
Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS)
Parents get confused when their child’s language development seems to be slower. He is able to ask for items around him. But he is not talking about activities and others behavior ; or he is not sharing any kind of interest by talking to others.
Does this slower language development exist with unusual emotional and social behavior? How do I get my child checked for Autism?
Both parents and professionals have a lot of confusion early on about whether a child has autism, or a speech delay, or just typical toddler tantrums. Identifying symptoms of Autism can be tricky.
When a child does not socially respond to the adults around him. He does not play with anyone , or tries to interact with only one or two adults . And he seems to be happy playing with himself.
The Autism Childhood Rating Scale is one of the widely used diagnostic tool which assess a child in fifteen following areas :
- Relationship to people around him
- Imitation skills
- Emotional response to a situation
- Body use
- Object use
- Adaptation to changes
- Visual- response
- Listening- response
- Taste-smell-touch response and its use
- Fear & nervousness
- Verbal communication (use of language )
- Non-verbal communication
- Activity level
- level & consistency of intellectual responses
- general impression
A composite score in the above areas is indicative of whether a child has Autism or not and what is the severity of symptoms , ranging from mild , moderate or severe.