autistic children. In this way, the autistic children won’t feel uncomfortable or awkward living with neuro typicals. This will enable a healthy environment for the two categories to interact with each other.

5. Social Interaction:   

      For neuro typicals to interact with the autistic spectrum, it is very important for them to go through the above steps, otherwise social interaction between the two is very difficult.

The three black symbols in the centre are to urge people to:

· Stop ignorance and apathy

· Pause to think

· Take Action

And the above steps to reach our final goal correspond to these symbols.