The ability of children with Pervasive Developmental Disorder or Autism Spectrum Disorder to Perceive and Make Meaning of the World
Every child comes into this world with a different biological system. The baby who breastfeeds peacefully in his mother's arms actually strengthens his coping mechanism with many sensory stimuli. We call this self-regulation or regulation. While the baby enjoys the taste and warmth of the hot milk coming into his mouth, he listens to the sound of his mother's lullaby, looks into his mother's eyes, takes in her scent and warmth, and on the other hand, he receives the 'proprioceptive' stimuli coming from his body, which we call deep sense, coming from his body, the onesie rubbing against his body, the stimuli of the mother's body moving with every breath. Many babies can continue to breastfeed peacefully even when they are aware of these stimuli. But as we said before, every child comes into this world with a different biological structure. Some children can be hypersensitive to moving their bodies, and what may be a very normal movement for us can cause them to become overstimulated, this can be the same with touch and sound. Excessively high-pitched or low-pitched sounds or the intensity of the sound, movement of the baby's body, touching the baby's romper or a simple tag on his clothing can disrupt the baby's regulation system. For these reasons, it may not be possible to calm the baby. While a calm baby receives all stimuli, integrates them and stores them as a meaningful whole, a baby who cannot maintain his/her calm will be deprived of this meaningful integration. The baby's failure to build meaningful bridges with his caregiver and the world will lead to great problems in the future. How can a neurodevelopmentally differentiated child remain calm and receive meaningful information in this sensory bombardment? The caregiver, who understands the baby's individual characteristics and ensures regulation (the baby's peace), helps integrate meaningful information. A connection will be made with the attachment-relationship between him and his primary caregiver. Without a relationship, why would he strain the child's system? For a piece of chocolate or crackers? Is this how we acquired communication? Or is it by watching how our parents communicate because of our relationship with them? By interacting-playing with them?
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