Vaccination & epidemic

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Sigh. No, you're not reading. The language development specialist at the school said that her language is not significantly delayed, but that she thought there was something going on, nonetheless. We were suspicious because of her behavior at home, which in the past would have been considered "high strung" or "difficult", as I was as a child. Therefore, we took her to a neurological center, where they confirmed that there is a significant neurodevelopmental delay and sent us on for further testing.

We discussed it with her pediatrician and the next step is finishing the intake process at OHSU and getting her tested at the neurodevelopment center. The pediatrician suspects high-functioning autism. It's up in the air until after the testing at OHSU, other than the fact that she has a very high IQ and a neurodevelopmental delay of some kind. The high IQ helps to "hide" the delay. I suspect strongly that high-functioning, highly-intelligent children are being diagnosed now due to higher awareness and better diagnostics, when they would have slipped through the cracks in the past.

Anyway, the only reason I brought it up was that you stated that I have never lived with a high-functioning autistic child. The fact of the matter is, my best friend's son is autistic and I had him after school every day for two years, plus he spends two nights a week here because my son is his best friend, and it is very possible that my youngest daughter is also autistic, so your statement was inaccurate.

I can easily see, from my own experience, how these children would have failed to be diagnosed in the past. Greater awareness and more resources mean that they are being diagnosed and helped now, rather than living their lives at half-potential.

If there is no significant language delay, it is not autism, by medical definition. Your daughter may end up with a diagnosis of Asperger's, ADHD, or any number of other diagnoses which are not autism, and they may rightly apply. If she ends up with a diagnosis of pure autism, then you must be correct, the diagnosis is being watered-down by some inexperienced medical professionals, because she does not have autism.

The fact remains that I have sat in a conference room with 50 other Pre-K autistic children all from my school district, all of whom had serious and obvious developmental delays, most of whom were completely nonverbal. Given the size of my school district, that works out to slightly less than the national rate of 1 in 150 (1 in 90 boys, because boys are affected 4 times more often than girls,) because of course this was a PPCD meeting and it didn't include any of the older autistic kids already in the system. If you could have sat in that room with me, you would understand the despair. None of these children could have slipped through the cracks in years past, ever. There are always going to be a handful of borderline cases that could persevere and cope on their own, but they are insignificant in the face of the total numbers. At any rate, I'm done discussing the topic with you, Tiki. I get enough of the "they'll grow out of it" head-in-the-sand bullshit from my older relatives, I don't need to subject myself to more of it here.