Rather than spending time reading about autism you can probably better help this child by playing with him and doing stuff for his parents so they have more time to play with him
In my (very limited) experience autistic children aren’t very interested in playing with people, so a minimum of reading might be useful if only to understand what kinds of “playing” are likely to interest an autistic child, and also which kind of “playing” have chances of slightly improving his communication/interaction skills and interests.
There’s an autistic three-year-old that often plays in the sandbox with my kid—he’s much more interested in playing with a single toy than in the other kids or his parents; unlike my 20-month-old who evaluates toys by how much attention the other kids are paying to them (resulting in the classical “everybody fight for the shovel, five minutes later everyone fights for the truck”), or uses toys to bribe other kids (preferably bribing with someone else’s toy). The autistic kid can eventually tolerate playing with another kid (like, both fill up the same bucket), but has to be prodded to do so, and will usually end up going back to playing alone. The only “game” I’ve seen him play with someone else is being chased around by his parents, which he seems to find fun.
so a minimum of reading might be useful if only to understand what kinds of “playing” are likely to interest an autistic child,
One theory is that you start with what the kid will do without prompting and then gradually introduce yourself into his play using trial and error to identify actions he appreciates and responds to. This is called floortime. The other main paradigm is Applied Behavior Analysis.
In my (very limited) experience autistic children aren’t very interested in playing with people, so a minimum of reading might be useful if only to understand what kinds of “playing” are likely to interest an autistic child, and also which kind of “playing” have chances of slightly improving his communication/interaction skills and interests.
There’s an autistic three-year-old that often plays in the sandbox with my kid—he’s much more interested in playing with a single toy than in the other kids or his parents; unlike my 20-month-old who evaluates toys by how much attention the other kids are paying to them (resulting in the classical “everybody fight for the shovel, five minutes later everyone fights for the truck”), or uses toys to bribe other kids (preferably bribing with someone else’s toy). The autistic kid can eventually tolerate playing with another kid (like, both fill up the same bucket), but has to be prodded to do so, and will usually end up going back to playing alone. The only “game” I’ve seen him play with someone else is being chased around by his parents, which he seems to find fun.
One theory is that you start with what the kid will do without prompting and then gradually introduce yourself into his play using trial and error to identify actions he appreciates and responds to. This is called floortime. The other main paradigm is Applied Behavior Analysis.