Sal's Regression
Video Summary
Some children with autism may demonstrate typical behavior initially but fail to develop further or even lose skills they had previously mastered. Sal, a young child with autism, regressed from an energetic baby, who would captivate audiences at parties with his bubbly personality, to a distant child who would wander away with a flat affect. In less than a year after his birth, Sal became increasingly unresponsive to both languange and his name, demonstrating less vocalization and interest in communicating with his family/peers. Sal's parents' useful home videos and distinct memories provide a powerful recount of his rapid transformation to a child on the spectrum.
"And then one day he just sat and didn't want to do anything...and that's when the whole show started. It's like something shut off....not shut off, dimmed."
— Raquel (Sal's Mother)
Keywords
- Autism-General Information
- Regression
- Emotion
- flattened affect
- Family Life
- Guilt
- General Behaviors
- Wandering
- Nonverbal Behaviors Used in Social Interaction
- eye contact
- lack of eye contact
- facial expressions
- lack of facial expressions
- Nonverbal Communicative Skills
- pointing to request
- Social Interaction
- interest in other children
- Social Interaction
- lack of shared enjoyment
- shared enjoyment
- lack of interest in other children
- Toys
- playgrounds
- Verbal Communicative Skills
- receptive language
- lack of receptive language
- lack of response to name
- Babbling
- expressive language
- lack of expressive language
- loss of language skills