My child has ASD, will my next child have it too?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every doctor in the world will agree that you cannot have a genetic childhood epidemic...it simply cannot exist. There are environmental triggers involved.

There is no epidemic. Studies have shown that current rates of autism are the same as in adults and the older populations - they just weren't diagnosed. So the actual number of cases hasn't increased but the number of kids being diagnosed has.

I don't know what studies you are reading, but they must be imaginary.

I didn't know a single ASD person when I was growing up. I don't know a single adult my age with autism. I know LOTS of kids with autism. My children have many peers with autism.

Many studies have show the increase in numbers of kids with autism and ASD is huge, and cannot be accounted for simply by claiming "better diagnosis" or "wider definition". Nonsense. Autism may have existed when I was growing up, but in miniscule numbers compared with today.

Yes, it's an epidemic. And yes, there are environmental factors at play.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/68/5/459

"Conducting epidemiologic research on ASD in adults is feasible. The prevalence of ASD in this population is similar to that found in children. The lack of an association with age is consistent with there having been no increase in prevalence and with its causes being temporally constant. Adults with ASD living in the community are socially disadvantaged and tend to be unrecognized."

We didn't have inclusive school systems decades ago. Kids who were non verbal or who had significant developmental delays didn't attend school with their peers.

Then there obviously wasn't the numbers of autistic children to create a demand for schools to pick up the slack.

They attended separate schools and programs. And Asperger kids attended regular school and were seen as or or eccentric.

OK, so where are all these autistic adults now? Did they disappear somewhere? Would you say these autistic adults are kept hidden somewhere "out of sight out of mind" now? I'm assuming their stay-at-home moms are dead by now, so where are these autistic 40 and 50 year olds? Are they kept in some sort of special institutions? Are they all the homeless people we see sleeping in doorways in cities?

[Anonymous]

This issue of "better diagnosis" and "expanded definition" was warned of in this article in Age of Autism:

http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/02/the-next-really-big-lie-about-autism.html

Just a snippit here: "So I’m warning everyone to prepare for THE NEXT REALLY BIG LIE ABOUT AUTISM. It’ll be a lot like the one telling us that one percent of children have always had autism. Only now, we’ll also be told that having one percent of young adults with autism is nothing new."

[Anonymous]

Science tries to use a non-scientific explanation to prove that it's scientific data in determining autistm rates are wrong. How fucked up is that??? That's the inconsistency of "science" these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/68/5/459

"Conducting epidemiologic research on ASD in adults is feasible. The prevalence of ASD in this population is similar to that found in children. The lack of an association with age is consistent with there having been no increase in prevalence and with its causes being temporally constant. Adults with ASD living in the community are socially disadvantaged and tend to be unrecognized."

We didn't have inclusive school systems decades ago. Kids who were non verbal or who had significant developmental delays didn't attend school with their peers.

Then there obviously wasn't the numbers of autistic children to create a demand for schools to pick up the slack.

They attended separate schools and programs. And Asperger kids attended regular school and were seen as or or eccentric.

OK, so where are all these autistic adults now? Did they disappear somewhere? Would you say these autistic adults are kept hidden somewhere "out of sight out of mind" now? I'm assuming their stay-at-home moms are dead by now, so where are these autistic 40 and 50 year olds? Are they kept in some sort of special institutions? Are they all the homeless people we see sleeping in doorways in cities?

I can tell you where the ones I'm related to are -- not working and living marginal existences. Being supported by their parents. This is one of the myths of the vaccine crowd, that there aren't any autistic adults. They weren't diagnosed, but they were absolutely there. I'm related to several, who were never diagnosed as children. We all knew these kids, I suspect everyone here (if you went to public school as a child) can remember them. They were teased, you may have teased them yourself. I did. I had no idea. Ever since my DS was diagnosed, I can look back and clearly remember several children who would be diagnosed today.

We don't have a good headcount of autistic adults because many weren't diagnosed as kids. But they were there. I see them as adults regularly, working low paying jobs mostly.

[Anonymous]

I can tell you where the ones I'm related to are -- not working and living marginal existences. Being supported by their parents. This is one of the myths of the vaccine crowd, that there aren't any autistic adults. They weren't diagnosed, but they were absolutely there. I'm related to several, who were never diagnosed as children. We all knew these kids, I suspect everyone here (if you went to public school as a child) can remember them. They were teased, you may have teased them yourself. I did. I had no idea. Ever since my DS was diagnosed, I can look back and clearly remember several children who would be diagnosed today.

We don't have a good headcount of autistic adults because many weren't diagnosed as kids. But they were there. I see them as adults regularly, working low paying jobs mostly.
[Report Post]

I'm sure there were autistic people in my family, going back to my grandparent's generation. There were Great uncles who never married and could never hold a real job and ended up being taken care of by the rest of the family. I'm sure most families would find the same thing. It was often taboo to discuss or acknowledge the disabilities back then, and they were often called "odd" or "queer". Queer back then did not mean homosexual, but was a common term applied to people who were different from the mainstream. In the Depression era, many kids didn't have the benefit of formal education and were sent to work on farms doing manual labor. Many of those who would carry an autism label today continued to support themselves as gardeners or manual laborers the rest of their lives.

[Anonymous]

Autism is a combination of things. There might be a genetic pre-disposition, but it's generally triggers such as the environment. In addition, I also have chronic lyme and passed it on to my son (just found this out). I really think that this generation of children on the spectrum have lyme disease and that's why it looks different than it has previously.

Also, vaccinations definitely have something to do with it. Everytime my kid got vaccinated his head size blew up. He had swelling of the brain tissue - neuroadema. I think most kids nowadays are born with a very weak immune system due to the state of our environment and they just can't handle the insults. I am all for vaccines - just take the junk out of them.

My 2 cents.

[Anonymous]

I worked for a while at a state mental insitution, and then for a while at a prison. Believe me, there are tons of autistic adults out there. Back in the dark ages decades ago, they got hidden from society rather than included in schools and communities. They ended up incarcerated or institutionalized. I'm hopeful that today's kids will have a better future because they are recognized and treated better.

[Anonymous]

Sorry OP that this is veering off into the territory of "Is autism on the rise or not?"

Now I must dive back in...yes, I may have known a person or two growing up who would be considered an Aspie today and over the course of my childhood maybe I encountered a few people who would be ASD and not high functioning, but what I see now is like a scary science fiction movie (and yes I have a child on the spectrum who is amazing, but the rise scares me all the same).

Every time I go to the grocery store I see tippy toe walkers and flappers and I hear ecolalia and the robotic speech and scripting. Every time I go to a playground there is at least one kid wandering the pewriphery with no clue how to play, usually more than one.

I venture to say at least 1/3 of the families we know are directly touched by autism. If lumped every type of child with SN I encountered during childhood, it would not even approach 1/10th.

If people still aren't convinced that something is going wrong in our environment and it's contributing to an alarming rise in ASD...take a look at our environmentally damaged "cousins"...the life threatening allergy crowd. Did you know ANYONE who could die from food growing up? I didn't. I knew a handful of people with food allergies and maybe one had a life threating allergy. Why is this increasing? Why do so many people I know have to worry that ingesting a trace of a food could kill their child? Are you freaked out yet?

[Anonymous]

Mom with the two kids with autism here. I think environmental factors certainly play a role in autism, but I don't believe they cause autism. In our case there were family members who either had autistic traits or would have been diagnosed with autism if they had been children now. I ate extremely healthy, non-processed, organic food when I was pregnant, so whatever damage was there had to have happened before conception.

Both of my kids showed signs of autism long before they got vaccinated.

Btw, I think another contributing factor to the rise of ASD is technology and/or factors that overwhelm the sensory system. Everything is much more fast paced for my kids now than it was when I grew up. I was able to handle my anxieties because my world seemed predictable. My ASD daughter could not handle her anxieties because she was constantly facing a sensory overload from all the noise, the lights and everything else around her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mom with the two kids with autism here. I think environmental factors certainly play a role in autism, but I don't believe they cause autism. In our case there were family members who either had autistic traits or would have been diagnosed with autism if they had been children now. I ate extremely healthy, non-processed, organic food when I was pregnant, so whatever damage was there had to have happened before conception.

Both of my kids showed signs of autism long before they got vaccinated.

Btw, I think another contributing factor to the rise of ASD is technology and/or factors that overwhelm the sensory system. Everything is much more fast paced for my kids now than it was when I grew up. I was able to handle my anxieties because my world seemed predictable. My ASD daughter could not handle her anxieties because she was constantly facing a sensory overload from all the noise, the lights and everything else around her.

I hear this a LOT. My question to you and everyone else claims this is: were your children vaccinated with Hep B just after their birth? If so, how can you make the claim that they were autistic before ever being vaccinated? Hep B is a nasty, nasty shot. This particular vaccine has thimerosal.

[Anonymous]

PP here. Actually, my son did not receive the hepatitis B vaccine right after birth. He received it when he was 5 months old and I first suspected issues at 4 months. Btw my Aspie brother did not receive any vaccines. What do you have to say to that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every doctor in the world will agree that you cannot have a genetic childhood epidemic...it simply cannot exist. There are environmental triggers involved.

There is no epidemic. Studies have shown that current rates of autism are the same as in adults and the older populations - they just weren't diagnosed. So the actual number of cases hasn't increased but the number of kids being diagnosed has.

I agree with this. I have been teaching for 35 years. Yes, more children have ASD than 35 years ago, but the behaviors haven't changed, just the ability to accurately diagnose what these behaviors indicate.

You are talking in circles. Even the CDC acknowledges the rate change. I am 39...when I was growing up, we had ZERO non-verbal children in the entire school. Now, you're hardpressed NOT to find an entire rooms of autistic nonverbal boys in each and every city. And you're going to tell me that this was just as much of a problem back in the 70s and 80s? That's total bullshit and you know it.

Even an article on WebMD, referring to the CDC, written way back in 2002, acknowledges the increase in prevalence. And, it's gone up since then.
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20021231/cdc-autism-rates-higher-than-thought

May of this year...."Rates of autism, ADHD, other disabilities on the rise, CDC says":
http://www.mlive.com/health/index.ssf/2011/05/rates_of_autism_adhd_other_dis.html

October, 2011..."Autism rate triples among K-12 students"
http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/autism-rate-triples-among-k-12-students-8488

I could keep going......

ZERO non-verbal kids?

Excuse me? Are you saying there were no children with cerebral palsy thirty-nine years ago?

No children with traumatic brain injury?

No children with speech and language disorders?

I think you need to look past your own bullshit.

[Anonymous]

I'm almost 40. I can think back to kids that we labeled as "weird", "quirky", "freaks", etc--and now I understand that some of those kids were ASD. I recently had surgery and tried to chat a little with the orderly who pushed my bed to tests and then to the OR. Before having a child with ASD I would have thought the guy was off, weird or whatever, but now I realize he's an adult with ASD. He was about my age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every doctor in the world will agree that you cannot have a genetic childhood epidemic...it simply cannot exist. There are environmental triggers involved.

There is no epidemic. Studies have shown that current rates of autism are the same as in adults and the older populations - they just weren't diagnosed. So the actual number of cases hasn't increased but the number of kids being diagnosed has.

I agree with this. I have been teaching for 35 years. Yes, more children have ASD than 35 years ago, but the behaviors haven't changed, just the ability to accurately diagnose what these behaviors indicate.

You are talking in circles. Even the CDC acknowledges the rate change. I am 39...when I was growing up, we had ZERO non-verbal children in the entire school. Now, you're hardpressed NOT to find an entire rooms of autistic nonverbal boys in each and every city. And you're going to tell me that this was just as much of a problem back in the 70s and 80s? That's total bullshit and you know it.

Even an article on WebMD, referring to the CDC, written way back in 2002, acknowledges the increase in prevalence. And, it's gone up since then.
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20021231/cdc-autism-rates-higher-than-thought

May of this year...."Rates of autism, ADHD, other disabilities on the rise, CDC says":
http://www.mlive.com/health/index.ssf/2011/05/rates_of_autism_adhd_other_dis.html

October, 2011..."Autism rate triples among K-12 students"
http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/autism-rate-triples-among-k-12-students-8488

I could keep going......

ZERO non-verbal kids?

Excuse me? Are you saying there were no children with cerebral palsy thirty-nine years ago?

No children with traumatic brain injury?

No children with speech and language disorders?

I think you need to look past your own bullshit.

You need to read more carefully. This poster said she didn't know anyone nonverbal personally. She didn't say there were no nonverbal people in the entire universe, only that she didn't know anyone when she was growing up who was nonverbal. Today, there are lots of nonverbal kids. We all know them and see them. I don't see how anyone can argue that there has not been a dramatic increase in the number of kids with ASD, asthma, life-threatening allergies, ADHD in the last 30 or more years. Yes, in the old days, some kids were labeled "weird" or stuffed into special ed classes, but these kids were not kept in cages! They would have been in the community where we could see them when they weren't in school. They were not there, nor were the kids with peanut allergies, etc. They didn't exist 30 or 40 years ago. Or if they did, they were in miniscule numbers.

Everyone has a crutch to lean upon. I know some people who refuse to even consider vaccines as a culprit, a trigger perhaps, in some ASD cases. Others don't want to rip up their wall-to-wall carpeting or move out of their brand new homes filled with products made with formaldehyde and other toxins, so they turn a blind eye to the possibility that these chemicals may be contributing to their child's condition.

A PP stated it best: There are no genetic epidemics. The current epidemic of ASD is caused by environmental factors triggering a genetic predisposition.

In another thread, a parent posted that her ASD kid is better after getting rid of electronic stimuli (tv, computers, etc.) changing her child's diet and adding omega 3s. Surely this is one case where environment (food, electronic stimuli) was contributing to this child's issues.

Posters who wish to keep their heads buried deep in the sand may stay there, but meanwhile their ASD kids won't get better if their parents don't look around and find the problems in their child's environment and body that lead to or contribute to ASD.

It's tough having an ASD child, but it's not God's will, or fate, or heredity alone. There are environmental factors that have created this epidemic. Once we all accept that, we can move forward and figure out the many causes of ASD and find out how to reverse these numbers and end this epidemic. ASD may never end completely, but the epidemic must.


Where will we hide all these ASD kids when they reach their 30s and 40s?