Pets Boost Friendliness in Autistic Kids

By R. Siva Kumar - 06 Jan '15 17:03PM

Developing a healthy relationship with pets can improve the social skills of autistic children. Dogs, rabbits as well as cats can all have a positive effect.

Autistic children have sensory stimuli that are tough to handle. Yet they do not have the social skills that can help them to exhibit what they are feeling. They often go through "problem" behaviors, according to nymag.com.

In a study, Gretchen Carlisle and colleagues from the University of Missouri have discovered that children who have pets can overcome some communication problems associated with autism. Pets are like a "social lubricant" for them, according to The Huffington Post.

The study probed the reactions of children between eight and 18, being treated at the MU Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders as well as their 70 families, according to a study published in ncbi.

Autistic children with pets appeared to be more friendly with strangers. "When I compared the social skills of children with autism who lived with dogs to those who did not, the children with dogs appeared to have greater social skills," Carlisle, from the Research Center for Human-Animal Interaction (ReCHAI) in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine, said in a news release.

Such children were quick to introduce themselves, answer questions and relate to others, according Carlisle. "These kinds of social skills typically are difficult for kids with autism, but this study showed children's assertiveness was greater if they lived with a pet," she added.

Even the duration of the relationship of children with pets was important. The longer a child owned a pet, the more friendly it could be. Most children seemed to like smaller pets over the bigger ones.

One out of every 160 children in the world suffers from autism. The study was published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, supporting a 2012 investigation that appeared in journal PLOS ONE. Marine Grandgeorge and colleagues from the Hospital Research Center of Brest in France understood that children who had pets exhibited enhanced communication in two areas: "offering to share" and "offering comfort".