If one in 88 among us is this way, it makes autism seem a little less terrifying and abyss-like and a little more like something that just happens in life.
Today, when people ask about my children, I tell them my oldest has autism and the vast majority nod without horror. They act like I said he has Crohn’s disease or some other lifelong but manageable condition. They ask if he’s going to college, if he’s married, what he does for a living. With the “creep” of this diagnosis has come a welcome acceptance. My son, like a lot of people, is struggling with something difficult. But he’s doing so valiantly, and it doesn’t define him.
Just a quick update, and apologies for slacking. I’ve taken a break from label gazing and am focusing on…living life. Which is a good thing!
At age 5 and a half, Brad is doing well.
On the speech front, he was recently evaluated and is testing in the average range for vocabulary, language organization, syntax, direction following, paragraph comprehension and question comprehension. All good! His deficits are in the domain of “narrative formulation skills.” Even there, he is okay when questions are structured, but when questions are open, he struggles. Also, not surprisingly, his speech is characterized as idiosyncratic. As for pragmatics, he excels at “topic initiation” but fails at “topic maintenance”. Love the SLP jargon. Big picture though, he is communicating, and it’s mostly in the average range. I’m so proud of his progress.
Now onto the fun stuff: he’s off to kindie in a few weeks. Can you believe it? He’ll be in the public school in a regular classroom, with an aide. Not a private aide – that I’m aware of anyway. He’ll get pull outs for speech and some sort of social group. I haven’t had the first meeting yet with the school, so I’m not really sure of the details at this point. I’m afraid for him, socially, but that’s my problem, not his. His special ed team says he’s ready.
As Bradley’s speech has improved, his personality has continued to emerge. He really is a joy to parent. Of course I’m biased but he really is very sweet, smiley and well behaved. He continues to be quirky, but that’s what makes him who he is. We appreciate his unique perspective.
Academically, he’s reading up a storm. I marvel at this ability, especially because he’s so far ahead of where his brother was at this age. However, his reading ability is way ahead of his comprehension – which is either good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it.
Anyway, sorry again for the slackage and best wishes to all.
One provocative hypothesis that might account for the rise of spectrum disorders in technically adept communities like Silicon Valley, some geneticists speculate, is an increase in assortative mating. Superficially, assortative mating is the blond gentleman who prefers blondes; the hyperverbal intellectual who meets her soul mate in the therapist's waiting room. There are additional pressures and incentives for autistic people to find companionship - if they wish to do so - with someone who is also on the spectrum. Grandin writes, "Marriages work out best when two people with autism marry or when a person marries a handicapped or eccentric spouse.... They are attracted because their intellects work on a similar wavelength."But hold the phone. The same study indicates that mothers in "highly technical" fields were 2.5 more likely to have geek spawn...er.... a child on the spectrum.
Asperger’s Disorder – is it Autism? In her introduction, Francesca G. Happé, Ph.D., (London, UK) raised some of the key questions that have arisen regarding the diagnosis of Asperger’s Disorder, which was introduced into DSM-IV in 1994. These questions include: is there an ‘Asperger’ subgroup of autism with distinct cause, course, cognitive profile, and intervention needs, and if so, what is its relation to other ASDs?...Asperger’s disorder has...had an impact on family studies of autism with regard to what we recognize as “caseness.” Dr. Happe noted that the current criteria do not work: they do not allow for developmental change, the early language criteria do not demarcate groups with different prognoses, it is hard to apply the diagnosis for adult cases, and there is no clear conceptual basis for the diagnosis. Dr. Happe concluded that although there is a recognizable Asperger’s type and that some cases of classic autism grow into this picture, she wonders whether there may be a better classification schema. Sally Ozonoff, Ph.D., (Sacramento, CA), in her presentation, compared high functioning autism (HFA) with Asperger’s, and noted that there were few differences in their definitional DSM-IV criteria; both require two social symptoms and one repetitive/stereotyped symptom, both are in the average range intellectually and have current fluent language. The main criterion distinguishing the two disorders is the requirement in Asperger’s that onset of language occurs at the expected time, e.g., single words by age 2. Dr. Ozonoff noted that it is difficult to evaluate the literature since definitions vary across studies and that many children who are thought clinically to have Asperger’s actually meet criteria for autism (which supercedes a diagnosis of Asperger's). There is some evidence to suggest that Asperger's and HFA do not represent distinct disorders: they co-occur in the same families and do not “breed true” (i.e., family members of patients with Asperger's have HFA and family members of patients with HFA have Asperger's); children with autism who develop language have similar outcome to Asperger's; HFA and Asperger's are indistinguishable by school-age; and although studies find better language skills and/or verbal IQ in Asperger's, multiple studies have found no group differences in other neuropsychological domains.Basically, we're in the abyss. I mean, I used to think, oh that CAN'T be a possibility for Brad. Silly me, looking for bright lines. I'll never learn! I have since downgraded "CAN'T" to "maybe not", bordering on "possibly some day in the distant future."
