Autism is more common than we thought

As a special educator in a public high school I would like to encourage all parents of children with autism to seek early intervention & outside help and to work closely with their children's teachers. Public high schools have become so large and understaffed that it is difficult to provide the one on one instruction that so many students with special needs require. I would love to spend 2-3 hours a day with each of my students, but my case load is too high. Get involved, Parents, you can make a difference!!

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My son at 4 1/2 has been diagnosed as having autism. Untill this Fall I was in denial that there was anything wrong with my angel. As the sleep patterns became worse with broken routines, I knew I had to find out for myself. We currently work with a speach pathologist and he has started attending pre-school. The more I learn the more I want to try and teach otherss. I've written papers for two collage classes on the disease. It helps me to know that there are people out there who are trying to find a reason. I ttoo was a cynic at one time dismissing ADHD and Autism as just a fad. A way to squelch an active youth but, experiencing what I have 1st hand I no longer think that way!

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As some have said, the reasons for the spike in autism spectrum disorders is not what's important here. What is important is that we will now hear more about it. The recent research findings can now open the doors to more communication, better understanding, promoting tolerance, more research on the causes and effects of autism and what can be done for those who fall into that category.
I am currently working with autistic teens as a personal aide and have learned (am STILL learning) so much about some of the more typical behaviors of autistics AND the vast differences in the way autism spectrum disorder presents in different people. At the same time, my exposure to autistic children, along with what I have previously learned about autism, has led me to believe, with a 99% degree of certainty, that my son has Asperger's syndrom.
Consequently, some of the comments I've read have bothered me a little. While qualifying for Medicaid would be extremely helpful (especially since my children and I currently have no health insurance), I'm struggling with feeling 'guilty' because people may think I'm having him officially diagnosed JUST to get financial aid. I also don't want to be thought of as jumping on the bandwagon--wanting a diagnosis just because it seems to be the popular disorder these days.
Ultimately, my son's well-being and his chance for a productive future are what's important and that's what I'll base my decisions on. So, trendy or not, the more attention autism gets, the better things will be for my son and the students I work with.

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School districts just can't stand it if they can't label a student as something - anything will do! Better if they can label a child for "Special Ed" or "Resource" because they can get more $$$ from the state/feds.

Of course, this label means that- should the child become a problem or - heaven forbid! - threaten to bring down their beloved test scores; they can pressure the parents to transfer the child to a "resource-oriented" school. This is just another name for minimum security facility usually in a really bad part of town!

BEWARE! Unless the child is truly a threat to themselves or others, this is absolutely not necessary! Stand your ground and demand the services that your child is entitled to!

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ARE CERTAIN PEOPLE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE SUCH CHILDREN? IF SO, PERHAPS WE SHOULD PREVENT THEIR REPLACATION.

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I go with the mercury theory. 1990 I waived the vaccination for my first child. My 1993, I thought it should be okay. My almost 10lb baby ended up with mild central auditory processing discorder (we thought she had sensory integration problems), bladder/kidney issues, reading comprehension learning disabled. Many children her same age, in our neighborhood, have the same issues - ADD, autism, auditory processing. Some people are more sensitive to mercury than others and coupled with any exposure to lead, it's more pronounced. THe CDC has been dragging it's feet. Can you imagine the lawsuits with the drug companies? It will cripple them. How do you think aspartame made it through? Think - Donald Rumsfeld.

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The vaccinations were from 1990 to 1997 that contained the mercury.

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There was never a recall on mercury/thimerasol-containing vaccines, just a government mandate stopping manufacturing of same.

Vials of multi-dose vaccines containing thimerasol were still sitting on pediatrician's shelves as late as 2003.

Single-dose vaccines (cost $4 more to manufacture per shot) did not need the thimerasol preservative.

Some flu shots still contain mercury . . . notice the rise in Alzheimers lately? All those old folks gettin' flu shots? Sigh.

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I just started reading a book called "Impossible Cure - The Promise of Homeopathy" by Amy Lansky. The author tells of having her son "cured" of autism by using a homeopathic remedy. I am only starting to learn about homeopathy, so I can't and won't claim to know much about it or even about autism, but the book is quite interesting. And the author makes a convincing argument for the use of homeopathy to cure many things, including autism, so I wanted to mention it just in case this is a treatment that anyone would like to try.

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I am a classroom teacher with nearly 20 years of experience. I have a child in my 5th grade classroom this year that is unlike any child I've ever worked with previously. He is without a doubt, a child who has Asperger's Syndrome. His mother is unfortunately in denial. I've researched this quite thoroughly this year since our interevention specialist brought her suspicions to my attention upon learning he'd be placed in my classroom for his 5th grade year. What a shame that this child has slipped through the "cracks" prior to arriving at our school in the late spring of 2006. He was simply labeled as a behavior problem rather than being recognized as a child who suffered, in many instances, because of a neurological disorder and that his mother is in such denial that she won't even take him to a medical doctor to have a physical. I often think how different his life would be if he were treated and allowed to be "normal" in the eyes of his peers rather than treated differently because he can't handle certain aspects of socialization with other children and becomes violent when someone is in his "self-space." He will be "eaten alive" in middle school when the teachers don't realize that he isn't "normal" and haven't put buffers into place within their classrooms like I have, to help protect this boy from his disorder and his misperceptions of the world around him. It is certain that his peers will not protect him or simply ignore his differences, like his classmates do now, without the guidance of a teacher who recognizes his issues. Thank you to Charlene for being willing to recognize and acknowledge that she was a mother in denial.

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My son David is going to be 15 in March. He was diagnosed autistic at age 3. He is basically non verbal, he will speak a word or two when prompted but cannot put a complete sentence together. He has been in the public school system since age 3. He is now in 8th grade. He had the same teacher in grade school and she kept him an extra year because of the progress she was making with David. We just had our annual IEP done, and the school he has been in for the past three years now says he is not Auticstic, that he is "Cognitive Impaired-Severe" and they want to remove him from the public school and have him attend a school strictly for people with mild to severe problems. I have been extremely upset over this because it has been those same people who year after year have diagnosed him as Autistic. I believe they are making this change to basically have him removed from the public school system. His classes have always been for Autistic Impaired with one hour a day in a regular classroom. 2 years ago, we got a notice that unless David got his last immunizations, he could not return to school. Against my better judgement, he got the shots to remain in school. That is about the point in time when he began to regress and forget things he had spent all of his grade school years learning. I do not know if it was the shots or the change of schools that was the key factor in the sudden change,or both. I know for a fact my son is autistic, i have known for 12 years. I studied it,i know the symptoms and signs. I welcome any opinions and advice on what i should do,if there is anything i can do. I now find myself in a not so good position. Everything i believed for the past 12 years is all of a sudden in question.

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I have a 9 year old daughter & she was diagnosed with PDD (Pervasive Develpmental Disorder) at the age of 2 1/2. My daughter would not look you in the eye & did not speak. I didn't know what that was, until the daycare she was at, the owner stepped in asked if she could get us help. If I didn't do that, I would of lost her 9 years ago. Thank God for people out there that help these children. Today, at 9 years old, thru Dr's appointments & phsycologist evaluations, my daughter has come a long way. I'm very grateful to the people that have helped us along the way & I'd be extremely grateful if we can help these children more.

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My Wife works with children of grade school ages at our public school. The inclusion program is a rewarding part of growing up with autisum.The students get to interact with other childern their ages and the parents see progress.
My 8th grade daughter has just done a big project on the subject. The awareness of this condition is gaining momentum. These kids ,I hope are getting some help. There certianly needs to be more research into the causes.
There's light at the end of the tunnel

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My youngest son was officially diagnosed with autism at age four but showed symptoms by age 2. He has progressed from total echolaic speech and not recognizing others, including family members, to being a very talkative and social 13 year old who is an honor roll student and is mostly mainstreamed for his classes. It has taken a lot of effort and support on our part, working with his specialists at Children's National Medical Center, to get him to this point. Most of this treatment has been at our own expense because most insurance companies do not cover the specialized treatment our autistic children need. For those who would suggest getting him help through our local school system, they have been less than helpful and actually have been detrimental to our son's progress. The school system believes that all autistic children are the same, cannot learn well, and belong in Emotionally Disabled classrooms. I know many parents of autistic children in our public school district who've had their children suspended or placed in inappropriate classroom settings due to the behavior issues inherent with autism spectrum disorders. Oftentimes the schools do this to selectively discriminate and prevent these children from attending their base schools. We've also found a tendency by the schools to selectively place autistic children in inappropriate classrooms because they have an opening in an Learning Disabled, Trainable Mentally Retarded, or Emotioanlly Disabled classroom and do not want to spend the money on more autism classrooms. The principals in our school system have site based management to determine what classrooms they will fund, as well as the right to deny any student to attend their school. As long as that child is offered placement in another school within the district, the powers that be look the other way. Parents have very little say and even less recourse as to where their autistic child ultimately attends school. Until such time as lawmakers are willing to address the needs of those within the autism spectrum, both educationally and medically, we parents are going to have to fight to our last breath for our children. As a society we learned long ago that seperate but equal based on race was anything but. It is about time that we realized that separating out special needs children and putting them in sub-standard special ed classes is not the way to go. My son was in 4th grade before he was even given a textbook. Up until the passage of the "No child Left Behind" legislation and the schools were required to include special ed students test scores in the school totals there was no reason to supply these children with even the most basic of learning tools. I helped my son's LD teachers beg/borrow/ and copy textbooks from the other teachers of "normal" students and helped provide some of the necessary classroom supplies. How do you teach a child to tell time without clocks, money concepts without manipulatives, and to read without books? That is what my son and the other children in his LD classroom faced every day.

Personally, I don't know why my son is autistic. My husband and I have done a little bit of sleuthing and can name several older relatives on both sides of our families who manifest many of the autism spectrum symptoms. These are people who did not receive any of the vaccinations that my son received. We also have three other children who do not have autism but they received the same vaccines our affected son did. What I do know is early intervention is crucial and this does not come cheap. My husband has worked as many as four jobs at once to allow me to stay home and care for our son's needs as well as provide the money needed for the many specialists he's needed with each new symptom he's manifested. As anyone who has experienced it will tell you, puberty and adolescence for an autistic child with the inherent hormone surges and increased social issues is not easy. That is what we are dealing with now. I do not know why anyone would consider the daily hell my son has experienced for most of his life , trying to navigate in a world he can barely comprehend, "trendy". If there truly are more children with autism today then let's stop stigmatizing the children and families coping with its' horrifying effects and start working to help those who need it.
Momma Dragon

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If the diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome had been trendy when I was a child, I would have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. For as much good as that diagnosis would do or have done, you might as well have simply diagnosed me with "Odd Duck Syndrome" because diagnosis in this case leads to neither treatment, insight nor cure. An Asperger's diagnosis would not even have shed light on my mind, my mental state or my eventual struggles with mental illness.

I will always be surrounded by people who don't understand me, and feel offended by the mere fact that I am different. Those people incude my own mother, who says she loves me, but continues to make no concessions to my own agonizingly heightened senses. Even there, if I were to announce a diagnosis of Asperger's to the world, the world wouldn't change one bit to accomodate me.

So why bother? The world doesn't care. People can't understand and refuse to accomodate or care. And I'm still stuck in the same old brain. A diagnosis of Asperger's is essentially the same as saying: "This child is different from us."

Oh--and I'm old enough and travelled enough as a young child that if mercury were the culprit, I should have been a completely non-functional autistic child. Neither I nor my brother are severely autistic, although we both share Asperger's traits in abundance. We also are both mostly functional, earning decent salaries, and exhibiting no significant learning disabilities as measured on standardized tests.

On second thought, a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome would be beneficial in some ways: I would feel free to tell people to go to hell instead of bugging me all the time. I could ascribe my general dislike of people to Asperger's. That has possibilities....

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I have a 15 yr old son whom I adopted @ 5 wks. He was drug addicted, 10 wks early & had seizure disorder for a few yrs. After many hospitalizations, meds, shrinks, therapists, heartaches, etc, he has been living in residential care for 3 mos now. For a few yrs I've thought he had "a type" of autism, but now I really am convinced. Aspergers? I know a bit about it, I'm a foster parent & have seen so many disorders & problems in kids. My son has learning disabilities & i could go on forever...does anyone have any advice or suggestions for me? We are a family torn apart by this, yet we love each other so much. Thanks to all & best wishes for all these children suffering. Nanci

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I have two sons. My oldest is 11years old and autistic. He was immunized in 1995. His MMR shot left behind a large scar on his leg!!?? My youngest son is 4years old and we opted not to immunize him. He is not autistic and is a very bright child that is reading. Many people ask me how I was able to enroll him in school without immunizations. It is very simple just check off a religious exemption. You do not have it immunize your child.

I do believe that there is a genetic dispostion as well as something environmental that is causing autism. In my own sons case I do believe that his MMR was the environmental cause!!

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I am 64 yrs. old and have an almost 40 yr. old autistic/profoundly retarded son who lives in a group home. It was a long journey for our family to get help for him. I won't go into detail as it would take a book. He was diagnosed at age 3 and up until then, we had no idea what was wrong with him and even after we learned, we had no idea what it was. He has never spoken a word and he has had severe SIB (self-injurious behavior), which is now controlled with medication. He does better than we ever dreamed he would, but it took its toll on our family physically, emotionally, and financially. It would be wonderful to learn what causes this disability and for families with younger children who are just starting the long road to be able to get help.

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I am a single parent of a 5 year old with Autism and extreme sensory integration issues. He has no connection between his head and his tongue and I have been battling with the schools in three states because they want to classify him as Mentally Challenged. I have to give them evidence every time of how smart he is in that shell he lives in. God it is so frustrating. Why aren't they doing a better job of training people to deal with this?

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I found the slps remarks heartening. I wish I had someone in my son's life to day who would consider his feelings so carefully. He comes home from school so beaten, and he's only 7 years old.

My I ask where you practice?

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