Has anyone been watching Jenny McCarthy and Holly Robinson Pete go around the syndicated television circuit and discuss their experiences with autism?
First off, I'm a pedi nurse, not a mother so the sticky for parents, I don't think I belong to that just yet...
But anyways, I was wondering what you guys thought about this? I personally have mixed feelings... on one hand, its great that attention is being brought to this condition since there hasn't been too much previously.
But, what I have issues with-- Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah stating that her child is pretty much cured by cutting dairy and gluten from the diet. Tonight she was on Larry King (maybe it was a rerun since it is Sunday night and all...) and was discussing it there too.
Maybe I missed it, but there were not any mention of the type of autism her son has, the severity, etc. She also just said that she "googled" autism and hundreds of pages came up discussing cures... but as we all know, anyone can make a site up with whatever they want to say without any kind of research or evidence.
Now, I am all for nontraditional means of healing, including changes in diet, but I have a feeling that because she is saying this on tv, in particular, Oprah, that there is going to be a lot of backlash against the medical community because of lack of "cure" for their children, even though autism is such an individualized condition.
JMHO to Soundofmusic: I believe that most high functioning autistic people were not recognized as such until very recently. Not so long ago, parents of a child like yours would have tried to punish those behaviors out of the child and loaded them up with laxatives and enemas.
A woman I worked with a few years ago (I worked in a grocery store in the pharmacy, which was next to the floral department where she was department manager) said that when she was a child, she had a teacher who would smack her across the face for not making eye contact. :angryfire Can you imagine doing that nowadays?
I have heard a lot of stories about adults of all ages seeing themselves in a diagnosed related child, and being evaluated and yes, they are on the spectrum. If I already said that on this thread, I apologize for repeating myself.
Rph, I know what you're saying, but I can't buy into the belief that we're just now diagnosing it better. Believe me, you WOULD HAVE NOTICED a child like mine, back then. Discpline does not end the behaviors . ..it only worsens them. He has or had, marked constipation, vitamin and immune defieciences, many tantrums, escaping behaviiors, and a severe speech and language delay. He's not just "weird" as many people think autistic people are.
I don't believe there are all that many high functioning autistic adults out there now. Where are they? Autism just doesn't go away . .we'd know it and they'd be everywhere if the rates were the same back then that they are now.
Rph, I know what you're saying, but I can't buy into the belief that we're just now diagnosing it better. Believe me, you WOULD HAVE NOTICED a child like mine, back then. Discpline does not end the behaviors . ..it only worsens them. He has or had, marked constipation, vitamin and immune defieciences, many tantrums, escaping behaviiors, and a severe speech and language delay. He's not just "weird" as many people think autistic people are.
I don't believe there are all that many high functioning autistic adults out there now. Where are they? Autism just doesn't go away . .we'd know it and they'd be everywhere if the rates were the same back then that they are now.
He would probably have been considered mentally retarded. JMHO. I would also not consider someone like your son to be high functioning before treatment. To me, "high functioning" is someone who can go to regular school WITHOUT aggressive intervention. THOSE are the people I grew up with, and the people I have known as an adult who could best have been described as "peculiar." One of my junior high friends has a son who was believed to have ADD until he was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome at age 13. THIS is what I mean by high functioning.
Edit: There's a woman I converse with a lot on another site whose daughter's unusual behaviors were written off as the effects of having a severely handicapped sibling, but at age 14 she too finally got an AS diagnosis.
Across the street from that junior high was a residential care facility for the "emotionally disturbed child." Many of them were rejects from the foster care system (reactive attachment disorder, maybe?) but I'll never forget one girl who did go to school with us who I'm sure was on the spectrum. She also was mildly mentally retarded, which certainly complicated things.
From what I have heard, the highest functioning people often improve markedly at adolescence, and there's a simple explanation: it's nature's way of enabling them to reproduce.
I personally know two people who have autistic family members. One is a son who is now over 60 years old (yes, she's pushing 90) and the other is a brother who would now be about 50. The 60-year-old has the "classic" autism where the child appears to be normal until age 2 1/2, almost to the day, and then over a period of just days, he regressed and has not responded to any therapy. He lives in a care facility. The 50-year-old has a normal IQ (or possibly higher) but his sister says he's like "Rain Man." He cannot organize his knowledge in any useful way, and the last I heard was living with their aged parents and working in a sheltered workshop.
I have a book titled "Jan, My Brain Damaged Daughter" which was published in 1963. When I got Internet access, I was delighted to learn that the author, her psychiatrist mother, was still alive well into her 90s and wrote to her. The author's niece replied, and said in her letter, "Until a few years ago, [the author] would not admit that Jan was autistic but the people who work with her generally agree that she is." Bowel problems, seizures, social difficulties, hyperlexia - it all fit together. Jan is in her 60s now and her mother has since died. They had an extremely supportive extended family, and her father, who died shortly before the book's publication was very involved with her care, even by today's "father standards."
Plus, it wasn't so many years ago that having a child who was "different" in any way was considered a disgrace, and families were stigmatized for this.
I don't believe there are all that many high functioning autistic adults out there now. Where are they? Autism just doesn't go away . .we'd know it and they'd be everywhere if the rates were the same back then that they are now.
A member of the housekeeping staff where I work was hit by a car after work on Monday, and died the following morning. She had worked there for over 40 years, and she was the type of person that if you didn't like her, there was something wrong with you.
A lot of us believed she was on the autistic spectrum because she never really looked at people and often didn't follow conversations. She had still managed to have stable employment, and had even married and had a son.
One of my pharmacy school professors, now retired, never looked at people either. When you spoke to him, he would look off in the distance, over your head, in another direction. To our knowledge, he never married and the fact that he lived with his mother caused a lot of snickers until I pointed out that she was probably quite elderly (he was in his 50s at the time and would now be around 70) and needed to be looked after.
I have also heard from other people who have worked in special education and handicapped services for many years that the number of people diagnosed with mental retardation has decreased at the same rate that the autism diagnoses have increased. Once again, we have to address the embarrassment parents felt not so many years ago at having a "different" child and the denial, etc. that resulted. Good grief, I grew up with a girl whose sister was partially deaf and blind from prenatal rubella exposure and there were families who wouldn't let their kids play with her because of this.
Specializes in Happily semi-retired; excited for the whole whammy.
I'm going to respond to a couple of posts with one message. rph, here in CA, our rate of MR (now called "intellectual disability) has not declined in proportion to the rise in autism cases. I do agree that many adults with autism were probably either dxed with MR or schizophrenia when they were young, or just considered weird.
As for the dx of high functioning autism. That term makes me crazy. It means nothing. Some people use it to mean a person with Asperger's and a very high IQ, even if that person has such anxiety and social issues that they barely function. IMHO, my son who has a borderline IQ but has strong (relatively speaking) social skills is much higher functioning. He has a much easier time getting by in the world. Then there are all the people who either use the term themselves or have been told by a doctor that their child is "high functioning" and you look at the kid and wonder what in God's name they would consider to be lower functioning. I know a woman whose 7 year old daughter is non-verbal and non-potty trained and she was told her daughter is high functioning! Huh? I understand that autism is a spectrum disorder, but I think the professionals oversimplify things when they explain that to a parent of a newly dxed kid. My son would fall very low on the spectrum on certain tasks and yet, like I said, on a daily functioning level, has a fairly easy time of it. As opposed to a kid I know who is a genius, but only weighs 90 lbs because he can't stand the texture of most foods, has very few friends because surprisingly few people like to talk about what day of the week their birthday fell on in 1970 and whose mother has bought every single National Geographic video she can find because they are all this kid watches and oh yeah, he doesn't "like" DVDs, so she also has bought spare VCRs.
Then there are all the people who either use the term themselves or have been told by a doctor that their child is "high functioning" and you look at the kid and wonder what in God's name they would consider to be lower functioning. I know a woman whose 7 year old daughter is non-verbal and non-potty trained and she was told her daughter is high functioning! Huh?
I wouldn't consider someone like that to be high functioning either.
Specializes in Happily semi-retired; excited for the whole whammy.
It also seems that certain people who should know better- pediatricians and such- use the term "PDD", as if autism were not itself a PDD. It is almost as if it's used to cushion the "blow" of an autism diagnosis.
By the time my son was dxed, I was just so frantic about what was going on, the last thing on my mind was avoiding some supposed stigma that made a PDD dx more attractive than the more accurate autism.
She had worked there for over 40 years, and she was the type of person that if you didn't like her, there was something wrong with you.
rph3664
1,714 Posts
JMHO to Soundofmusic: I believe that most high functioning autistic people were not recognized as such until very recently. Not so long ago, parents of a child like yours would have tried to punish those behaviors out of the child and loaded them up with laxatives and enemas.
A woman I worked with a few years ago (I worked in a grocery store in the pharmacy, which was next to the floral department where she was department manager) said that when she was a child, she had a teacher who would smack her across the face for not making eye contact. :angryfire Can you imagine doing that nowadays?
I have heard a lot of stories about adults of all ages seeing themselves in a diagnosed related child, and being evaluated and yes, they are on the spectrum. If I already said that on this thread, I apologize for repeating myself.