autism scares the hell out of me October 30, 2007
There are a lot of scary things about parenting, and one of the most scary is worrying that your little child will fail to develop like the other kids.
With autism rates soaring, and the disorder in the news so much, I am rather paranoid about it, I’ll admit. I watch my three month old daughter, C. for the slightest hint of developmental abnormalities; the fact that she finally began regularly smiling and cooing at us about ten days ago made me wildly happy. I was worried she wasn’t going to. Now I am worried that she doesn’t hold her giant, wobbly baby head up as well as her four-weeks-younger cousin.
GIven parents’ worries about developmental delays, I think this new, more aggressive APPROACH TO RECOGNIZING POSSIBLE SIGNS OF AUTISM in even the youngest babies to be a really great idea. Check out the included videos to help spot autistic behaviors; they are really enlightening.
Hi—–seeing delays in a child and even getting a diagnosis can be scarey and puzzling, but there is a lot that can be done to help an autistic child, and a lot of hope. My son is 10 years old and has autism–I have about him and the AAP reports.
Best wishes from Kristina Chew
autismvox.com
My son (8) has autism and his sister (5) does not. I really don’t think you have anything to worry about. The only thing I know we did differently with them was space out my daughter’s immunizations. Caveat: I do not believe that the immunizations caused my son’s autism. But, on the off chance that getting many immunizations at once were a trigger of some sort, my wife talked to the pediatrician about the issue, and the ped was great about the whole thing.
My take on the rise of the incidence in diagnosis? I think that things that were formerly something else are now recognized under the “autism” label.
Feel free to email if you want more information, but I don’t think Charlotte will have any issues.
Try not to compare her to other babies development levels. I did with Lake, but then I remembered, “hey, she was born @ 35 wks.” So, even though she is 14 mos. and not walking without pushing a toy around, it’s okay. I’d be worried about all the laundry and dishes that come with a big family instead of things you can’t control. Cheers!
Those developmental milestones are a very wide ballpark. You know that W. is a bright boy. Did you know that he did not WALK till he was 16 months old? We were 1 week away from having him take a cerebral palsy test. What made him finally walk? His sweet but huge great grandmother tried to pick him up. He got up and walked across the room. Up until she passed away, she proudly took credit for being the one who got W. to walk!
[...] of 18-24 month old children for autism, parents are starting to worry: A mother wrote that autism scares the hell out of me. And, the October 2007 issue of Popular Science listed autism as among the “deadly [...]
And Bigots scare the hell outta me…
Girl, you will worry yourself to death if you are already watching for autism in a three months old! I know because I’ve been the mom who watches for ANY TINY hint that might suggest a delay.
i think the rates are “soaring” because we have a better understanding of autism and how to identify it….remember back in the day when we were kids the “bad” kid? nowadays that kid has adhd or other learning disabilities.
anyhoo, my son is developmentally disabled. given his extreme premature birth i knew odds were this would be an issue or worse. we didn’t get worse but now that we are in school i see he has challenges and i see the obstacles he has…especially from the kind-hearted mamas who encourage their “normal” kids to endure the “different” kids that go to their school.
hearing your child has a problem or is not normal is scary but knowledge is empowering and makes you courageous. why live in fear? it isn’t empowering but rather paralyzing. cherish the gift you have…whether he/she is “normal” or “different”.
i think the rates are “soaring” because we have a better understanding of autism and how to identify it….remember back in the day when we were kids the “bad” kid? nowadays that kid has adhd or other learning disabilities.
anyhoo, my son is developmentally disabled. given his extreme premature birth i knew odds were this would be an issue or worse. we didn’t get worse but now that we are in school i see he has challenges and i see the obstacles he has…especially from the kind-hearted mamas who encourage their “normal” kids to endure the “different” kids that go to their school.
hearing your child has a problem or is not normal is scary but knowledge is empowering and makes you courageous. why live in fear? it isn’t empowering but rather paralyzing. cherish the gift you have…whether he/she is “normal” or “different”.
It used to scare the hell out of me too, until I had a child with autism.
Autism is not cancer. It is not the end of the world. It is not a catastrophe. Once you reach that conclusion, it makes autism a lot less scary.
Talk to some autistic adults sometime, that also helped the fear aspect for me. Autism does not equal the end of the world. Autistic people can and do live very full lives, regardless of what Jenny McCarthy and the rest of the autism hysteria crowd says.
If you’re really and truly worried, get an evaluation. Put your mind at ease. It’s normal to be worried when you’re a mom. Just please know that autism is not a big scary horrible thing, despite what the stupid talking heads on the mainstream media have been saying.
I agree with the above poster and also the poster who stated something about overpathologizing everything. Anyone who is the least bit different now has a “diagnosis”. My pet peeve is ADHD. Maybe the real thing exists, I don’t know. But I find it real interesting that the majority of “ADHD” kids I know come from families with big issues that are more than enough to cause a kid to act crazy. But its easier for the insurance companies to throw a pill at it than to work through the problems.Not to mention the load of guilt it takes off parents of said ADHD kid. As for autism, the woman who mentioned prematurity….I wonder if the ever earlier ages that preemies survive could somehow be correlated with the rise in autism and if anyone has done a study on it? Personally I think that would be a good thing because then it might shut up the nutcases who would have everyone stop vaccinating their kids because they are blaming vaccines for autism.
we do see increased rates of autism in extreme prematurity as well as cerebral palsy, retardation, adhd, and a multiple of other things. it’s simple enough to figure out that there are most likely going to be issues when your child is born 4 months early. how severe is pretty much determined by the individual. my son was born 4 months early he does NOT have autism, cerebral palsy but is by definition retarded and developmentally delayed. he is only 5 so someone assigning a diagnosis of adhd just is not fair as most children that age have attention issues as part of their normal growth and development.
these conditions do scare the hell out of many parents and i guess that is normal but live with it and you will realize it is not the end of the world, just a different way of living. i stand firm of arming oneself with education whether your child has it or not. who knows, maybe the next generation of parents and children will be a little more gracious and accepting of a “different” child.
Laura, I hope I did not offend you with my statement. You comment simply opened my eyes to another possible cause for the reported increase other than the freaky stories about vaccines and such that one reads. People are very very quick to not think of all possible explanations and just blame whatever seems like a good target. In this case vaccines. Most of the anti vaccine crowd uses old studies or discredited studies or just blatantly ignores anything that contradicts what they just “know” is true because it is a good outlet for them to have something to blame and to feel that they are taking some action. Then tons of people decide to not vaccinate their kids because of these folks bad science and we have a real problem on our hands when non vaccination becomes more than just a few isolationists here and there.
I have something to add about the rising autism rates: I wonder how this increase breaks down in severity? How many of these kids are high functioning autistics or aspergers who would have simply been considered “weird” a generation ago. High functioning autistics often have IQs off the charts and although it is controversial, a lot of very very accomplished people are believed to aspergers (such as Bill Gates). If included in the numbers are people that would just have been considered “nutty professors” in the past but now have an official diagnosis on the autism spectrum, that alone could seriously increase the numbers. When you factor in the lower functioning individuals that might have been diagnosed with something else, that ups the numbers even more.