What I see when London participates in sports is a mind that wants to go faster, a face that believes in her ability, but a body that isn’t quite there yet. It’s a real thing that some studies suggest 50% of autistic children deal with and it is called hypotonia (low muscle tone). Autism Parenting Magazine defines it as:
…muscles feel soft or floppy even though they’re not weak. It’s a neurological issue, not a strength one. Muscle tone refers to the resting tension in a muscle. In other words, it’s the readiness of a muscle to activate and hold posture. Strength, on the other hand, is about how much force a muscle can exert. A child with low tone may look relaxed or even lazy, but they’re actually working harder than other kids just to sit upright or hold a pencil. It can impact everything from gross motor skills, such as running, to fine motor tasks, like buttoning a shirt.
It’s been a long time since London struggled with fine motor skills, but gross motor skills continue to be much more challenging for her than they are for neurotypical middle school kids. When I watch her compete in XC or track my heart is so proud of her, but it also aches at the same time too, just wanting a level playing field for once. When it comes to sports, I don’t know if she will ever have one and as someone who grew up with heaps of expectations on him to be a great athlete I know what it can be like to not meet them. So I try and I try to not have expectations when it comes to sports, but I fail again and again.
When I sat down this morning to write this I did a bit of research into hypotonia in autistic children and teens. One of the more interesting bits of information I found was a conclusion from a study, that I don’t have access to, but still I find it worth sharing now. The study followed autistic and non-autistic youth from childhood into their teens and found that, “Strength gaps got bigger as kids became teens. Autistic youth fell further behind in grip, core, and leg power. Other motor skills stayed about the same. Ceiling effects on easy tasks may hide later problems.”
The study’s conclusion and action item:
It’s a report aimed at helping BCBAs and therapists develop strategies to offset the effects of hypotonia in autistic children, but it was helpful for me to see that conclusion because I’m not really helping London in that way. There are things that I could be doing with London to develop some strength and muscle mass and the activities would only take a few minutes every other day. In the long run, will this level the playing field? I don’t think so. I don’t know. But it’ll bring her body closer to matching the sheer determination on her face and the burning desire to simply belong and feel like one of her peers.
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