Wampum

Excellent questions, indeed! Thanks for the info about the show, I'll try to watch or record it.

-Desi

I'm feeling straw-manly today: why Dwight, it's better diagnosis. Asperger's was only added to the DSM in 1994. Blabla. I'm still not buying (though yes, thinking back, I do remember some pretty Aspie college classmates). I thought the UC Davis study pretty conclusively proved that autism (not just spectrum disorders, but DSM-IV, industrial-grade autism) is on the rise. I happen not to believe it's thimerosal, but something HAS to be going on environmentally. Has to be.

This is the documentary that's about Facilitated Communication and the "recovery" of some Ivy League student, yes? Not sure I'll watch. Of all the things to show. How about "Refrigerator Moms" instead? Oops, sorry, off the hobbyhorse I hop.

Yes, it must be better diagnosis. After all, you can't really expect people of 15 years ago to have noticed that kids like my Bobby were nine years old, could not speak and still soiled their pants every day. It is not as if that would sort of stand out.

Seriously though, I think Kirby's point is that even using the means of better diagnosis now available, why do those better methods not identify the same number of autistics for the older cohorts as the younger cohorts. If the incidence has not increased, all age cohorts should have about the same incidents. Where are those older autistics?

Sounds like a good show on CNN. Too bad that I don't get cable. (Oh, Eric, incidentally, your screen is back up on your display and no longer flickers and zaps out. Glad you got it fixed.)

I actually misrepresented the movie--I'll blame it on CNN's advertising for it (based on the "top IQ" line in the advertising, I assumed it was going to be one of those Raun Kaufman miracle stories). And Dwight, I see your point and raise you thirty. Studies have addressed that point, haven't they (i.e., that it's not misdx of autistic adults as, say, mentally retarded?)?

I think the most hate mail I ever got was when I posted something skeptical and mildly critical of Kaufman and Son-Rise.

So, umm, when I felt alone at Sam's diagnosis, not knowing another PoA, it was because all prior PoAs were just ... hiding their PoA status, experience, and secret handshakes??? A PoA or an RoA in Maine is about as rare as a European car at the Mall or a mallard on a pond, not an Edsel or a whooping crane.

One of the screaming shames of all this is how badly parents are handled at point of diagnois/entry into the system. There needs to be more work educating doctors and professionals about how to plug parents in--we keep reinventing the wheel, and it's such a waste of energy at such a vulnerable time. It's one of the reasons why I got so involved in PTA honcho-dom, b/c I so feel for the younger parents, but even by the time they get into the school system, it's often been years of relatively solitary pain and work. I have regrets re where we sent Miriam to preschool, but I'll always be glad they had the parent support groups. Made a big, big difference.