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I take him out into the community every day, just like I decided I would do, many years ago. He has (admittedly, sometimes annoying) twin 17-year-old sisters at home. I babysat my now 5-year-old grandson for two years, full-time.
We have a family dog & a cat. he has 14 cousins he sees on a regular basis. We have gone to church. He has gone bowling several times & swimming at a public pool, many times just this year. We go to the cheesy traveling carnivals every time they set up here & this last summer; we went every night for 7 days straight.
I took him to the Balloon Glow & Territory Days, Lakeside Amusement Park, a couple of movies at the theatres & various playgrounds 3-4 days out of the week. Last month he had to have surgery, under general anesthesia (he has paradoxical reactions) & several uncomfortable examinations.
He has not laid one finger, nor harmed one hair on anybody's head while I was "on the clock". Not one. I've stated that he's been bigger than me for two years now; I'm not a Ninja-Mom. I'm not even loud or bossy but if he is loud or disruptive; I remove him VERY quickly. I do not allow him to impose on others. He is expected to say Please, Thank You, Excuse Me & I'm sorry. If he knocks something over; he picks it up. If he runs; I chase.
I have never seen a dirty look or heard a snide comment while out in public with him, ever. Probably because he's being handled promptly & I don't expect accommodations from the public at large.
But the school can't get him to the lunchroom with a team of 5 or 6 grown-ups; without an incident? I'm prepared to go back to high school, btw. First thing Monday morning, since that's apparently the only way I can ensure that he gets to be a 9th grader & nobody gets hurt. I'm sure the school will be thrilled.
I can give him a life as a valuable member of a family; somebody's grandson, nephew, cousin, uncle, brother & MY child. He can lay down on one of those disk swings & swing & swing to his heart's content, giggling & flapping away under the stars & having a good old time.
He has something valuable to offer this world; if you want to know more; try communicating with dogs & babies ... Maybe they could tell you what it is; they sure are universally drawn to him.
If he even survives long after I'm dead & gone; don't worry ... THEN Medicaid will kick in $6,000/month to lock him up & finish the job that was started on his brain 12 years ago, by gorking him out on a bunch of crap SSRI's. I'm well aware that the Herd loves to demand but rarely gives back to those that took one for the team.
In other posts you state he has attacked YOU violently more than once and in this thread, that he hurt a school staff member.
The above post suggests he is NOT prone to violence, when in YOUR presence, however he has attacked YOU? You state that he has and has attacked and hurt school staff. Which post is accurate?
Were it not for the violence/attacking I wouldn't be saying he should be removed to a controlled residential setting; but I am truly baffled as to how you are OK with him being able to lash out/attack and that you think the school staff should handle that; unless the staff is comprised of MMA fighters just HOW do you propose the staff handle things when he tries to hurt them?
You state his size and that he is expected to grow to be 6'7". A guy that large with a condition that causes him to be violent to STAFF is to be handled how, in your opinion?
I'm sure he's in a self-contained class. I worked as an OT in public schools and there are a lot of kids who have behavioral problems. Sone are special ed, some aren't. Some are autistic, some have Down's. Most are fine most of the time but have problems when upset. Autism especially as it's a communication disorder so they often can't express what they are upset about. I highly doubt he is beating people up or burning down the school. There is no reason to have these kids removed from school, they just need the right classroom set-up (as in self-contained class with trained special ed teachers). To say (not you, the other poster) that he should be institutionalized is outlandish. They are there to learn how to cope in the world, they have speech therapists and counselors who help them learn how to communicate so that they don't resort to acting out. They have OTs to help with sensory issues. Public schools do all this every single day, around the country. There are kids who are lower functioning and have more extreme behavior issues that may be better transferred to county special services schools, but they still belong in the public school system.
For the poster who thinks these kids should be institutionalized, well, there are no "institutions" for children in this country, thank God. There ARE private residential special ed school settings where the kids live there while they learn. If you want all special ed kids with behavior problems to go to them, prepare for huge tax increases, as the home school district is required to pay for it, and many cost over $100,000 a year.
My master's is in medical genetics and I worked both in research and as a genetics counselor for 27 years so I am not coming form a layperson's viewpoint, i.e. lacking in knowledge of neurological conditions that affect behavior and cognition; are you saying you don't realize that degree of disability in some cases cannot be mitigated by OT/PT/behavior mod/therapies?
Your statement doesn't allow for the very sad reality that some neuro conditions can and do cause violent and other behaviors that render it impossible for that individual to be present in society, safely.
Every single website I looked at mentions drug prescriptions that are often used in autism cases for aggression, hyperactivity and other commonly associated symptoms. Seems like a lot of them get really angry easily. I guess that is why it is often said that school shooters has autism. Did they really have autism or were they just different than an average kid and their parents had them seeing therapists and taking drugs that really screwed them up? I don't know, I guess I really don't care. What I do know is I wouldn't have ever put a kid of mine through all of that unless he was showing true signs of a problem like rocking and mumbling about buying underwear at Kmart.
I will just be honest at this point, I really think a lot of these kids are just different and maybe a little weird and the parents want some sort of diagnosis or treatment in an attempt to make them more normal.
Now see; I notice that you have taken on some hostility from others here but I'm going to tell you that I actually appreciate your observations because you are looking at things from a step or two back. The big picture.
The person who puts the words: "Autism. Drugs. Aggression. Anger." ... into the same paragraph? Is connecting the dots quicker than most of us have.
It's a literal travesty that we can't have this conversation with everybody on the same page, at least with the scientific evidence. Here is a page that deserves to be in Chapter 1 (or actually; should have its own chapter):
"The Same Neuroinflammatory Markers Present In The Brains of People with Autism; Are Found In The Brains of People With Schizophrenia ... And Alzheimer's."
You'll notice there have been proposals regarding BPD, Parkinson's, etc ... Nobody should feel safe from the "whatever-it-is-that-autism-is", just because their kid doesn't have a speech delay & plays with friends on the playground.
What if Autism isn't just Autism? That would throw off all the epidemiological studies ... wouldn't it?
Then all the "evidence" would only evidence a colossal mistake. FFS; people should be getting mad ... Down's Syndrome was "solved" in 1959; with the discovery of an extra chromosome, before we even put a man on the moon ...
As a scientist the two things the peeve me the most are mistaking correlation for causation, and anecdotal evidence. There are some hilarious articles with graphs showing very tight correlations between things that are clearly unrelated. There is one, not shown on this page, that shows a tight correlation between the sales of organic foods and the incidence of autism. But there are lots of other gems here:Spurious Correlations
Okay.
That’s cute & all but as a parent I’d prefer that scientists go back to science & utilize what apparently is their superior intellect for establishing the missing component in the:
Surely I don’t have to point out that for the majority of human history; humans DID eat ALL organic food & while there may have been deaf, blind, “mute” or intellectually disabled children; there were no children who were born & developed typically, only to withdraw from all interactions, lose the ability to communicate & regress in all developmental milestones, as their brain literally expanded in size by 5-10% ... by age 4.
Autism. We didn’t have that.
We had disease, including viruses. We did not have Autistic brains that show viral-responding, cytokine disabled microglia cells that impede the synaptic pruning, therefore leading to the synaptic overgrowth found in the neurodevelopment of a child’s brain & the neurodegeneration of Alzheimer’s in the adult brain.
Follow?
I find it depressing that every single poster on this thread who has offered thoughtful proposals as to what that component may be; has had their post deconstructed or otherwise challenged, while parents like me wait in the wings & the scientists are off entertaining themselves with graphs correlating cheese consumption with the economy.
That’s cute & all but as a parent I’d prefer that scientists go back to science & utilize what apparently is their superior intellect for establishing the missing component in the:
Surely I don’t have to point out that for the majority of human history; humans DID eat ALL organic food & while there may have been deaf, blind, “mute” or intellectually disabled children; there were no children who were born & developed typically, only to withdraw from all interactions, lose the ability to communicate & regress in all developmental milestones, as their brain literally expanded in size by 5-10% ... by age 4.
Autism. We didn’t have that.
We had disease, including viruses. We did not have Autistic brains that show viral-responding, cytokine disabled microglia cells that impede the synaptic pruning, therefore leading to the synaptic overgrowth found in the neurodevelopment of a child’s brain & the neurodegeneration of Alzheimer’s in the adult brain.
Follow?
I find it depressing that every single poster on this thread who has offered thoughtful proposals as to what that component may be; has had their post deconstructed or otherwise challenged, while parents like me wait in the wings & the scientists are off entertaining themselves with graphs correlating cheese consumption with the economy.
No one knows what the "?" is in your equation. The "?" could be a combination of genes, not necessarily something environmental.
Autism. We didn’t have that.
Yes, we did. Children with it were called "mentally retarded." The label was just not invented yet.
We did not have Autistic brains that show viral-responding, cytokine disabled microglia cells that impede the synaptic pruning, therefore leading to the synaptic overgrowth found in the neurodevelopment of a child’s brain & the neurodegeneration of Alzheimer’s in the adult brain.
Yes, we did. The tools were just not available to identify the features of the brain in the two conditions. In addition, due to a lower life expectancy, many people did not live long enough to develop Alzheimer's disease.
"Geneticists believe that autism has a long evolutionary history in humans, likely appearing before the stone age. Today, fields such as engineering, mathematics, law, and other academia attract a high rate of people with autism, most notably Asperger’s syndrome. Coping with autism even in the modern world is difficult at best. But, the team argues that the traits which push modern individuals towards these fields provided a powerful advantage for the early social groups of a hunter-gatherer society."
In some societies, autistic children were simply killed:
Even if behavior is caused by a diagnosis, the district is not obligated to keep him there (though it is very rare that schools try to have any kids removed, usually they go through hoops to keep them in place). But there are, rarely, kids that get transferred to county Special Services schools or even live-in schools. Most schools do not want to send kids out of district because your home school district has to pay for it, even if it's a residential school that costs $100,000 a year.
Yeah, my school district with 61.5% of students qualifying for free/reduced lunch will likely NOT be coughing up the big bucks. I anticipate that if this continues, the recommendation will be for an online program with in-home tutoring.
I've hosted in-home services from the district before, during the early-intervention phase & that part is not the problem. The problem is that he is so rigid & inflexible that he will turn it into a big game. There is only one personality type that he has ever worked well for before & that would be an older female who is cheerful, very confident & has a dominating personality.
Younger females he turns into a showoff for. Males, he sees as a challenge; especially for in-home appointments (they are on his turf & he will assert himself) but send an older woman with "swagger" & he will knuckle down.
I suppose I should be concerned that the entire focus of his IEP is supposed to change this year towards transition (he's 14) but I'm not, really. I mean, honestly. What's the use (sorry, just having a hard week)?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ocnjgirl
Is your child in a self-contained class with a teacher experienced in autism? I saw the most behavior issues frankly in special ed students who were in regular ed classes and were overwhelmed in them.
Yes, he's considered "severe needs" & stays in the same room with the same students all day. ALL incidents this year have occurred during transitions when he is in a crowd of general-ed students (to & from the bus, lunchroom, etc ...).
Last year all issues occurred during his "electives" (one or two aides would take 3 or 4 students at a time to these classes & supervise), such as PE, Art, Choir, etc ...
The PE class was huge & of course in an echoey gym but the worst incident happened on a day they were doing the fitness test on the track.
He is not exactly one of those kids with an "invisible disability"; if you watch him for about one minute, it's easy to understand that he is significantly impaired; he toe-walks, lunges, looks at the ground & flaps almost 100% of the time, all the while making loud & unusual sounding vocalizations or giggling/laughing.
He had a melt-down after he finished his lap on the track & plowed through a crowd of students & teachers like a linebacker on a football field. Luckily, nobody was hurt but he was suspended for two days.
They said they had "no clue" what triggered it. The most I got out of him at home was;
"They made me a joke. To be a loser. Luke is a loser."
After asking the school, I found out Luke had been brought on the field a little later than the other students & not that he would have processed it anyway but he missed the instructions that this was not a race; this was to assess how you had improved or not since last year's test & blahblahblah ...
But they lined them up on the track & blew a whistle & then everyone had to stand & watch him; the only kid left on the track; limp/hop/flap his way around to the finish line. He thought it was a race & he thought he was a loser.
It doesn't excuse his behavior but it didn't happen "for no reason", either.
So, the new school is now trying something new as of last week: Luke will be spending 4th period across the hall; with an all-male class & a teacher who looks more like a shop teacher than academics; in a special class for the boys who have the most violent behavior of all the students at this inner-city high school.
I'm not actually as opposed to it as one might expect. During conferences on Thursday, the teacher told me that he prepared the class for the new & unusual student & told them why they would be joined by one of "those" kids. He said: "My kids are changing! This is unbelievable!" Apparently, they have taken Luke, who they see as being as marginalized as they are, under their wing & have started modeling more "appropriate" behavior on his behalf ... so ... okay. I don't know; it's one day at a time, as usual, & too early to tell if it will be impactful for Luke.
That’s cute & all but as a parent I’d prefer that scientists go back to science & utilize what apparently is their superior intellect for establishing the missing component in the:
Surely I don’t have to point out that for the majority of human history; humans DID eat ALL organic food & while there may have been deaf, blind, “mute” or intellectually disabled children; there were no children who were born & developed typically, only to withdraw from all interactions, lose the ability to communicate & regress in all developmental milestones, as their brain literally expanded in size by 5-10% ... by age 4.
Autism. We didn’t have that.
We had disease, including viruses. We did not have Autistic brains that show viral-responding, cytokine disabled microglia cells that impede the synaptic pruning, therefore leading to the synaptic overgrowth found in the neurodevelopment of a child’s brain & the neurodegeneration of Alzheimer’s in the adult brain.
Follow?
I find it depressing that every single poster on this thread who has offered thoughtful proposals as to what that component may be; has had their post deconstructed or otherwise challenged, while parents like me wait in the wings & the scientists are off entertaining themselves with graphs correlating cheese consumption with the economy.
You might want to consider it takes literally only minutes to create the graphs of entirely causally-unrelated correlations to expose the nonsense which people are still posting on here, including yourself apparently, which actually undermines the search for the complete understanding of the real etiology. Churning out the alt-med worn prime suspects list is not "thought provoking" or of any help. As is the gibberish idea that there wasn't any Autism before someone came up with a name for the state.
That's right, the scientists who work on autism are just fooling around while you nobly suffer. Please, get over yourself.
No one knows what the "?" is in your equation. The "?" could be a combination of genes, not necessarily something environmental.
The question mark = environmental. As inconvenient as that may be.
"The" gene for Rett syndrome was identified in 1999. "The" gene for Fragile X was identified in 1991. "The" gene for CF was identified in 1989. ASD variants are predicted to be discovered into the thousands. One person can have multiple combos & they won't be the same combos as the next person & some of those people will be autistic & some won't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
Yes, we did. Children with it were called "mentally retarded." The label was just not invented yet
No, we didn't & only someone who has not spent much time around Intellectually Disabled children nor Autistic children would believe that. The differences are profound, even with Autistic children who have a low IQ.
Quote:
Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
In addition, due to a lower life expectancy, many people did not live long enough to develop Alzheimer's disease
We don't have the stats to prove that & plenty of people lived very long lives. They may have gone half-deaf, half-blind & addled/forgetful... but if they could remember what dress they wore on Christmas Eve 50 years ago; they knew if their husband had died within the last year or not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
On the ancient history of autism:
Now, I've heard it all. I guess that makes me ancient. You do realize there is a difference between the autistic phenotype & autism? The phenotype & the genes that contribute to it, have been with us since the dawn of time. Autism has not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by suzy_q2010
Could you provide the evidence that viruses have anything to do with autism or Alzheimer's disease?
Anytime brain Microglia cells are activated; it's due to an immune response. Two very good overviews:
1. May 19, 2016, SnapShot: Microglia in Disease"The development and maintenance of the central nervous system is dependent upon regulated, homeostatic actions of microglia, which sculpt and refine neuronal circuitry. By contrast, dysregulation of microglia contributes to the pathology of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorders; neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease; and schizophrenia and chronic neuropathic pain.https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(16)30587-6.pdf
2. Wednesday, November 29, 2017, Microglia: The Brain’s First RespondersMicroglia: The Brain
And while there have been links established with Influenza, CMV, Measles & Rubella, here are two studies implicating the same virus for both Alzheimers & Autism:
1. June 26, 2018, NIH-Funded Study Shows Viruses May Play Role in Alzheimer's: "Analysis of large datasets from post-mortem brain samples of people with and without Alzheimer’s disease has revealed new evidence that viral species, particularly herpesviruses, may have a role in Alzheimer’s disease biology." https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news...eimers-disease
2. 2017, Maternal Immunoreactivity to Herpes Simplex Virus 2 and Risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Male Offspring: Evidence from epidemiological studies and work in animal models of neurodevelopmental disorders suggest that both genetic and environmental factors may be implicated. The latter include gestational infection and immune activation. In our cohort, high levels of antibodies to herpes simplexvirus 2 at midpregnancy were associated with an elevated risk of autism spectrum disorder in male offspring.
We speculate that ASD risk associated with high levels of antibodies to HSV-2 is not specific to HSV-2 but instead reflects the impact of immune activation and inflammation on a vulnerable developing nervous system. https://msphere.asm.org/content/2/1/e00016-17
Yeah, my school district with 61.5% of students qualifying for free/reduced lunch will likely NOT be coughing up the big bucks. I anticipate that if this continues, the recommendation will be for an online program with in-home tutoring.
I've hosted in-home services from the district before, during the early-intervention phase & that part is not the problem. The problem is that he is so rigid & inflexible that he will turn it into a big game. There is only one personality type that he has ever worked well for before & that would be an older female who is cheerful, very confident & has a dominating personality.
Younger females he turns into a showoff for. Males, he sees as a challenge; especially for in-home appointments (they are on his turf & he will assert himself) but send an older woman with "swagger" & he will knuckle down.
I suppose I should be concerned that the entire focus of his IEP is supposed to change this year towards transition (he's 14) but I'm not, really. I mean, honestly. What's the use (sorry, just having a hard week)?
Yes, he's considered "severe needs" & stays in the same room with the same students all day. ALL incidents this year have occurred during transitions when he is in a crowd of general-ed students (to & from the bus, lunchroom, etc ...).
Last year all issues occurred during his "electives" (one or two aides would take 3 or 4 students at a time to these classes & supervise), such as PE, Art, Choir, etc ...
The PE class was huge & of course in an echoey gym but the worst incident happened on a day they were doing the fitness test on the track.
He is not exactly one of those kids with an "invisible disability"; if you watch him for about one minute, it's easy to understand that he is significantly impaired; he toe-walks, lunges, looks at the ground & flaps almost 100% of the time, all the while making loud & unusual sounding vocalizations or giggling/laughing.
He had a melt-down after he finished his lap on the track & plowed through a crowd of students & teachers like a linebacker on a football field. Luckily, nobody was hurt but he was suspended for two days.
They said they had "no clue" what triggered it. The most I got out of him at home was;
"They made me a joke. To be a loser. Luke is a loser."
After asking the school, I found out Luke had been brought on the field a little later than the other students & not that he would have processed it anyway but he missed the instructions that this was not a race; this was to assess how you had improved or not since last year's test & blahblahblah ...
But they lined them up on the track & blew a whistle & then everyone had to stand & watch him; the only kid left on the track; limp/hop/flap his way around to the finish line. He thought it was a race & he thought he was a loser.
It doesn't excuse his behavior but it didn't happen "for no reason", either.
So, the new school is now trying something new as of last week: Luke will be spending 4th period across the hall; with an all-male class & a teacher who looks more like a shop teacher than academics; in a special class for the boys who have the most violent behavior of all the students at this inner-city high school.
I'm not actually as opposed to it as one might expect. During conferences on Thursday, the teacher told me that he prepared the class for the new & unusual student & told them why they would be joined by one of "those" kids. He said: "My kids are changing! This is unbelievable!" Apparently, they have taken Luke, who they see as being as marginalized as they are, under their wing & have started modeling more "appropriate" behavior on his behalf ... so ... okay. I don't know; it's one day at a time, as usual, & too early to tell if it will be impactful for Luke.
My heart broke ready my this.
Thank God he has you to love him and be there for him.
You might want to consider it takes literally only minutes to create the graphs of entirely causally-unrelated correlations to expose the nonsense which people are still posting on here, including yourself apparently, which actually undermines the search for the complete understanding of the real etiology. Churning out the alt-med worn prime suspects list is not "thought provoking" or of any help. As is the gibberish idea that there wasn't any Autism before someone came up with a name for the state.
That's right, the scientists who work on autism are just fooling around while you nobly suffer. Please, get over yourself.
Pardon?
"People" here are not "posting nonsense" & the demi-gods of science are not waiting with bated breath to hear what we have to say before they rush off to endanger their funding by actually making any headway.
Can you explain what or who the: "alt-med worn prime suspects list" is or are? Microglial dysregulation of synaptic pruning as the basis for neurodevelopmental & neurodegenerative disorders is about as mainstream as you can find.
LOL on the "noble suffering".
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