Autism, real autism, is real. All this crap in the last 30 years is not. I have a severely autistic nephew. You would know it if you saw him. Labelling young children is one of the biggest crimes of this century. It brings more money to the school, and lets parents off the hook. Plus, believe it or not, it has become cool. These poor kids.
Psychiatric/psychological disorders very often have physical, genetic causes. It takes time, but the causes are slowly being revealed.
What are some of the characteristics of autism. I sometimes wonder if I don’t have a touch of it.
My friend’s 5 year-old is autistic. He’s not very verbal, and speaks his own version of English, so if you don’t spend a lot of time with him, you don’t understand him. My friend is a teacher (proper, not a liberal parrot), and has done speech therapy and everything. He’s shown improvement, but he’s having a hard time.
He exhibits a lot of the obvious behaviors, including varying sorts of fidgeting and hypersensitivity to noise and touch. Hand-flailing, and he doesn’t pick up on social behaviors a typical 5 year-old should. He’s very smart, and receptive to those with whom he’s familiar, but has difficulty with other kids his age.
Sorry, but this blogger needs to fix his “word wrap” so the reader doesn’t have to scroll side to side to read the text. Meanwhile, I’ll just read the rest here.
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The symptoms of classical autism appear much too early and much too randomly to think of it as anything but a yet-undiscovered physiological malfunction of one sort or another. Taking it out of the realm of psychology/psychiatry – that is, removing it from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – would be a boon to research as well as a boon to the kids in question and their anguished parents. The roadblock to that has much to do with the fact that autism is producing a significant income stream for lots of mental health professionals. And yes, I proudly admit to cynicism.
The further problem is that one can’t talk in general terms about autism without consideration of the so-called “spectrum” that includes, most prominently, something called Asperger’s Syndrome. I say “something” because this Asperger’s something is about as ill-defined as something can be. The common denominator among kids who are hung with this label or are said to be “on the spectrum” seems to be “odd” and/or “quirky.” Personally, I think children should have the right to be at least slightly odd and quirky.
Without exception of which I’m aware, once a mental health diagnosis begins to gain traction – that is, it begins to sell – the mental health professions begins expanding it – explicitly or implicitly – such that it captures more and more people (i.e., paying clients) over time; thus things have gone with “the spectrum” and Asperger’s.
I don’t deny that some kids who are said to have Asperger’s may need help. Equally likely, their parents need help managing and disciplining them. The many anecdotes I’ve been told strongly suggest that most of the somewhat odd kids in question, however, grow out of it, whatever “it” is.
My long-time readers know that with some conservatively-defined exceptions, I’m not in favor of allowing children into rooms with therapists (and I’m a licensed therapist). Labels, which therapists have a bad habit of dispensing, tend to stick. For me to believe in Asperger’s (hypothetically) is one thing; for a child to believe he “has” it is quite another thing.
Autism, like the lesser Asperger’s Syndrome is a dominant aspect of consciousness and suppression of the feminine. This is the reason more boys get it than girls.
It causes the thalamus to not be able to handle feminine consciousness input in the priority sort.
I’ve worked with many Autism Spectrum children over the years.
The origin appears to be during the 3rd month of pregnancy.
It’s a bit too complicated to explain the cause here in a post. There are several influencing factors.
Autism is a real thing. In the 80s my brother had it, and there is no way doctors were reaching on the diagnosis. Most of them didn’t even know what it was, my parents were educating them. There were only a handful of books, nobody knew what it was and yet he had it. But then again, nobody knew what it was because it was unusual and kinda rare. Now it seems every third kid is diagnosed as being “on the spectrum”, which I think means you are autistic even though you don’t seem in any way autistic.
Bookmark.
They are definitely real but unfortunately just as definitely overdiagnosed.
I always thought the prob was adding general mental health to insurance in addition to the classic teacher wanting to get rid of a “normal” behavior problem.
If you go to a doc with a complaint, they will try to treat it and they will “code you” a certain way based on your insurance (otherwise there’s no payment).
As a nutritionist, I have read quite a bit over the years, and worked with a few parents of such children.
In my opinion: Congenital autism is real and rare. Induced autistic symptoms may arise either pre- or post-natally, due to a toxic load too heavy for a small body with an immature immune system.
AMA types may scoff, but the human body was not designed to scavange unlimited quantities of unnatural (artificial, not merely synthetic) chemicals.
The induced type often improves somewhat by regulating methylation.