Top Posts from the Past Two Weeks

In the midst of talk of diagnosis and disability rights, of treatments and of what’s an appropriate education for an autistic student, we took a hands-free cold walk last weekend to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza, and passed a wall of snowflakes too.

• Age of Diagnosis and the Apparent Increase in Autism
  A study in the December Archives of Pediatrics and General Medicine examines autism prevalence trends over time in Denmark and states that “the apparent increase in autism in recent years is in part attributable to a decrease over time in the age at diagnosis.
• Recovery Distracts
  How the notion of “recovery from autism” colors—not for the better— parents’ decisions about “treatments” and “therapies” for autism, and also on the popular perception of what autism is.
• Dangerous Ideas About Autism
  From Icad: “Suggesting that parenting a child with a disability is so challenging or stressful that killing these children is somehow understandable or excusable adds to the probability that other parents will kill their children, because sick minds struggling with the impulse to kill can be assisted to go over the edge by social endorsements, which help them to rationalize murder.”
• Overglut of Gluten-free?
  If everyone’s going gluten-free, is a “special diet” really a treatment for autism?
• Human Clinical Trials Underway for Fragile X Drug
  Experimental drugs that are said to “correct” symptoms of Fragile X, Rett Syndrome, and tuberous sclerosis complex are now in early-stage human trials, the MIT Technology Review reports.
• The Daily Commute (Your Child’s)
  How far does your child—or do you—travel to school?
• Letter to OSU President Gordon Gee
  A letter by Melanie Yergeau, a 2nd-year Ph.D. student in English, in response to remarks by President Gee including the statement that “‘It [autism] should not exist.’”
• Older, and Trying to Be Wiser, and Better at Hemming Pants
  I turn 40 and find myself wearing hand-me-ups from a not-yet-adolescent boy
• The Private-Public Dance: What’s Appropriate?
  What’s an “appropriate” education for an autistic child?
• Who’s On the Board?
  No one with autism when it comes to Autism Speaks.
• Arrested: The Charge? Bad Behavior
  Children with autism and other disabilities, and more of them, are “actually getting arrested for having tantrums at school,” Minnesota’s WCCO reports.