Yesterday I read what might be the best opinion piece on autism I’ve ever read. At the very least it’s the best I’ve read in a long time. Here’s the short version. If you want to reduce the number of autism diagnoses, the best approach is to start offering services for deficits rather than for diagnoses. Here’s the opening:
We have a strong urge to find labels for disturbing behaviors; naming things gives us an (often false) feeling that we control them. So, time and again, an obscure diagnosis suddenly comes out of nowhere to achieve great popularity. It seems temporarily to explain a lot of previously confusing behavior — but then suddenly and mysteriously returns to obscurity.
Not so long ago, autism was the rarest of diagnoses, occurring in fewer than one in 2,000 people. Now the rate has skyrocketed to 1 in 88 in America (and to a remarkable 1 in 38 in Korea). And there is no end in sight.
NFS. I’ve been following this off and on via Respectful of Insolence blog and others and man some of the things parents fall for are downright scary. I memory serves one treatment was in effect like chemical castration.
Just to be clear, the very initial research that sparked all this nonsense has now turned out to be one of the biggest instances of academic fraud with faked date, dishonest and unethical medical practices.
I’d recommend the entire article.
Shortly after I viewed your recommendation of “Loving Lampposts,” we had an autistic boy in the house. He was six, going on seven. His mother had some control, but otherwise, he was wandering around bobbing his ball, not speaking, a sort of aimless undirected wandering. Nothing drew his attention.
He wasn’t really potty-trained. That’s a hard life.
The mother also said that
“Loving Lampposts” is the best piece on autism that she’d seen.
@Janis Gore
Sounds like the kid was stimming “self-stimulating” inside his own head. Either he hasn’t gotten very good support from austism specialists in the school system or he’s rather severe as autism goes. My first suspicion would be his school district isn’t serving his needs well.
They’ve worked hard here. His mother doesn’t know what to do. She’s mainstreamed him now. Hard to say what’s going on with the boy.
She’s everexcitable.
My odds are on fetal alcohol syndrome. I have no idea how that presents.
Nope. This child is very pretty, healthy and well-coordinated. And I didn’t mean to imply that his mother is a lush. There is that period at the beginning of a pregnancy, though, when a woman might overimbibe without being sure that she is pregnant.