Unlock Autism: 7-Step Autism Action Plan to Unlock Your Child's Potential Within 12 Months

By Taiba Bajar

If you're the parent of an autistic child between the ages of 1-11, you already see their incredible potential. However, without enough support, it can feel like you're on your own.

Autism's challenges from self-harm and anxiety, to trouble with eating, sleeping, or self-care, can be disruptive and draining. Additionally, with

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inspired By Publishing
• Release date: May 31, 2024
• ISBN: 9781068620119

Book preview

Introduction

Why You Need to Read This Book!

If you’re reading this book, it’s likely because your child or a loved one’s child has an autism diagnosis. Or if you’re in the UK like me, you might be suspecting autism in your child, but are still waiting for your child’s official diagnosis.

I remember how overwhelming and emotional this experience can be. You may have turned to your GP or Health Visitor for help, but perhaps you didn't receive the support you hoped for. If you're fortunate enough not to have been dismissed, your child may have been placed on a waiting list for assessment, which determines their access to services. Following the assessment, there's often another waiting list for the actual support to begin. This system can be frustrating, and unfortunately, there's often insufficient support available for parents of autistic children in our country. Even after receiving an official diagnosis, some parents still struggle to access the help their child needs, leaving them feeling like they're left to manage everything on their own.

Within the autism community I found that there are two main types of narratives. There are people who will try to convince you that this is a lifelong condition that your child is born with. Their brain is wired like this, and there is nothing you can do except adapt your child’s environment in a loving way to try and make their life experiences easier for them. This is the narrative I was told. I was told to look for a SEN school, purchase noise cancelling headphones for my child, and be prepared to look after a child who may never become independent or will always have some lifelong struggles.

I couldn't accept this narrative, and if you’re reading this book, I’m sure you feel the same way and you are looking for solutions to unlock the potential you see within your child.

There is a second more hopeful emerging narrative that a person’s brain can be rewired. Neuroplasticity is the name given for the ability to create new brain connections and reorganise and prune your old brain connections. Understanding neuroplasticity means understanding that there is the potential to change the brain you currently have or the brain you are born with. When you’ve done this, you can change your habits and learn new skills. As parents this means we can help rewire our autistic children’s brains, help them to thrive in new environments and adapt to sensory changes better, and to learn new skills faster such as speech, emotional intelligence, and potty training.

Thankfully I remembered learning about the potential of the brain, especially how malleable a child’s brain is in the first five years of their life from my neuroscience studies at university. A child’s brain has grown 75% of the brain connections it will ever have by the age of 3, and would have grown by 90% of the brain connections by age 5.¹ Even after this age of rapid physical growth, there is evidence of neuroplasticity occurring even in adults up until the age of 75, and as more research happens, it is likely that we will discover evidence of neuroplasticity occurring beyond this age too. So if your autistic child is older than the age of 5, there is still a lot of potential to use neuroplasticity to rewire their brain, overcome any developmental delays, and unlock their potential.

Sometimes it can be difficult to know if our child really does have autism. Or are they just developing a bit slower than normal? Use Worksheet: How Do I Know If My Child Even Has Autism? on page 17 to help you answer this question for yourself. As parents, we are often first to see autism symptoms in our children below the age of 3-5. Because of how fast the brain grows in this age, this also means there is a lot we can do to influence our child’s life outcomes at this age.

When a person’s inputs change, e.g. their nutrition, their stress levels, the toxins they are exposed to, their hormone levels, their environment etc., then this changes the outputs (symptoms) they display. This can be regardless of what genes they have. A person’s genes are not their destiny. The environment has an impact on the expression of genes. For example, a person could have a gene for obesity, but if they are living in an environment where there are a lot of food shortages or they have a healthy lifestyle where they are staying fit and not overeating, then that person will never show that gene’s expression of being obese. This is what epigenetics teaches us. How having the gene for something does not make it a person’s destiny, but that gene expressions can be switched on or off depending on the person’s environment and lifestyle.

In the case of an autistic child who is experiencing a developmental delay and showing autism symptoms, which are impacting the quality of their life and their family’s lives, I will be teaching you my 7-Step Autism Action Plan™. This is a step-by-step guide on how to change each of your child’s inputs to produce different outcomes for them: someone who may no longer have sensory overwhelm or underwhelm; someone who is no longer always so anxious or aggressive; someone who reaches their developmental milestones; or someone whose potential has now been unlocked, who can lead themselves and others.

I have included some worksheets throughout this book to guide you on how to implement the 7-Step Autism Action Plan for your child. If you follow my step-by-step method, your child will likely make progress towards their developmental milestones and you will know exactly how to unlock their potential within 12 months. As a parent, I know that after seeing nil or limited developmental progress in your child, I know that this is a bold promise. But it is one that I know can be fulfilled as I have done this for my own son, and for many of my clients’ autistic children too. My program works. Everyone can rewire their brains to learn new skills using neuroplasticity, if they optimise their brain health by changing the inputs their brain is receiving.²

Autism is not simply in a child’s genes where there is nothing you can do about it. Research conducted by Professor John Constantino, of psychiatry and pediatrics at Washington University studied identical twins who had an official autism diagnosis. He explained that autism severity often varies greatly between identical twins. For example, one twin could be non-verbal and the other could have excellent speech. This shows that the quality of life of autistic children is not hardwired by their genetics.³ It proves that the environment matters a lot, which should be hopeful to us parents as it shows even if a child has a strong genetic vulnerability to display autism symptoms, there’s a lot of room for improvement to reduce their symptoms and enhance their quality of life.

Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that at the age of 23, I discovered that I was on the autism spectrum and I also received a diagnosis of dyspraxia. Once I got my diagnoses, this made a lot of sense, as there were always skills that I found harder to learn and social situations where I didn’t understand nuances as well as other people. However sadly, once I learned my labels, I leaned into them harder and limited myself. As an example, I always enjoyed learning Bollywood choreography dances growing up. As soon as I learned that I had dyspraxia, I accepted that this will be harder for me and I won’t be able to get this skill easily. I believed that I would find this skill harder to learn so I tried less, and my dance moves got worse, and my confidence to perform in front of other people decreased. Sadly this is similar for my team working skills, or my social skills at events or to form new friendship groups as