OTİZMLE YAŞAMI NE KADAR ANLIYORUZ?

Despite the increasing rate in its diagnosis, autism is not a well-known and understood concept in our society. Sometimes it is confused with mental retardation although a child with autism may not have mental retardation. Every year, individuals who were focused on autism come together and make programs for creating awareness about autism among society, in April second. This is a day called "World's awareness day for autism". As an educational researcher and a mother of a child with autism, preparing an article in this sort was a must for the author of the paper. The paper includes an introduction to "autism" for those who do not have an adequate information about it or who would like to understand the situation with all details. Parents and schools are the two important agencies that can make life easier for children with autism. Therefore; it is necessary to understand how parents of children with autism think and behave, as well as understanding how teachers and other individuals in schools act towards them. The paper describes autism in the first step and includes discussions about metaphors related to its definitions. These metaphors range from "being a disease" to "being an alien" and there are several others in between. Those who were neither autistics nor having a relative with autism use "autism as a disease" metaphor, while individuals with either autism or having a relative with autism choose to use "autism as neurological diversity" metaphor for autism. Despite the varieties in metaphors, autism is generally defined as social communication disorder. Very limited language development, having problems of learning with imitating, unfair play with toys and lack of eye contact can be counted among the symptoms of autism. Delayed or no language development may mostly limit this communication. People in the environment of children with autism might need to develop an alternative way to communicate. This creates a stress for parents and people in close relationship with the child with autism. Picture exchange communication system, sign language and augmentative communication systems are among these alternative ways of communication. As the first important socialization agent in his life, parents of a child with autism are needed to be well informed and equipped about their children. Being ready for educating and bringing up a child with autism is something can never occur. But there are always some ways to understand the child better and help him communicate the world properly. The paper discusses parenting stress emphasizing factors related to stress for mothers and fathers. In most of the research studies related to parents of children with autism, it is underlined that mothers have more stress than fathers. Mothers need to think solutions to their children's various problems concurrently. This is not the case for fathers in general. Fathers mostly think about getting more money to use in their children's needs for special education. School is another important agency for socialization of a child, but schooling brings extra stress to parents' life. Teachers' lack of knowledge about autism may cause that stress. Although there are many research studies about the inclusive classroom applications for people with autism around the world, there is very limited number of them in our country. It is very interesting to say that stress is not the only feeling expressed with parents. Parents also express feeling of inner wealthines and individual development. This displays that parents hold both good and depressive feelings when bringing up their children. The article includes some hints for teachers of inclusive classrooms about how they can cope with problems of a child with autism. These hints were practiced and reported as working practical applications for inclusion. Schools are the places where children with autism cannot be socialized without them. Therefore, the hints mentioned in this article and in othersimilar ones, need to be well understood.