Courtesy of Dr. Chelom’s brilliant blog, a breakthrough finding that may prove extremely beneficial for autistic children.
Research demonstrates that spending time with pets can help autistic children develop social skills:
‘The study, from French researchers, is the first strong scientific evidence that animals may help foster social skills in individuals with autism, but it also reinforces what clinicians have been hearing anecdotally for years.
“We hear from parents a lot that having a pet or interacting with an animal really helps their child’s social behavior, but there hasn’t been a study so far that has looked at that scientifically,” said Alycia Halladay, director of environmental research at Autism Speaks. “This offers some intriguing evidence to confirm what parents have been saying.”
How do pets help:
- Pets are predictable. Some owners would disagree but pets have smaller range of predictable emotions comparing to humans. This can help autistic kids recognise their pets’ emotions more easily.
- Pets have buckets of time. Research shows that one of the biggest…
View original post 68 more words
Topical Teaching 
August 13, 2012 at 1:24 am |
I’d like to know whether all kinds of pets would be equally beneficial to kids with autism or whether there’s a certain preference when it comes to choosing the right pet for these children. For example, if I wanted to buy a dog for my little son I would definitely weigh all the options before deciding which dog breed to choose.
August 13, 2012 at 8:49 pm |
Good question Steve. For the best possible answer I suggest you ask the writer of this particular piece:
http://doctor-pets.com/2012/08/02/why-pets-are-autistic-kids-best-friends/