Today with Charlie and Tomorrow, Too
October 31, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Regarding yesterday’s Today show piece on vaccines, autism, and Dr. Paul Offit:
Kudos to Dr. Nancy Synderman, especially at the end of the piece when she made it very clear to Matt Lauer, there’s no controversy about vaccines and autism. Vaccines don’t cause autism. [ABC News has a story on Dr. Offit that emphasizes how "ugly" the discussion about vaccines and autism has become: It's entitled "Death Threats, Hate Mail: Autism Debate Turns Ugly: Vaccine Researchers, Autism Community React to Account of Death Threats and it seems to me that we really ought rather to keep discussion focused on autistic persons.]
When a cameraman filmed Charlie a couple of weeks ago for the Today show, Charlie rode his bike in circles back and fort, back and forth. Jim helped him navigate a tight turn and by the end of it, Charlie was smilng ear to ear and pedaling hard and fast. On the Today show, only Charlie’s pedaling legs and feet were shown so you will have to take my word for it: Charlie astride his bike is a joy to behold.
Charlie’s often most at ease when he’s in motion. Jim met Charlie at the bus on Thursday and they kept moving. They went to the bank and the cleaners. They went to a park and Charlie ran about and Jim passed him a basketball to catch on the bounce. They ran around some more in brisk fall weather before driving into Jersey City to meet me at work.
On a suggestion from Jim, Charlie’s teacher has been having Charlie go outside the classroom at fairly frequent intervals to walk and, indeed, wake up: Charlie’s classroom is smaller than it was last year and its windows look out onto a hallway, rather than outside. He’d been having trouble staying awake some days—one day he fell asleep just after 9am and nothing could wake him till 11.30am—we’ve done everything we can think of (plus) to help him get to sleep earlier so he can get up earlier to catch a 7.25am bus. Regular doses of getting up and out of the classroom into the fresh air have helped some.
Charlie has a couple inches on me now. He seems to have grown a bit taller just in the past week and to be, of late, in a continuous growth spurt. Hours of swimming and bike-riding have given him an athletic build. He’s the youngest in his class—some of the other students are nearing 13 years old—but the biggest and when he gets upset (it happens) what to do to help him calm down is not as obvious or, I’ll even say, as easy.
Nonetheless—one point I’ll diverge from Dr. Synderman on—I don’t feel “desperate” about needing “answers.” Often the best source for an answer to how to help Charlie is Charlie himself. It’s not about saying “he must learn to sit still in this chair for X period of time” or else, but that, well, maybe he learns best when having to sit in a chair is regularly intermixed with running around in the fresh air.
The vaccine-autism issue aggravates because it diverts attention from autistic children, from autistic individuals, and fixates on what (despite more and more evidence to the contrary) some believe is a cause of autism. It’s been a long, confusing, worrisome, tiring journey since Charlie was diagnosed with autism in 1999 and I’ve stumbled and often in trying to help Charlie. But what’s so very much for sure is that my life is better and just plain good with Charlie, and I’m grateful he and Jim and I’ll be walking on the road together for years and years to come.
I liked the way Charlie was represented in the video–dignity & anonymity. And I loved the shot of the three of you walking away. Charlie’s physique at the moment reminds me of my younger stepson at about the same age. I thought of him then as “inflating from the bottom up” — man-sized feet and ankles, calves growing fast to catch up, and the rest of his body long and lean, the structures on which the musculature would be laid down.
And I thought Dr. Snyderman’s exchange at the end of the clip was great.
This piece was wonderful and I hope you don’t mind but I blogged about it as well and embedded it into my entry. I don’t have as intelligent and insightful thoughts about it as you convey here but I did my best to share my feelings on the matter. THanks for sharing yours in the piece. It was really cool to put a face to a blog, and it you sure got the feel for what a great bike rider Charlie is!
Good for Dr. Snyderman!!
Kristina, great post as always.
I have a question for you: Does anyone know if there are children who were not vaccinated who have eventually rec’d an Autism dx? I would think that might be another way to show that there isn’t a vaccine-autism connection. If I remember correctly, I met a woman who chose not to vaccinate her 2nd son b/c her older son has Autism, but her 2nd son was eventually dx’d. Yet she was still convinced vaccines were the problem. I could never make sense of that.
Just wonder if you know if anyone out there has looked at that.
Thanks.
Dr. Chew:
Great piece from the Today show – it showed the emotion in a very emotional topic. However it was nice to see Dr. Snyderman make the points that she did against the opinion of a few including Matt Lauer. First his slip about casual and not causal, then his verbal ambush vs. physical ambush; thankfully Dr. Snyderman corrected him right away and then said her opinion on controversial caused a cheer from my desk when I saw this. When you popped on, it warmed my heart after following you and Charlie this past year. Let’s hope more pieces come to the surface like this one so that finger pointing and division can stop and a cause can be found.
Ok, I know I’m going to regret jumping into this, but… I did not get to see the show yesterday, but my husband did. He commented to me this morning about it, saying that Matt and Dr. Snyderman practically came to blows. From his perspective, and one that people might want to keep in mind – Matt was just doing what journalists do, wrapping up the segment, and saying that there was still a controversy – now obviously there IS, since people all over the web and everywhere else are still arguing about it. I agree with Dr. Snyderman, there is no SCIENTIFIC controversy, but the fact remains that there are people who don’t believe it, and therefore there IS a controversy.
Anyway, I have no idea what his personal feelings or beliefs are, but I think it behooves us to remember there are several possible explanations for anyone’s behavior, anytime.
goodfountain said “Does anyone know if there are children who were not vaccinated who have eventually rec’d an Autism dx?”
Yes, they exist, see:
http://notmercury.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-was-wrong.html
I was just reading the ABC news on death threats and thought I would see what you wrote. I like how you have that pic of the three of you from today segment.
I think since the GMA on call series starts on Monday that this was a way for them to get traffic to the site.
Maybe you can post that link to the leave comments for Nancy that was in a comment yesterday.
I am going to look for it and put it on my blog.