Desenvolvimento psicomotor da criança com Transtorno do Espectro Autista na Equoterapia: diálogo da Educação Física com a Psicologia

Abstract

Currently, Autism Spectrum Disorder has gained greater visibility. Being a global developmental disorder and knowing its implications for children's lives, emerged the need for new therapies and approaches to address the needs of autistic children has arisen in a way that can fully develop. In this context comes the equine therapy with a proposal of therapy linked to psychomotricity, in which, through psychomotor development, socialization, learning and affectivity, these children can have greater autonomy in the ir lives. In this way, the general objective of this work is to verify the contribution of Equoterapia in the psychomotor development of the child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) from the perspective of the Physical Education teacher and the Psychologist. As methodology, we applied an open questionnaire to five professionals who work in equine therapy centers in São Paulo and work or have worked with children with ASD. For the treatment of the data we used the thematic analysis where we chose five themes (Development of the child with ASD, Psychomotricity, Evaluation, The role of the Horse and Time needed for results). As results we could observe that as the literature states, Equine therapy, under the view of psychologists and physical education teacher, brings affective, cognitive and motor benefits to ASD practitioners, although the centers use heterogeneous approach and evaluative methods. Regardless of the factors questioned in this work, it was evident the dedication of all the professionals involved and, above all, the incredible experience of seeing these children perceiving a new world with the horse and through this the process of self-discovery as people in the world.