I have a good friend of mine who was wrongfully diagnosed with Aspergers for this reason. He was frequently harassed and abused in school and was even raped by classmates. The school did nothing about it and the parents blamed him for what happened. They used the diagnosis as a club to abuse him even after he got out of school. But he had several jobs that required social skills such as working as a training manager, a salvation army soldier and a receptionist. But Despite overcoming a lot of obstacles from this his parents made him lose his job and he became homeless for a time on Skid Row Los Angeles of all places. Well despite claims he cant socialize he did alright there. He survived the ordeal and now lives in Omaha Nebraska and works a part time job but is still recovering.
Parents should be careful of this. Your child could be branded mentally ill or disabled simply for being a victim at school. Its just another example of how psychiatry is run amok.
I have an acquaintance whose grandchild was diagnosed with Autism. She’s a health pro herself, and said that there is a growing conviction among researchers of Autism that later-life parenting is a factor. She said that there are very few young parents (under thirty) of autistic children, and that even older fathers and young mothers have a higher incidence of austism than young parents.
In good conscience, I couldn't; because it wasn't true.
I had to seek outside the standard medical health care plan to protect my son and myself from the "state". It cost.
He was given the diagnosis of "aphasic" which is a subcategory of autism; and I agreed to use this phrasing because the Nanny state knew nothing about "aphasia"; and so could not force my son onto drugs, into a program, or me into jail or court.
Later, they tried again, this time trying to label him "autistic". He was placed in a pre-kindergarten class with other "autistic-ADD/ADH" little boys. Only boys. There were no little girls at that entire K-5, labelled "autistic" or "add/adh", then.
He was the only boy in that class who knew his name, could cite his phone number, and count to 20. And, they were at this point stirring him up in class to get him upset; and then telling me of his "obvious" autistic behavior. Yes, I did spy at the classroom windows, after my son telling me HIS side of the story. He wasn't lying. These special ed teachers had singled him out to stir him up.
I pulled him out, asap. Took only a month for the "set-up" to be revealed.
That little boy began college at age 11. He's extremely talented physically and musically, as well as academically.
I'm sorry to have contributed to the burgeoning "labelling business in the name of collecting dollars" for the state; but I truly had no other alternative, THEN, to keeping my son safe, and in my home with his family.
Republicans changed all this in following years, passing legislation in support of parents and their rights. I couldn't have been happier that they did this.
This little boy would play chess with me when he was 5. I shared this, about the chess and the late "speaking" morph to autism, in person with Dr. Sowell, about middle 90s. He knew. lol. He'd already gone through something similar with his own son being a "late talker". What he has seen is how the damned thing morphs. And it's always about the money, the taxpayer dollars, or the personal payments for parents to just go along with effectively pimping their kids.
The worst thing about these overdiagnoses? The real victims of autism and/or ADD/ADH get shuffled around and aside: The help and money doesn't go to where it would do the most good.
And because the numbers of "victims" just really wouldn't be that large enough sufficient to satisfy the demands of most teacher's unions and the politicians they support.
How much this may have contributed to the soaring statistics on the number of children diagnosed as autistic is something that nobody knows— and apparently not many people are talking about it.
I thinks its conclusive then, that autism is contagious. It spreads from the child to the parent by way of money.
Based on my limited knowledge of this subject, Dr. Sowell is 100% correct. Thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the left has found a new way to prise tax dollars out of all levels of government. Just have your child be declared “autistic” or “asperger” or ADHD or whatever else, and you’re suddenly entitled to piles of other people’s money. Kinda cool, eh?
Does anyone on this thread have any expertise/experience with a “Non-Verbal Learning Disorder” (NLD)? My youngest (11) has been diagnosed with this and I am gathering info and getting my bearings on how to deal with it, so to speak, and would appreciate some other perspectives.
day10
A friend of mine and my brother both were worried because the doctors were concerned that their one year old sons did not talk yet. I told them that was crazy. You shouldn’t expect a one year old to talk. Nevertheless they did what the doctors said and sent their sons off to speech therapy.
My own son didn’t talk until he was 4. Oh, not for lack of trying. He had an older sister and brother who never let him get a word in edgewise. Whenever he’d open his mouth to talk, he’d have to shut it because one or the other of them said something first. It taught him to be a good listener.
By the time he started kindergarten he was still speaking like “me wan dat” and couldn’t pronounce the “S” sound and another consonant. So they took him out of class every day for speech therapy. It really helped. He’s 21 now and he doesn’t shut up, which is fine with me. But he’s still a very good listener.
Nobody ever told me maybe he is autistic back then. I wouldn’t have believed it anyway. It’s disgraceful that doctors scare these parents into thinking that a one year old or two year old or even three year old who doesn’t speak is autistic. Some kids just talk when they’re ready and others try to talk but can’t get a word in. And then there are those who are genuinely autistic and for them and their family it’s tragic.
I think it goes something like this. A researcher or a group of researchers publish a seminal article on a very rare, devastating and poorly understood condition. “Wow, cool!” think their lesser colleagues and jump on the bandwagon, producing a whole slew of “companion” (academic codeword for “copycat”) literature. Of course, since the disorder is, as I mentioned, rare, subjects are in short supply; and, because the disorder is poorly understood, there isn’t much to discuss, except descriptively and by outlining the diagnostic criteria. Thus, these diagnostic criteria get “revised” and “updated” — meaning they get expanded — which, of course, kills two birds with one stone: generates more subjects for study and gives researchers something new to write about. At some point, the flurry of scientific and administrative activity spills over into mainstream media. This is where all hell breaks loose, particularly if the disorder affects children. The media reports how the original researcher estimated circa 1908 that there were only about 80 people in the world with this condition and now 1 in 6 has it!! Hack historians begin cavalierly diagnosing famous figures from the past. School administrations push the diagnosis relentlessly, as a way of lightening up their overloaded classrooms by sending those children who aren’t perfectly obedient and docile to special ed. Therapists and some parents also push the diagnosis relentlessly, as a way of getting drugs or services that, they figure, can’t hurt. Doctors begin diagnosing left and right as well, with an eye towards their malpractice carrier — for, a false positive diagnosis is not malpractice, but failure to diagnose is. People start talking about an “epidemic”. In order to make sure all the afflicted are discovered, diagnostic criteria are expanded even further, thus making the “epidemic” a self-fulfilling prophecy. Meanwhile the researchers, who have done little except establish protocol and modify it a few times claim, that they have made “tremendous progress towards understanding” the condition, though they have no more clue than 50 years ago as to what causes it, how to prevent it, or how to cure it. In other words, it becomes a fad — and it hardly benefits those people who truly suffer from the condition.
Strictly speaking, the problem with the ASD label today is not overdiagnosis, but overmedicalization. After all, it is, as I said, a matter of protocol. The powers that be decide what the diagnostic criteria are, and if a large swath of humanity meets those criteria, then it is what it is. What bothers me, however, is that there is a definite trend towards pathologizing socially troublesome behaviors. As someone once wrote, a child can no longer be simply boisterous or simply shy without provoking inquiry into whether he is suffering from the Condition Du Jour. And if he ever had anything like speech delay, then perfectly normal behaviors (dumping girlfriend, interest in nuclear physics) will be interpreted as a manifestations of “lifelong difficulties” (relationship troubles, narrow interests). I few months ago, in a conversation with a relative who happened to be a physician, I mentioned an 18th-century German archaeologist who from childhood was keenly interested in clues that old junk offers about people who made it or owned it, and thus spent his early years rummaging through rubbish heaps instead of playing with other boys. “Ah, he must have been autistic,” the doctor said, dismissively. To his contemporaries, he was merely eccentric — to her, he was a head case. In the 18th century, he became an eminent scholar, a published author, and a highly regarded expert on antiquities. Today, he would have been thrust into an institution, away from rigorous academic pursuits, and indoctrinated that he is physically and mentally incapable to function successfully in the world of “normal” people. This is ridiculous, really. Must every slight departure from the mainstream be characterized as a “disorder”?
And folks, please don’t say things like “My daughter has it, autism is real, etc.” It may be real in your case — but the undoubted existence of a condition does not justify slapping the label on people who merely don’t follow social conventions and expectations closely enough. The conflation of culture with medicine is truly frightening. And overdiagnosis isn’t as harmless as some have claimed. A false positive has devastating effects on a family. Children are placed in educational environments that are wrong for them. They are subjected to endless testing. And they grow up believing they are handicapped and different (in a bad way) from everyone else. And let’s not ignore the parents. There are people who divorce in the wake of a diagnosis, people who kill themselves. And even when they do not, a false diagnosis leaves psychological scars that can never truly be healed.