In 1944, an Austrian pediatrician, Hans Asperger, wrote about some characteristics he was seeing in some people, such as clumsiness, repetitive routines or rituals, different speech patterns (monotone, overly formal), inappropriate social behavior, and difficulties with non-verbal communication.
Over the years, not much notice was taken until the 1980s when a doctor in the United Kingdom, Lorna Wing, noticed children with similar characteristics and she named what she saw as Aspergers syndrome. Since then,  the disorder was studied more, and in 1994, Asperger syndrome was labeled as an autism spectrum disorder. With that, it was officially recognized in the “bible” of …read more

A long time ago (definitely “before Charlie,” which is “bC” to Jim and me) “someone” (she writes poetry) wrote this to me:
Poetry is life; it should change everything around it. Do only what changes you.
The lines were written at the end of a letter regarding a topic that was, at that point in time (I was about half as old as I am as I write this), of total everything significance to my life: What should I study in graduate school?
I was a Classics major in college and, finding the sustained study of Latin and ancient Greek intellectually intriguing, albeit …read more

Happy 2009!
We’re leaving tonight on the red-eye to go back from the Bay Area to New Jersey so, in the interest of being able to spend more time in the California sunshine with my guys and my parents, and since it is, indeed, 2009, a few more highlights from 2008.
August means one thing in my household—-two weeks at the beach, at the Jersey Shore. Not surprisingly, it was still impossible to avoid talk about vaccines. A new clinical trial of the GFCF diet was announced. While people have strong disagreements about the “right” of parents to vaccinate or not, …read more

If Charlie’d had a younger sibling, would we have decided to participate in studies like this one at the University of Washington, as noted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Autism researchers at the University of Washington are seeking parents who will allow them to do brain scans of their infants.
………….
The UW scientists are looking for 84 six-month-old infants from California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Nevada and Alaska who have an older sibling who has been diagnosed with autism. They also need 34 infants with typically developing older brothers or sisters.
Each child will be scanned three times over two years.
Certainly I would have …read more

So you know how we made sure to have a very lowkey Thanksgiving and also to keep things real simple and understated for Charlie’s birthday, a holiday involving days off from school and an event that has been known to cause Charlie some serious consternation? In 2008, both of these days passed well and quietly for us, largely because we strove to make them Super No Big Deal in the biggest way.
So you think I’d have applied the same tried and true formula to Christmas and New Year’s.
Granted, since we take a 3000 mile airplane trip from New Jersey …read more

Saw those 4 letters on the license plate of an older SUV while driving around Berkeley on Tuesday—–no kidding!

9-year-old Nicholas Benavides died Monday morning in a fire at his house in Corpus Christi, Texas, today’s Caller Times reports. Nicholas was autistic and, according to his grandmother, Maria Benavides, was “’shy, but also friendly and always smiling.’”
On Monday, Nicholas’ siblings, ages 11 and 4, were at their maternal grandparents’ home and Nicholas’ mother was at work. Benavides said her son, the boy’s father, told her he was doing laundry in a room at the rear of the house.
Fire Chief Richard Hooks said it hasn’t been determined if the boy was alone in the house. Fire officials were interviewing …read more

A constant theme in 2008 was the rebranding of autism, as Orac at Respectful Insolence referred to how the likes of David Kirby have been constantly saying that “autism isn’t autism”—-it’s “mercury poisoning,” “vaccine-aggravated mitochondrial disorder,” “mercury-induced neurological disorder,” etc., etc.
(April being Autism Awareness Month—-does your child know about this—let’s not get into what such “rebranding” would do to the month…….)
The notorious Judge Rotenburg Center in Canton, Massachusetts uses electroshock “treatment” on some its residents, some of whom are autistic. In April, one of its staff was charged with rape, assault, and battery of another staff member—-more about the very, …read more

Change.org has been running a competition to vote on the top Ideas for Change in America. The competition ends on December 31st—-yes, that’s Wednesday—and here are three ideas that I think can clearly make a difference in the lives of autistic individuals:
Fully Fund Medicaid Waivers for the Developmentally Disabled
Replace No Child Left Behind With a Strong Education Policy
Independence and Services for Disabilities and Autism
The top 10 ideas will be announced in January.
(For discussion about the idea about the “Autism Reform Act,” see this post on autism legislation.)

An expecting mother wrote this yesterday on BabyCenter:
…..more than anything else that could go wrong with this pregnancy, I am more worried about my child having autism than anything else in the world.
These causes, many reported by the popular media, and without valid evidence to back them up, are listed:
- Vaccines, especially with thermisol, the kid getting them all at once (flu shot, MMR)
- Smelling cleaning products while pregnant (Lysol, etc.)
- Advanced maternal age
- Having autism in your family
- Heat, hot baths, hot showers
- Worrying and stressing
- Rainy climates
The UC M.I.N.D. Institute’s MARBLES (rs of Autism Risk in Babies—Learning Early …read more