Mindfulness and Autism

By Abeer H. Ezzeddine

A fairly recent study shows a “mindfulness” program for

autistic children and their parents provides a direct and long-
term improvements.

Mindfulness is defined as a mental state achieved by

focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly
acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily
sensations, used as a therapeutic technique. For Muslims and
Christians who pray, an element of mindfulness is naturally infused in
one's prayer. Another way I can describe it is when we take time to
reflect on our conscious existence and our existence in relation to
the natural environment and with other human beings around us.

I always think about myself, the environment and the people

around me, what is the big deal about a mindfulness program? The
difference is that when you practice mindfulness on a routine basis,
taking time from your day to actually mediate or pray, you become more
mindful throughout your day. To put this in perspective, have you
ever had an interaction with a person that was not as friendly as you
would have liked it to be? After having an opportunity to reflect you
may re-approach that person to apologize or to make the relationship
more peaceful. What if your always busy with your work, school, or
other tasks or social responsibilities, you may miss that opportunity
to reflect, whereas when you designate time on a routine basis you are
always having that opportunity to think about your emotions, your
existence, and your relations with others. Thus, setting a time on a
regular basis to reflect with oneself, one become more mindful
throughout their day and through-out their life.

What is Autism? Autism is a mental condition, present from early

childhood and remains throughout adult life. It is characterized by
great difficulty in communicating and forming relationships with other
people and in using language and abstract concepts. Fundamental to
human development at many levels is the human ability to read minds
and predict other peoples' intentions, this requires a specialized
network of neurons in the frontal cortex of the brain called the
“mirror system”. These neurons are active when one performs a certain
task but also when one observes the same task performed by others.
From this, the brain forms a theory of the another person's mind using
one's own experience, which enables imitation learning, empathy
towards other human beings, and plays a critical role in the formation
of language. Imitation is an early milestone in child development,
and impaired socialization and lack of imitative play in children with
autism are among the diagnostic criteria for the disability. In
autism, this network of neurons is underdeveloped, resulting in
deficient copying skills and the inability to recognize and interpret
of minds of other persons.

A child's autism diagnosis affects every member of the family in

different ways. Parents/caregivers must now place their primary focus
on helping their child with autism, which may put stress on their
marriage, other children, employment, finances, and personal
relationships and responsibilities. As much as we need to cope and
treat the child's autism, equally important is treating the parents
added stress and their overall mental health.

In a recently published study at the Research Institute of Child

Development and Education at the University of Amsterdam, which
followed forty-five children with autistic spectrum disorders from the
age of 8 through the age of 19 to see the effectiveness of a
mindfulness program on both the parents and the autistic child who
preformed mindfulness programs along with their parents. The study
showed parents had an improvement in emotional and behavioral
functions, improvement in the effectiveness of their parenting,
specifically, over-activity and stress about their competence in
parenting were decreased. Also, the parents' mindful awareness, as
described in the mindfulness definition above also increased.
Surprisingly, the autistic child did not report significant changes in
mindful awareness, however, what is significant is that the child's
social communication problems decreased, and their emotional and
behavioral functioning improved, which included their internalizing,
externalizing, attention problems, rumination, stress, and emotional
well-being.

Preforming a mindfulness exercise with an autistic child can be a

challenge because of the inherent limitations in the child's ability
to mirror the parents. Forcing anyone, albeit a child with autism, to
pray or meditate in all likelihood will fail. However, if the parents
approach the mindfulness exercise in a manner that is part of the
parent's natural household order and part of the parents daily life
and activity, they will set an environment that is naturally conducive
to encourage mindfulness by the autistic child on his own. For
example, when its time to meditate or pray, all the distractions such
as electronic devises and televisions are turned off, the lighting is
reduced, and all toys are put away; creating a certain time during the
day where both the parent and the child are availing themselves the
opportunity to be in a peaceful and quiet environment to self reflect
and be mindful.

About the Author

Abeer is a Specialist in Childhood Education, she received her

Bachelor of Education Majoring in Early Childhood Education at
the Lebanese International University. Abeer consults non-
profit organization, NGOs, and public institutions dealing with
children with special needs and is also involved in various
activities to raise awareness to many social problems affecting
children. Show your support for children with needs by following
me #childrenawarneness_