BigGaayAl

Exactly my thoughts.

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This is my "depressed stance." When you're depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you'll start to feel better. If you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this. ~Charlie Brown

ScratchMonkey

So kind of like cancer?

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Gillespie

Autism seems to be a catch-all phrase for a variety of symptoms then. Sort of like "asthma".

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BigGaayAl

Not at all I believe.

All forms of cancer share a common mechanism that causes different symptoms. All cancers are uncontrolled cell growth. Cancer=disease
"Medical usage sometimes distinguishes a disease, which has a known specific cause or causes (called its etiology)" (from wikipedia).

For autism no underlying mechanism has been discovered. The only reasons to believe all different cases of autism have a common cause, are statiscical, or intuitive. Autism=disorder
->no etiology

Autism is more like asthma. The causes/mechanisms aren't always known, and different causes may exist.

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I wsih to agzoiollppie for tinpyg so mnay tpoys

This is my "depressed stance." When you're depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you'll start to feel better. If you're going to get any joy out of being depressed, you've got to stand like this. ~Charlie Brown

Ferris Bueller

Al is absolutely correct.

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Bamboo

I am actually very interested in the autism subject.
I didn't know much about it until in college, when I took a therapeutic rec class for my major, and for service project hours I helped teach swimming lessons for the Special Olympics and other groups with special needs. The program was called Adapted Aquatics.
http://www.adaptedaquatics.org/

After I finished the class, the program (it was held through the YMCA) asked me to stay on as paid staff. It was one of the best jobs I have ever had, and did it for 3 years.
Here is a pic from one of our swim meets with one of the coolest kids I ever worked with.


After I moved to Northern Virgina, I got a job working as a teachers assistant at a school for students with special needs.
Worst job ever. I actually got the job because I was really considering going into teaching, and couldn't decide if I could spend all day inside. (my current job lets me teach outdoors) It was mostly do to how many kids they had in each tiny room, and it was completely randomly split up so you had very violent students with the most gentle kids ever.
I stuck it out for 5 months, and was one of the few left out of the group of 60 that had started the school year when I did. Some of them walked off the job the first day, after just having 2 weeks of hard core training. It was very hard on the students that needed things to be constant, with all the screaming, throwing things, etc.
Found out after I started it was the school where the public schools sent students they couldn't handle any more.

I still get to work with children with autism pretty frequently. Everyone at work knows I enjoy it, so when a school group comes to the park where I work with a special student, he goes with my group.

Many of the best days I have had have been with a special student that the teachers and parents were scared to let come on the field trip. One of the best was a student that constantly panicked and cried as soon as things didn't look good for him. The parents even sent in a whole photocopied packet to give to who ever was working with their child, even though the mother was coming too. I didn't need to read it, but was nice to let the other worker learn some stuff.
Anyway, so the group gets there, and as staff are calling out their groups to come over and join them, all of a sudden one of the kids just starts bawling crying. Realized right away that was my student. Went over and sat down and introduced myself and told him he would be in my group that day. The mom was blown away that I had figured out the problem and solved it. He had been scared he wouldn't get picked.
The rest of the day he was glued to my hip, and was EXTREMELY smart. May have only been in 5th grade, but he could give random facts on everything, like was spotting out all the birds we saw in the woods by both common name and sci. names. His mom said he had never really been in the woods before.

One of our hardest challenges is the Peanut Butter Pit, which is a big pit full of mud and water with a rope hanging in the middle. The group has to come up with a plan to get the rope and then all swing across. I have taken at least 2-300 groups there, and often have groups fail and not be able to get the rope because no one in the group wants to lean out. Surprise! This kid that hardly anyone ever talks to volunteers to do it right away. (kid in the pic is a different group, didn't have my camera that day)


He also did our 100 yard zip wire, which for a kid that usually gives up as soon as something got hard, that is just amazing. His mom was actually crying at the end of the day and kept thanking me saying she never thought her son could do the things he had.
And I could go on and on with examples of kids that completely caught their teachers off guard. Something about exploring and being engaged in learning out in the woods (or at least out of the classroom) works for ADD and ADHD as well.
Point is, it was just a label, and the spectrum of kids I have worked with is so wide, you can't see from one end to the other.

I also keep up on articles about the subject, and had already bought the Wired Mag. that started off this thread.
One of the most interesting things I have read is that they are looking into links between cable TV and autism. They noticed that the "cases" of autism went up rapidly in cities were cable TV was introduced, starting in the early 80s. I will look around cause I probably bookmarked the article.
Question is, if there is a link, was it because the parents let the kids veg. in front of the TV as toddlers, or was it something else.

Edit: found it
http://science.slashdot.org/article....35250&from=rss

TV Really Might Cause Autism
"Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders. The Cornell study represents a potential bombshell in the autism debate."

That is some scary ****. I need to read some more about it. Didn't have time when it was 1st found.

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Ferris Bueller

The study by Cornell has been widely disregarded as of late because the researchers didnt do their jobs and forgot to equate in population densities of the areas involved. For example, in PA, if pittsburgh had cable TV and the surrounding rural communities did not, given a rate of growth approximate with the standard for cities and towns of the size observed, the rate will always be higher in the cities. They neglected to put that in.

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kormendi

Sounds like where my ex girlfriend works, also in the NoVA area. You may know if it, rhymes with Aint Nobetta's. The place is a hell hole and does nothing to help the kids. Its sad.

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Bamboo

Holy ****, that is where it was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What a small world. Does she still work there now?

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kormendi

Yea, for nearly 2 years now.

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Bamboo

She was there when I was there then.
What age range did she work with?

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ScratchMonkey

In Education magazine:

Understanding Asperger's Syndrome
http://www.education.com/magazine/ar...gers_Syndrome/

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ScratchMonkey

The Autism Rights Movement
A new wave of activists wants to celebrate atypical brain function as a positive identity, not a disability. Opponents call them dangerously deluded.
http://nymag.com/news/features/47225/

The article compares three quite different positions: Those who think autism should be cured and is chemical (eg. from tainted antivirus), those who think it's genetic, and those who want no cure.

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Ferris Bueller

From a medical standpoint, I have to say that the third group are dangerously deluded. Autism doesnt just effect the person with the disorder, but indeed everyone around them. Some people with ASD can be inappropriate or even dangerous and not even realize it nor be able to do anything about it. Care management simply isnt enough, and there is a growing population of children with ASD who are having to go into state-run care facilities because their families cant afford the cost of their specialized care.

As far as the other two, we simply dont know enough to make the determination as to where the root of ASD lies. I'm fairly sure that it's not just a vaccine to blame, seeing as the specific vaccine that is currently being blamed has only been around for 20 years or so in its current form, and ASD has been around for much much longer.

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Karkianman101

From my extremely limited understanding, as the only ASD person I've every knowingly met is my uncle who may have mild Asperger's, the brain has specific sections that are attuned to different tasks, such as speech or memory or spatial concepts, and most people have a more or less similar distribution of 'ability' (can't think of the right word), and anyone with a significantly different 'ability' distribution is said to have ASD. In my layman's terms, how I understand it is that people with ASD have just as much wiring in their brains, but with different priorities for which tasks get however much wiring dedicated to them.

No idea how accurate or useful that is, but it's always more or less been my understanding of how ASD 'works'.