1/20 children in Northern Ireland have autism

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Northern Ireland is a very small country. This could easily be the result of a handful of specialists changing their practices.

Or inbreeding. I’m not being crass, but it’s common knowledge that Cousins often married each other, and with a smaller population of happens more. Raising my hand and admitting that my great great grandparents from Ireland, were related!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re “high functioning”, do you really have autism? When I was growing up, autism meant non-communicative, in-your-own-world kind of behavior. Is the “spectrum “ too broad now because people want a label for their kids just because they’re a little weird?

Yes. My dc, who is 'high functioning', does really have autism. Really.

They were referred to EI at 12 months by the ped, and was dx at 4.5 years old. Dc has seen multiple medical providers in 2 different states and ALL concur with the dx (or had concerns about it, if seen prior to dx). I can guarantee you that these professionals were not humoring me as a parent who 'wanted' a label for my weird kid.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for posting 13:55! Very interesting!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re “high functioning”, do you really have autism? When I was growing up, autism meant non-communicative, in-your-own-world kind of behavior. Is the “spectrum “ too broad now because people want a label for their kids just because they’re a little weird?

And I’ll bet that when you were growing up, a subway ride cost a nickel. Was there any particular point you were trying to make, other than to deliberately invalidate the identities of autistic people who don’t meet your ableist and decades-out-of-date conception of what autism is? Of course, ignorance and hatred like yours isn’t unexpected on a forum like this one. Even the r-word is considered acceptable by the admins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

Thank you. +100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re “high functioning”, do you really have autism? When I was growing up, autism meant non-communicative, in-your-own-world kind of behavior. Is the “spectrum “ too broad now because people want a label for their kids just because they’re a little weird?

And I’ll bet that when you were growing up, a subway ride cost a nickel. Was there any particular point you were trying to make, other than to deliberately invalidate the identities of autistic people who don’t meet your ableist and decades-out-of-date conception of what autism is? Of course, ignorance and hatred like yours isn’t unexpected on a forum like this one. Even the r-word is considered acceptable by the admins.

DP. The r word is not acceptable. Report it and it gets deleted. As for the rest, there's a lot of dissatisfaction from experts and laypeople about the current diagnostics for autism. It's not ableist to say that autism is too broad now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

Unfortunately, you can. Brains are plastic. Given the wrong stimulus in the earliest years, the effects may be permanent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

Unfortunately, you can. Brains are plastic. Given the wrong stimulus in the earliest years, the effects may be permanent.

+ 1,000,000 - No question. Jane Healy, Ph.D. documented the horrific consequences of screen time, and how it LITERALLY rewires a child’s brain. Shocking that intelligent people still believe this is debatable. Screens are never a good thing for young children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re “high functioning”, do you really have autism? When I was growing up, autism meant non-communicative, in-your-own-world kind of behavior. Is the “spectrum “ too broad now because people want a label for their kids just because they’re a little weird?

And I’ll bet that when you were growing up, a subway ride cost a nickel. Was there any particular point you were trying to make, other than to deliberately invalidate the identities of autistic people who don’t meet your ableist and decades-out-of-date conception of what autism is? Of course, ignorance and hatred like yours isn’t unexpected on a forum like this one. Even the r-word is considered acceptable by the admins.

DP. The r word is not acceptable. Report it and it gets deleted. As for the rest, there's a lot of dissatisfaction from experts and laypeople about the current diagnostics for autism. It's not ableist to say that autism is too broad now.

+1 Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

Unfortunately, you can. Brains are plastic. Given the wrong stimulus in the earliest years, the effects may be permanent.

+ 1,000,000 - No question. Jane Healy, Ph.D. documented the horrific consequences of screen time, and how it LITERALLY rewires a child’s brain. Shocking that intelligent people still believe this is debatable. Screens are never a good thing for young children.

It’s simply not the case that this has been proven (check the link below)
That’s not to say that screen time cannot impact a child’s development - of course it can. But autism must be understand as fundamentally separate from social emotional delays or it’s criteria (repetitive behavior/ sensory issues/ stims etc) become redundant. We must stop conflating autism with any social and emotional issue. Again partly a fault of the overly broad dsm, but this type of rumor is not helping

https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/studies-investigating-link-between-screen-time-and-autism-must-improve/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you’re “high functioning”, do you really have autism? When I was growing up, autism meant non-communicative, in-your-own-world kind of behavior. Is the “spectrum “ too broad now because people want a label for their kids just because they’re a little weird?

And I’ll bet that when you were growing up, a subway ride cost a nickel. Was there any particular point you were trying to make, other than to deliberately invalidate the identities of autistic people who don’t meet your ableist and decades-out-of-date conception of what autism is? Of course, ignorance and hatred like yours isn’t unexpected on a forum like this one. Even the r-word is considered acceptable by the admins.

DP. The r word is not acceptable. Report it and it gets deleted. As for the rest, there's a lot of dissatisfaction from experts and laypeople about the current diagnostics for autism. It's not ableist to say that autism is too broad now.

+1 Thank you.

+2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

Are you saying autism is visible on MRIs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

NP. I agree that you cannot screen time your way into autism. However, I DO think that the extreme amounts of screen time that some children are exposed to now absolutely must be having a detrimental effect of some sort. I think we've all seen or been around people who are propping infants up in front of tablets, seen toddlers who can't be separated from iPads, etc. That virtual 24/7 bombardment is definitely going to impact them negatively. The question is just in what way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

NP. I agree that you cannot screen time your way into autism. However, I DO think that the extreme amounts of screen time that some children are exposed to now absolutely must be having a detrimental effect of some sort. I think we've all seen or been around people who are propping infants up in front of tablets, seen toddlers who can't be separated from iPads, etc. That virtual 24/7 bombardment is definitely going to impact them negatively. The question is just in what way.

Yes but that’s not autism. Autism should not be a catch all for every socialization delay

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s going to get worse. I am a school psychologist and when I look at the younger siblings of students at the school I am at really worried about how many if them are in strollers staring at screens. Phones and tablets are an effective and cheap babysitter. It’s a low income school where kids don’t have the opportunity to get signed up for activities where they interact.

If there are kids on the spectrum who are borderline with a lot of socialization with parents, siblings, friends, quality pre-schools, attending story times, etc. they might not ever have enough symptoms to have issues or get diagnosed. Now add COVID lock down to that mix where kids didn’t socialize at all for a year not even with cousins. We are seeing kids who are coming in to K with lower language and socialization skills across the board. It’s really, really concerning.

I do NOT think though that you can screen time your way into autism. you can screen time your way into poor socialization, but not into the fundamental brain differences, visible on MRIs, that exist in the brains of true autistic individuals from birth.

Are you saying autism is visible on MRIs?

Yes. Although studies are still in process to confirm

https://www.news-medical.net/life-sciences/-Using-MRI-to-Diagnose-Autism-Spectrum-Disorder.aspx