Thanks to all who sent the kind birthday regards. My birthday coincided with the last day of classes at my college and the morning was packed with review sessions prior to exams and a couple of phone calls about matters that needed to be figured out by today (meaning Wednesday, i.e., yesterday) and some missing files of a rather important nature. (Two found, one still missing.) At 11am a student came in to talk about her graduate school applications; she had a bag lined in red tissue paper (a little soggy from the rain) and gave it to me. Inside …read more

I’m on the train to Washington D.C., to attend a meeting of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which coordinates efforts concerning autism within the US Department of Health and Human Research. There’s a list of the federal and non-federal members of the IACC here; the committee has been overseeing the writing of the Strategic Plan for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Research. Over the past year, there have been numerous calls for input from “stakeholders”—from anyone concerned about autism—and other meetings of the IACC and of workgroups concerning various parts of the plan.
I went to an IACC meeting just about a …read more

Autism myths abound and Kev is collecting, and dissecting, them at this new site. One myth that especailly irks me is the notion that autistic kids are “in their own world” and “withdrawn into themselves” and, generally, “out of it.”
My son Charlie is thoroughly engaged in and attuned to the goings-on of the world all around him. He may not look like he is, and he often does no respond in the usual ways that people are accustomed, to indicate social awareness. Due to his limited language, people tend to assume, or too quickly assume, that he does not …read more

“Figuring out his signs, it’s like watching a third-base coach.”
Says Brian Rattner about his oldest son, Jarrett, who is 13 years old and does not talk or walk. An October 23rd New York Times article describes Jarrett’s bar mitzvah last Sunday, and how his parents came to focus on “who Jarrett was and what he could do”:
When he wanted a ball, he would pound his chest until he got it. “Sometimes, he wants to communicate so badly, you can hear him from the other room pounding his chest,” Mr. Rattner said. “There’s a lot of emotion there.”
He is good at …read more

Senior Matt Farag has a “zest for learning,” today’s Gatehouse News Service Reports. Diagnosed at 6 with autism, Matt
…..will browse the encyclopedia and history books in his St. Charles home, memorizing notable facts and dates on history, dinosaurs and insects. Matt also can name each of the presidents and vice presidents in order and their middle names.
My son Charlie doesn’t do this—-reading’s been a long-time challenge for him—-but he too has a deep-running “zest for learning.” The word “student” comes from the Latin studere, “to be eager, to have zeal”—-and no better example of true students than Matt and Charlie, …read more

Yesterday’s Pathophilia reviews a group of studies (two by Mark and David Geier) about testosterone levels in autistic children. Pathophilia finds that testoterone is not increased in autistic children.
The Cambridge-based Autism Research Centre is also researching hormones in autistic individuals. The Foetal testosterone Longitudinal Study seeks to find out whether elevated levels of foetal testosterone are associated with a later diagnosis of autism spectrum conditions. The Current hormones Project is looking at whether current hormone levels might also be atypical in autism and Asperger Syndrome. And another project is looking specifically at puberty.
Yes, as you may have guessed, I’ve got …read more

So on Wednesday morning it was chaos in our house. Only for about 15 minutes, but any minutes of Not Fun is Not a Great Way to Start the Day. Charlie had woken early and got up and smiled and wanted a shirt; he was pulling it on backwards (it’s an Oakland A’s t-shirt with numbers on both sides) and I gestured wordlessly to turn it around and his eyes clouded and he made a low noise. I stepped away and then heard thump cry and the chaos ensued.
But I don’t mean the chaos of a crowd of a …read more

As of this Wednesday, the fall semester is underway at my college and I’m explaining how to pronounce v as w in Latin to one class, and leading another in reciting and writing the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. I’m teaching early in the morning thanks to Charlie being in middle school, which starts much earlier than his elementary school. I’m a quite energetic teacher, a necessary feature (I think) if you’re going to instruct college students in “dead languages” with complicated grammatical systems. At some point, some student’s attention will seem to waver, as indicated by eyes focused …read more

My college students are performing Cabaret and tonight Charlie and I went to see it. For the past month, Charlie has been doing something he has never done before, putting his hands over his ears when the radio is on in the car and when he hears human voices that are too loud or high-pitched. So I was not sure if bringing Charlie to a musical was the best idea.
We sat down in the back row and Charlie said hello to the athletics director (at my prompting) and then “no” to shaking hands with the chair of the history …read more

Yes—what with the poll over at Larry King Live asking if you believe that vaccines cause or contribute to autism; and the CNN report tonight; and the fact that all I had to do while standing in line at the store with two bottles of melatonin, sushi and watermelon for Charlie, and my eco-friendly “carry your own bag” shopping bag was to turn around and behold! there was the headline “David Kirby on Autism and Vaccines” on the cover of Mothering magazine—-once again this blog, which is an autism blog, is in danger of becoming a vaccine blog, as you …read more