Autism

I think increased diagnosis and acceptance (e.g. not 'sent away' like they may have been in the past) maybe a factor...also a bigger population will mean there are more cases. ?

It's really Mrs Cats field not mine...

http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science_news/index.php

Key Immune System Mediator of Abnormal Brain Development Identified

Using pregnant mice as a model system, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have identified interleukin-6 as an immune system signaling molecule that, when present in high doses during pregnancy, may lead to abnormal brain development and neurobehavioral disorders such as autism in the offspring.
Date: 10/04/07

This is the best, most informed, kindest and most practical piece of writing on this subject that I ever saw.

I second the comments be dovy. Great post kilowatt0, that's probably the best I've seen on CR4 concerning this issue.

Well written. Thank you for your perspective. On the front page of Autism Speaks is a moniker stating "Cure Autism Now". I'm not sure I can agree with that pitch. To me it's like saying "Cure Left Handisim now" My boy will be 7 years old in a few weeks. He is technically PDD NOS. They want to boot him off the Special Ed list he is doing so well. Learning about what Autism was and hearing other people's stories have done so much to help us as parents. I look at him and think what life would have been like for him growing up in my father's immigrant family as a boy. He likely would have seen the backside of my grandfather's belt on a daily basis. He would have been labeled incorrigible by his school. He may have ended up institutionalized. We were blessed to have settled in a community that consistently gets the highest rating for special ed services in public schools. He has a whole team of people watching over him. They do a good job of educating the other kids on how to get along and work with the special kids too. All that said, I still really am curious what members think is at the core of the disorder. The stuff on immune system responses made real sense, but so has other stuff along the way. Oh, and for you Brits; my son will be director of the Thomas the Tank Engine museum when he reaches adulthood, so get ready for a new expatriate in about 15 years.

Kilowatt0,

Your comment;

"Our child was diagnosed with let's see: Dyslexia/Autism/ADD/ADHD depending on who you were talking to at the time. We'll just call it pervasive learning disorder;"

Without sounding arrogant, but just ignorant, could ADD and ADHD have been over diagnosed or misdiagnosed, as in the child was just say unruly?

There is a reason I asked this, it may seem like a loaded question, but I like to hear your response before I discuss the reason I ask.

Anything can be misdiagnosed. The less is known about it, the more likely it is to happen. But you will find a common thread with the true cases, that has been brought up in this thread a couple of times, "their brains are wired different".

We aren't talking about damage, just a way different way of processing information. One that does not work well with our perceptions as a society, or with the current educational format.

I've seen my kid solve algebra problems just shy of a quadratic equation one night, and the next night, give me the "deer in the headlights" look, when I asked her what 3x5 was. It is a real twilight zone type of thing.

I can't comment on his cognitive abilities, but the poster does raise a point.

There are a number of issues that cloud the subject. First, as you yourself noted, the actual definition for autism is changing. Second, given the moving target that the definition is, it is not easy to classify who qualifies and who doesn't. Such things are easily subject to abuse. Third, autism has symptoms, but there are also other causes for symptoms that may have different roots than autism, yet can allow for a misdiagnosis to occur. Forth, autism is not a digital disorder. There are degrees of autism and they probably span in multiple dimensions. Fifth, as the poster noted, people do tend to look for causes to issues and it is human nature to first try to pin root causes on other things (and people) before considering that it may be themselves. To his point, it is easier to diagnose someone with a disorder because it solves a riddle (be it the right or wrong diagnosis) and puts that question to rest.

Lastly, the poster may have been crude in his post, but he may have succeeded brilliantly in raising the consciousness about his point. We may not like the taste, but it does force us to wince and take notice; perhaps raise our awareness of something we have not considered. Then again, he may have just been crude, insensitive, and ignorant.

It looks like our host is having to a bit of auditing. My bad. I'll try a more civil approach. The string is running off topic, but is very interesting in what reactions it is creating. I have struggled to explain my son's condition from the outset. As a person who works professionally in communicating complex technical messages, and as person who dabbles in fiction writing, it is particularly frustrating not to be able to make someone see what I see. It is almost as if the good Lord sent unto me, (someone who prides in problem solving), the utmost unsolvable riddle. There is no doubt people look for easy answers, abuse the system, make excuses in the face of difficult parenting issues, etc. But do we judge the whole by the minority? Not if you seek knowledge and understanding. Spend one day with someone like my son and you will know. He is wired different. For the uninitiated, the best description I have been able to produce is this; we use the two halves of our brain in conjunction to process the information the world around us provides. Verbal, visual, all sensory information is a two way distribution between the halves. In Autistic children, that communication breaks down. Some of it is cut off completely. The challenge for the parent, the educator, and all those who interact with an Autistic person is to understand that they process information differently. I liken it to trying to communicate with someone who speaks a different language. if you are patient, you will get your point across. A note to our guest who raised the issue; I am sorry for so crass a response. No matter how sophisticated I believe I have become in my older years, I am still a Detroit city kid who tends to :"drop the gloves" when challenged. I was an assistant to an A.D in college and know all too well the abuses of that department. I just don't think it really applies here. Nobody in their right mind wants to hear their kid has been saddled with anything physical or mental that will increase their life challenges. Now, if you want to talk about people not in their right mind, that may be a topic for another day.

well the different levels of autism after that was defined are also increased the number of autism dianoses.

After the was diffinitions have been somewhat established, what some people may have labeled as unsocialable. The new label may be a mild form of autism.

How they came to establish the levels of autism that I do not know, because sometimes some people may not have autism but are just unsocialable?

I have not read the book or seen "Of Mice and Men", but now I want too.

JT,

Just a quick look on the net reveals a mountain of data you can start to explore.

However, I would suggest looking for support groups that are knowledgeable on the subject. While there are many good hearts on CR4, there are more opinions here than actual experience (myself included).

You should always be asking questions. Do not forget that questions always lead to even more questions and the process expands geometrically, but you will find that this process will fill the reservoir of knowledge in due course.

While autism can be defined as a disorder, it is more importantly a journey for those inflicted and those that live and love around them.

Good luck on your journey and may it make you a wiser and more human person in the end.

AH

This isn't going to make me popular on this website (CR4), but I think it is pertains to everyone here, and is more in the vein of the original post: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/4665

What this (and other studies) state, is that mathematicians, physicists, and engineers have (up to) double the frequency of autistic offspring. That is not a good thought.

But what a lot of people (including some on this site) are confused about, is the common misconception that Autism=Stupid. IF (and there are ALWAYS doubts in my mind about any study) this study is correct, then we have bred for this situation. We have bred for the type of brain that is so specialized, that something else has to give.

Sometimes that means an Einstein, a concert pianist, or a whole slew of others that make a big impact on the human race. Sometimes it doesn't.

TANSTAAFL. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

That is MY OPINION, there is not enough evidence out there for anything else.

I've said it before, "these kids brains are WIRED differently". What most of them need is an interpreter. Their brains CAN be trained to understand the "normal" train of thought.

Hi All,

I do look at this problem from a totally different point of view ... our body is chemical and electrical ... if cells are not formed properly then inter-cellular communication becomes compromised ... a small deviation in the chemistry may result in cellular miscommunication ... our brain consists of delicate cells ... it is also 85% water that the brain must have ... it is known that de-hydration can also cause some inter-cellular mis-communication.

I watched Dr. Phil not long ago and he immediately suspected heavy metals present in a boy's brain ... he did not try to modify his behaviour, first he suggested testing for the presence of the heavy metals ... I moved to an industrial area known for its large car manufacturing and chemical plants ... statistically this area has a higher incidence of autistic children ... I believe that this is not a coincidence and so do the parents that I have talked to ... I am also convinced that the electromagnetic pollution may be a contributing factor.

I know of several health products that can modify the brain chemistry ... I have talked to parents who were able to improve the cellular communication within the brain in children who were autistic and ADD/ADHD ... the natural health products I have studies enable the cells to be detoxified, hydrated with a unique water and receive the nutrients needed for a proper cellular structure ... healthy cells generate the right biochemicals ... my view is that every dis-ease is caused by a lack of some essential element(s) ... our body can repair itself when give the missing nutrients.

ADD/ADHD, bi-polar, autistic and schizophrenic children have for instance harder time to read face expressions ... they lack empathy ... they are self centred and insist on an immediate gratification ... the problems with their "mis-behaviour" are many ... the degree of the severity is fully understood only by a parent of such a child ... it is a difficult disease to live with because the children look all right but inside are different ... these are incredibly smart individuals however the practicality of life evades them ... one of my sons broke my marriage because my husband thought that he was lazy ... he could not hold a job from 9-5 thought he was employed many times in many countries ... my other son swore that the natural supplements helped him think differently when he attended a university ... he "broke down" after he graduated ... he was fired from his first job, quit the second one after the first day and was not successful at many interviews thereafter ... then he seeked medical help ... he knows now that if he lost his job he would never work as a professional again ... it breaks my heart to accept the fact that my sons will never see the world as it really is as the reality sometimes escapes them ... I do not know how much the past experiences trouble them ... I am constantly afraid that one day things will go chemically wrong and seeing the world with different glasses will make them do the wrong thing with lifelong lasting consequences.

I continue giving them supplements, encourage them to take the medication as prescribed, shield them from the EMF, parent them as much as I can and hope for the best ... Jaan

I have a 7-year old niece who seems autistic, although her official diagnosis is cerebral palsy. She does not speak any words yet, relying mostly on sign language, unintelligible utterances, and manually pulling caretakers' towards what she wants. Her main fixations are listening to music, watching cartoons, and manually spinning beaded necklaces in intricate loopy patterns (with surprising dexterity). Fortunately she often expresses happy emotions, even smiling, hugging, and laughing. She also loves playing in the swimming pool, and other generally physical activities like bouncing on a trampoline.

Her parents, I, and the rest of the family often wonder if she is really autistic, as opposed to being developmentally delayed due to cerebral palsy alone. Of course she could have both conditions -- autism often (but not always) occurs along with certain types of prenatal brain damage. As to the causes of autism, the more I learn, the more it seems that multiple causes apply. Perhaps in some cases genetics predisposes an individual to autism, and environmental pollutants and/or biochemical deficiencies and/or self-destructive auto-immune responses trigger or aggravate the symptoms. The parents of my autistic niece are both highly-intelligent computer programmers (more evidence for the genetics hypothesis, or just coincidence?). And my niece suffers from stomach aches and ear infections (evidence of an auto-immunity problem, or just typical childhood conditions?). Autism, along with the varied sets of conditions known as "schizophrenia" must be the most complicated and mysterious maladies presently known to humankind. We definitely need much more investment into research of the causes and treatments. I wish I was wealthy so I could do more to help.

For the general info of all, here are 3 threads where autism has appeared on CR4, and an external link. The 3 previous threads have quietened down, but may be of interest for those reading here. They may help in furthering the interesting discussion on this thread.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/9758#newcomments

http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/271#newcomments

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/2034#newcomments

http://www.nas.org.uk/

Initially I was enraged by #8. but that will accomplish nothing.

You are in for the roller coaster ride of your life. I was blessed with a daughter that that has ADD. I had her in a private school because I felt the learning environment was better than the local public school system. In third grade, she wound up with a family friend as her teacher. We thought the personal attention from this teacher would help my daughter to stay focused on school work. This was far from the truth.This woman was verbally abusive to her, and made my daughter the class joke.My daughter had very poor grammar skills, so we (my wife and I) decided to get a private tutor to work with her. This tutor suggested we send my daughter for some testing. This is how I learned about ADD. This woman also suggested that We put my daughter in public school. The larger school systems are better equipped to handle the few children that need special help, because they see more of them. One day I witnessed my daughter taking some special test to determine her learning disabilities. she was listening to, and answering questions that were on a movie in the adjacent room. The teacher that was administering the test for my daughter noticed this and called me to the window to watch this. She could not stay focused on her test, but could answer the questions from the movie by just listening to the movie.

Reading comprehension was always a problem. We had some real jerks for teachers, and some GREAT teachers, some that have remained friends till this day.

At six years of age we enrolled her in a music school. She started to desire to play the drums that were part of the school. To keep her happy the guitar teacher would let her sit at the drums and play each week after her band lesson. The following year we convinced the music school to hire a drum teacher to work with my daughter.

Music made her happy, but drums made all of us smile.That drum set was Melissa. All the learning disabilities, all the daydreaming, all of the misconnections inside her head were gone when she was behind the drums. She excelled in middle school band, high school band, and at the music school. She went on to march in a university marching band For two years, without attending the school.

Today she is thirty years old. She is married. Works hard every day. The math that was so hard for her in school is now a game called Sudoku, that he loves.

No one knows your child like you do.

A parent's instincts are an evolution of instincts that have evolved for thousands of years.

Better people than me can tell you where to find help. I have no idea why the lottery of life is the way it is. I have been told God will never give you more than you can handle.

There will be times when you will need a break. When I was a young child my father would take my sister and I to watch rail cars loaded onto barges in Brooklyn on a Sunday morning. We thought this was a treat for us. It was probably a break for my mother. Find activities that you can share with your child.

One last thought. A friend of mine started coaching a young boys basketball team to be with his son. There was a boy on the team with some form of "learning disorder". The boy struggled to perform with the other boys his size and age. Todd would always try to include this boy in the practice drills, and it was obvious the skills were hard for him. One day Todd went to the boy's mother and told her that if she wanted to withdraw her son that he would make sure she received a full refund. The woman pleaded to allow her son to stay on the team. The time with basketball team was the best part of his week.

Stay devoted to your child. The answers will come. If you want to talk send a note I would be glad to.