Nature as a healer for autistic children

Abstract

The reason of many symptoms of autistic children is sensory integration, it is the power to understand, organize and feel sensory data from the environment and body. The issues surrounding sensory integration are presented in hyposensitive and hypersensitive a reaction by children with autism to the vestibular, proprioception, tactile, audio, visual, and olfactory senses.The aim of this paper is establishing a group of guidelines for designing a therapeutic garden for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder to treat the sensory integration problems of children with ASD by designing a sensory garden which should focus on therapeutic interference. By using the elements and principles of design, guidelines for this garden focused on producing calming effects for hyper reactive children with ASD and stimulating effects for hypo reactions. Keywords: Autistic children, Healing gardens, Sensory integration, Hyper-reactive children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Hypo-reactive children with Autism Spectrum Disorder