Vaccines & Autism: A Deadly Manufactroversy (page 3)

besty

leo - how severe is your autism - is there a scale that you can be placed on?

There is no objective scale AFAIK. Plus there is an independent dimension of mental retardation that accounts for much of the apparent severity; a child can manifest all the diagnostic criteria and be very, very bright and not seem as profoundly autistic as one who is cognitively handicapped. Thus it is conventional to distinguish a scale of low-functioning and high-functioning autistics; I fall into the high end, of course. And the issues have largely receded in my life, though they are there beneath the surface. I am dx'd with AS, although it is not quite right (as I had significant language delay). But at age 2 and 3, I manifested every symptom of autism you could imagine. By age 5, I had started to speak and was no longer aloof (and thus no longer qualified according to the narrow strict criteria in place in the 1970s), by age 7 I was able to speak mostly normally except for pronunciation, and by age 8 I started to make friends. At age 12 and 13, I had intensive therapy to overcome some remaining cognitive, memory, and social deficits. This trajectory of development is not too uncommon among high-functioning autistics. But I could have been a poster child for the horrors of autism at ages 3 and 4.

drwtsn32

Very interesting, Leolaia...thanks for sharing.

So what's the difference between Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism?

BurnTheShips

Leo obviously compensates for some mild cognitive difficulties in some areas by being quite a savant in other areas. A lot of people would love to have your brain, Leo. It seems that autism is so common these days. I read somewhere that it was especially common around Silicon Valley. Maybe when two extremely intelligent parents get together, this is more common. Who knows? I was worried about my son being autistic when he was born just because everyone seems to be having autistic kids these days. I am just a worrier. But he was already pretty good with spoken language at 1yo (and he was walking at 9 mos!) and he was very fluent in Spanish by the time he turned 2 earlier this year (we exposed him to a foreign language first). We put him in a daycare/preschool a couple of months ago, all English, and he is speaking English like a little chatterbox now, hardly any Spanish unless I tell him to.

BTS

Leolaia

So what's the difference between Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism?

They overlap considerably because autism and AS were described independently by two different Austrian psychologists in the 1940s whose patients were representive of different parts of the same overall autistic spectrum. People with AS are generally high-functioning, even higher-functioning than many with HFA; the most significant distinguishing criterion that contrasts the two is the absence of significant childhood language delay in AS. This makes the label not fit so well in my case. Perhaps PDD-NOS is better suited, but this is a wastebasket category that doesn't really mean anything. The spectrum is a continuous, diverse one, and these labels artificially and inaccurately split up the spectrum into different discrete categories. I like the AS label tho because it seems to fit best and it makes some allowance for nondiscrete variation (in other words, as a syndrome, you only need to satisfy a number of the criteria, not all of them).

The main thing is that childhood history of "autistic" developmental delay. There are many adults who may relate to AS or another autistic spectrum condition as describing their personality, but you can only know for sure if it is correct if you satisfied the criteria at a young age. Thus you need to have either been labelled with a diagnosis as a child, or have records of tests and assessments from that time, or if your parents can give a detailed history of your developmental process. I have my own memories too, but naturally those tend to be more hazy.

Leo obviously compensates for some mild cognitive difficulties in some areas by being quite a savant in other areas. A lot of people would love to have your brain, Leo. It seems that autism is so common these days. I read somewhere that it was especially common around Silicon Valley.

Which is where I live, LOL. I'm sure I am pretty normal in most everyday respects; I don't think you could guess without getting to know me well that I had a history of childhood autism. It comes out more in complex social situations that I find particularly stressful; also I still have significant disparity between auditory and visual processing, such that I am hopeless in learning to speak or understand a spoken foreign language but I can easily learn language vocabulary and grammar visually. As a child, I learned to read words long before I used spoken language, and my mom and I often communicated by drawing pictures. In kindergarten, I went to a school for disabled children (mainly deaf kids and autistics) where mainly visual techniques were used. My parents tested my hearing lots of times, thinking I was deaf, but my hearing was actually better than average (and many sounds, like those of motorcycles and vacuum cleaners, would make me freak out).

I was worried about my son being autistic when he was born just because everyone seems to be having autistic kids these days. I am just a worrier. But he was already pretty good with spoken language at 1yo (and he was walking at 9 mos!) and he was very fluent in Spanish by the time he turned 2 earlier this year (we exposed him to a foreign language first). We put him in a daycare/preschool a couple of months ago, all English, and he is speaking English like a little chatterbox now, hardly any Spanish unless I tell him to.

At home I have a very good month-by-month list of diagnostic criteria for children between the ages of 1 1/2 and 5. It is quite detailed and complete; there are lots of little things that autistics do that are distinctive (like playing with a toy truck or vaccum upside down by spinning its wheels, rather than the way it is "supposed" to).

Your kid sounds very bright....and being bilingual will serve him well later in life, make sure he keeps up his Spanish learning. :)

leavingwt

Harvey Karp: Cracking the Autism Riddle (The first in a series of articles.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-karp/cracking-the-autism-riddl_b_213730.html

mrsjones5

Thanks WT. That was a good read. I look forward to reading all the articles in the series.

Josie

drwtsn32

Thanks Leo... I'd be interested in seeing that month-by-month diagnostic criteria you mentioned.

And thanks to LWT for the link to that article.

mrsjones5

"At home I have a very good month-by-month list of diagnostic criteria for children between the ages of 1 1/2 and 5. It is quite detailed and complete; there are lots of little things that autistics do that are distinctive (like playing with a toy truck or vaccum upside down by spinning its wheels, rather than the way it is "supposed" to). "

When Joshua was 2 he would not play with toys cars (hot wheels and matchbox) like his brothers, he would try and try to stack them. If they fell he would get upset and if he couldn't get them to stack he would become very upset and grab anyone to help him stack those cars. Around that same time he became fascinated with any type of puzzle of the United States. I had bought him a $1 puzzle from Target and he put it together the same day. He became so focused on anything picturing the states that he could (and probably still can) name each state by shape. He also could draw the outline of the whole United States and would attempt to draw the individual states within.

When he's interested in something it becomes an obsession, currently he's obsessed with the Golden Gate Bridge (draws so many bridges that we are always running out of paper) and the opening sequences of movie companies (music and all) like Universal, Columbia, 20th Century Fox, etc. (he watches those over and over on Youtube), he draws them too.

He's also intensely interested in computers (he knows my hubby's Mac almost better than hubby) and monopolizes our iPhones and my iTouch.

Oh and Joshua has been able to read since he was about 3 and he taught himself to write when he was going through his US phase and after that his calendar phase when he taught himself to spell the months of the years. (took me a long time to get him to leave my calendars alone )

No day is a dull day when Joshua is around.

Josie

El Kabong

From my experience, the article is incorrect.

I have a 23 year old Autistic Son. Vaccinated same time as my Daughter. One autistic, one not.

Believe me, when my Son was small, very few people even knew what Autism was. That is, until the Movie Rain Man came out, then all of a sudden everyone was an expert.

Vaccines & Autism: A Deadly Manufactroversy

Share this