Autistic children don't interact with the environment.

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To clarify, the child in gingerpickles's post is probably not the same patient that my ARNP was talking about. I really don't know anything about the patient; I was not working on the same child's chart, I didn't work with ARNP later, didn't get a referral or a consult or anything that I could use to connect to a particular patient.

I don't know the patient's age or what the symptoms were other than the head twitching the parent was concerned about. I don't know anything except that ARNP was trying to tell parent that while head twitching can sometimes be stimming and therefore possibly an ASD symptom, she doesn't think this child is Autistic because he has NT social skills. And he "interacts with the environment" while according to her statement at the time, Autistic Children don't.

No, I still haven't seen a good opening to ask her about it. I actually don't interact with the MD's and DO's and ARNP's much myself. So maybe they have a point about ASD people not interacting with the environment, if by "environment" they mean "other people."

But it's still a strange way to say that. Grabbing a toy and manipulating an isolated part of it is interacting with your environment. Lining up your toys is interacting with your environment. Jumping at loud noises and shying away from overly stimulating lights and/or colors is interacting with your environment. Feeling the different textures of surfaces is interacting with your environment. Learning which people you can be safe around and which ones to avoid is interacting with your environment. Even stimming is in a way interacting with your environment--an attempt to control the stimulus from the environment so it's less overwhelming.

As I said in my OP: Autistic children interact with the environment differently than NT's. We interact with the environment in Neurodiverse ways. Obviously--we're neurodiverse.

skibum I do think it was just that: oversimplifying the concept so she could tell the parent that the patient is probably not autistic. There are likely other reasons for the head twitching. We had a 5-year-old girl come in last week because her head was "vibrating." Both of these are odd symptoms, probably neurological or at least neurobehavioral, but not definitive signs of autism.

Yeah, even if you lived under a rock you would still be interacting with the environment. Anyone who is not sounds to me like he would have to be in a catatonic vegetative state.

I didn't like my environment at school when I was young and found it overwhelming. I didn't talk much and everyone thought I was weird. I just doodled in my notebook in between classes and sat in the corner at recess. School was rarely fun for me. I was more interactive at home.