Non-white children are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with mental retardation rather than with learning disabilities or pervasive developmental disorders, leading to a suspicion that those children are being misdiagnosed in some cases.
My mother is a special ed administrator in a school district with a pretty high Asian population (both East and South). I have heard her talk many times about Asian & Indian kids with autism & aspergers and some of the unique challenges of dealing with the (stereotype coming!) highly academically motivated immigrant parents.
My rule of thumb is that if they act like a jerk to everyone including their boss and other people that can hurt them, then they probably have some emotional problems. If they keep their nose nice and brown with their boss, then they are jerks.
My sister isn’t a self-entitled jerk.
My sister isn’t some insanely gifted savant (as far as we know).
My sister has severe low-functioning autism. She can speak to her tutors and caretakers, but mostly she communicates by biting her hand and screaming and singing. She has almost no impusle control, and has to be watched very carefully around food. She needs everything to be done exactly the right way, and a change of schedule can set her off shrieking for hours. So can not being able to play her preferred music or movie, and anything she wants that she doesn’t get. She has full-time caretakers living in her room.
The rest of us (except the youngest, I think) have been diagnosed with varying degrees of AS. I know I sometimes have the same impulses as my sister, to panic and shut out the world and biting myself, only I have words to say why I’m doing so. Yes, we do have the typical “High IQ, low EQ” that Aspies often have. But it’s not a case of “superhuman with magic powers.” We’ve had a lot of issues, a lot of struggles, a lot of confusion, a lot of bullying, a lot of frustration. We’re learning, in fits and starts, to cope with a world that doesn’t come with an instruction manuel.
ETA: Yeah, we’re white and upper-middle class. I don’t think the autism cares.
I don’t see the debate. As a poll of “how many of us can find ways to ridicule parents of children diagnosed with autism based on race, wealth, or poor parenting skills?” this beongs in IMHO.
Off it goes.
What, precisely, is crazy about giving your child a better education? Kids that are barely 5 years old are not ready for kindergarten. It’s much better for their parents to hold them back a year. You make it sound like parents are trying to cheat the system or something, yet a lot of the 6y.o. kindergarteners are on their second year in school. It’s got nothing to do with beating standardized tests and everything to do with giving your child a better education.
Yeah, there are a lot of austism-like disorders that aren’t the same thing, like Rhett’s and Fragile-X syndromes. The main distinction between HFA and Asperger’s is that the former at some point went through some linguistic difficulties, even if they improved later. Both have near-normal intelligence usually. The DSM-V is talking about removing “types” of autism and putting it on a full spectrum, so we’ll see.
I’ve read that it’s best to put a child with linguistic difficulties in a treatment program immediately, even if they don’t have a formal ASD diagnosis. It’s something about the critical period I think. The point is that even if you don’t have autism, it’s not worth the risk to assume you’re just a late bloomer, and start some speech training immediately.
I know it is, but as a teacher, you’d be surprised how many quirky kids who are not autistic have been diagnosed. I think if you doctor shop around enough, you can find one who will tell you what you yearn to hear.
I am quite dubious of this claim of any significant portion of parents with “autistic” kids wanting their children to be labeled as such. My wife has been a school psychologist for six years now and she has never told me about any parents pushing for an autism evaluation. Numerous times she has told me about parents (especially “quirky” dads) who go into complete denial about it when she suggests their kid may have autism/aspergers.
Frankly, this thread seems somewhat similar to discussions about peanut allergies; if someone doesn’t have first hand experience, then it is all hype to them.
That may be more popular now, but holding back one year before kindergarten for those turning 5 early in the school year - and especially for boys - has been going on since at least the 1970s. Tests weren’t cited then, but social maturity, ability to sit through the whole class, and intellectual development were definite issues.
It’s been two and a half years I’ve been going through the DX process with my five year old. She didn’t talk at all and rarely made eye contact. You’d think right away “oh yeah that kid has autism!” but nope.
I don’t understand how it can be overdiagnosed as much as people think when it seems like it’s been forever and we still don’t have a solid diagnosis! I know part of the issue with my Bella is she’s extremely smart and an excellent mimic. She went from non-verbal to being just a few years behind at her last speech re-eval.
But you can see, just observing her for an hour, something is going on. She can’t handle change, loses control with loud unexpected noises, her language is just…wrong. I don’t know. Everything gets mixed up. So we go back and forth: sensory and language processing disorders–autism spectrum.
And you know, disability for children doesn’t cover sensory and language processing disorders. So that’s been a bit frustrating because we do spend a lot on manipulatives and gas for four therapy trips a week. I don’t just mean toys. Special lights and brushes and weighted blankets and vests (we rarely use them now at home) and CDs for her modulated music therapy. Because she had poor motor skills early on, my SO built balance bars. We got a sensory swing. I have worked with her every day since I first noticed something was off in the way she processed information. I don’t want to think she has autism but she has something going on and at this point it seems to fit.
I’m white. Definitely not rich! I never would have thought I’d be dealing with this. It frustrates me when autism is likened to “special snowflake syndrome”. I KNOW all children are different but you know when something is especially off, right? And both her therapists agree this is more than a case of sensory integration and language dysfunction, but her psychiatrist wanted to wait until she finished pre-k before a re-eval could be done so we’re still playing that waiting game I guess she’s just that borderline.
It’s just not that easy to diagnose with high-functioning children. We’re not making things up and if decent doctors are doing the evaluations it shouldn’t happen just because mama read a magazine article.
About ten years ago I was a TA in a class with autistic children, all so severe they were in a contained class. A few were shuttled off to PE or library with regular ed. kids but they were generally a distraction and they couldn’t care less about leaving their classes to go to a place where everyone is looking at them funny and none of the people/things they’re used to are there to keep them stable. There were black kids and white kids. I don’t remember what percent of what, but there were more black kids probably because it was an inner-city school. Maybe people who see it more in white kids are not realizing we’re still the majority out here. I don’t know, but what trips me out is the research showing it’s far more common in parents with a higher education. I wonder what that means.
I do think there is a tendency for parents to prefer the diagnosis of autism to mental retardation these days, however.
Now that we aren’t in GD, I would wager some guesses, based on what I have read about autism:
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Autism, as has been aluded to, can be hereditary. So maybe Pops has mild, undiagnosed Asperger’s, which–with its hyperspecialization of knowledge–makes him well-suited as a botany professor at a prestigious university. He meets his wife through the university–perhaps she too carries some traits that could be on the “spectrum” as well. Or maybe not. They then go on to have a kid who has full-fledged autism, inherited through his parent(s). I had a professor in college who was kind of eccentric, though friendly enough. I’m betting it wasn’t just a coincidence that he was kind of weird, given to rambling at the chalkboard and repeating nonsensical phrases, and that he also had a severely autistic son.
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Families with low education may not have environments that nurture the brilliant quirkiness that often appears in autistic individuals. Kids aren’t born being fixated on dinosaurs or geography or prime numbers; they have to be exposed to these things first. So if you have a HFA kid or an Aspie kid with a poor environment, where they don’t get verbal stimulation or they’re constantly being punished, then you may get an individual who looks more retarded or emotionally disturbed than autistic/Aspergeric. But such a kid who’s born in a rich environment full of books, trips to the museum, educational toys, and verbal back-and-forth may not appear as “dim” as much as “socially awkward”. And because educated parents will more likely be more aware of the “latest” disorders, they may be sensitive enough to take their kids to a specialist if they sense something’s wrong. An uneducated parent may take their kid to a doctor too, but may not have the wherewithal to chase down the “right” diagnosis that fits their kid.
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I think more educated parents are more likely to seek out diagnoses for their kids, in general, than less educated parents. If Johnny keeps getting in trouble in school, it’s not because he’s a brat. It’s because he has Oppositional Conduct Disorder or ADHD. If Suzy stays locked in her bedroom all the time and doesn’t have any friends, it’s not because she’s shy or introverted. No, she must have Social Phobia or Generalized Anxiety Disorder. They will read up on these things first and then go to the doctor with a diagnosis already in mind. Maybe the doctor will challenge them, but maybe they won’t and just write up a prescription. Uneducated parents, IMHO, do not do this. Johnny just needs to get his butt whipped and be told to cut out the crap. Suzy needs to be dragged to the girl-who-lives-next-door’s house and be forced to make friends with her, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. So quit crying!
My parents are fairly well-educated, but they definitely had the “uneducated” philosophy for mental illness. My father knew all along that my oldest sister had bipolar disorder (it runs in his family), even as she practically destroyed the family with her crazy behavior. But did he ever take her to a doctor? No. He just ignored it and hoped it would get better on its on, damn the consequences for my sister and the rest of us. I think upper middle-class people tend to NOT have this approach to parenthood.
BigT, one of the characteristics of autism is having social impairments and lacking any intuition of others’ feelings. That’s similar in some ways to what is thought of as “acting like a jerk.” This has caused some people to claim that the reason that they act like a jerk is that they have some form of autism, even though they haven’t been professionally diagnosed with it. I’ve seen people make such claims.
Now you may say that this is lousy argumentation on the part of these people. And you’re right. I’m not claiming that this is a good argument. Acting like a jerk is only superficially similar to autism, and in any case anyone who claims to be autistic has to get professionally diagnosed before they can be believed. I’m just saying that this is one of many (and the other posts here show just how many) reasons that autism is so much talked about these days.
Sorry if this point was brought up already, but the reason it’s such a huge topic now is because of how common it is. It’s very close to being classed as an official epidemic.
Whaaaaat are you talking about? Did you mean to quote me? Where did I say there are parents pushing to get an autism diagnosis? I’m calling bullshit on the idea that holding back kids is about getting a leg up on the competition or having anything to do with standardized test scores.
Common?
Epilpsy 1 in 118 people
Autism (the new extended definition) 1 in 110
Heterochromia 1 in 99
Cancer 1 in 68
Stroke 1 in 59
Diabetes 1 in 17
Blindness 1 in 16
Asthma 1 in 15
Arthritis 1 in 5
For comparison, the chance of having twins is 1 in 31 births… We’re using different definitions of common perhaps?
Also… classified by whom?
Autism is mainly about being unable to experience empathy. In my own brand of Asperger’s, I have to rationally think about how others are interpreting my behavior. I have to consciously learn signs of how people give off various moods, and quite often I interpret things incorrectly and end up in a shit storm of hard feelings. I appear to get very emotional over trivial subjects due to troubles in regulating emotions. Yet, I was diagnosed merely with depression for about 20 years due to having those symptoms. Maybe my current therapist is over-reacting to various aspects of my personality, but the constant misinterpretation of social situations over my life makes me feel that I have some form of autism - I just needed a therapist who was looking for it.
The story of the girl who made a connection between someone’s pointing and their speech reminds me of something similar I do that I discovered while working with my therapist. I have a tendency to discount connections between two disparate events because I focus on what’s different between those events instead of what I might be able to learn from their similarities. To me, any difference between two situations might be enough for everything I’ve learned in the past to become irrelevant. While I can go through checklists of how a situation might resemble others, I very often fail to understand the important aspects and focus on some trivial details because it’s difficult for me to distinguish between them. To this little girl, she finally was able to piece together some connections that she had been dismissing a long time for lack of evidence.
Our brains have a lot of learning about the world to do after we’re born, and sometimes connections fail to get made correctly. Without the ability to diagnose and intervene early on in such people’s lives, they end up being lumped in with the Mentally Retarded. Through early intervention, it is possible to get people those brain patterns that they didn’t develop on their own while they are still developing. For me, it’s possibly too late, and I’ll have to muck my way through life doing the best I can, but never being able to do more than trying to rationalize everything - I will never be able to trust my gut feelings.
According to this site, autism is more prevalent in white males. The line containing this sentence is frequently repeated throughout the internet, verbatim. I assume the author means that it’s disproportionately represented in white males, even though that’s not what they actually say.
But this site seems more credible. It cites a CDC study that demonstrated no difference in incident rates between white and black people.
This site says that black autistic kids are more likely to be misdiagnosed and that when they do get diagnosed, it’s two years after white kids typically do. Which means they don’t get the early intervention they need. So that might explain why the focus on autism seems come to more from upper-middle-class and white people. These folks are more likely to get hooked into the intervention teams, drug regimes, elimination diet discussions, etc., in addition to having blogs and writing columns for magazines and newspapers. As well as being regular “voices” on NPR. But really, I don’t see that being any different from any other disease or condition.
No, I was kind of further agreeing with you on the absurdity of the idea that parents would want an autism diagnosis to provide some sort of advantage for their kids.