Daniel Isn T Talking By Marti Leimbach

1536 Words7 Pages

The Book “Daniel Isn’t Talking” is written by Marti Leimbach. Leimbach writes a nonfiction book that is semi-influenced by her own personal experience with her child's diagnosis of autism. The book is written in first-person point of view, through the eyes of Melanie, a 29-year-old mother of two. Daniel, that is almost three, and Emily who is four. We see Melanie face difficulties trying to cope with life issues due to a past life of hardships involving deaths of many loved ones and her new relationship with her husband Stephen and his never supportive family. This leads Melanie to get psychiatric help because she feels as if she doesn't understand what is wrong with her. However deep within her, she does, she just doesn't want to admit it …show more content…

Daniel, who is almost three isn't able to verbalize, has strange behaviors such as walking on his tippy toes, has little to no interest in emotions, or the presence of others. His interests are very much restricted and fixated on one toy, Thomas the train. His mother has a hard time accepting that he doesn't love her the way her other child does. Melanie says “ He will not speak or look at me while I sound out words for him. It appears a deliberate effort, this turning away, for he seems to search for everything but my face, my eyes that seek him out, my lips that produce the words that I am so desperate for him to try” (Leimbach,38). One of the key aspects of autism is not displaying joint attention because they don't understand social interaction, eye contact and how important it is. According to ASHA Daniels, characteristics are normal for his diagnosis ASHA writes autistic kids, “have social, communication and language problems. They also have restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, such as flipping objects, echolalia, or excessive smelling or touching of objects. Autism may be mild or severe. All children with autism don't have the exact same problems. Children with autism may have the following social and communication skills and common behaviors” …show more content…

However, in recent times we know that it is also a genetic factor and environmental factor which brings this upon babies. Matsuzaki states, “ genetic and environmental factors play a major role in the development of autism. However, most cases are idiopathic, and no single factor can explain the trends in the pathology and prevalence of autism. At the time of this writing, autism is viewed more as a multifactorial disorder” (Matsuzaki). At the time of the MMR vaccine was being distributed to children it was the age that autism shows most

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