Why Use Horse Therapy for Kids with Autism?

According to Autism Speaks, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting awareness and research in autism, autism is a term used to describe a group of brain disorders that present varying behavioral signs in differing levels of intensity. Signs of autism include problems engaging in verbal and social behavior.

Types

• Horse therapy for kids diagnosed with autism generally comes in two forms, according to the Aspen Education Group. Horse therapy options are hippotherapy and therapeutic riding).

Features

• Hippotherapy means horse therapy, from the Greek "hippo," meaning horse. Hippotherapy involves supervision by a licensed medical specialist. Therapeutic riding, on the other hand, is not supervised by medical specialists and is really a recreational event.

Verbal Skills

• Hippotherapy may be used with speech and language therapy to help autistic kids use verbal skills.

Social Skills

• Hippotherapy may also help autistic children develop social skills. This results, in part, because autistic children form emotional attachments with the horses they ride in hippotherapy.

Warning

• Hippotherapy should not be used as a replacement for a full medical treatment program in autistic children. Expert hippotherapist and speech-language pathologist Ruth Dismuke-Blakely advises that horse therapy may overstimulate some autistic kids, according to CNN.com.