Made me wonder, too. I’ve never heard of an entire family of 4 being autistic.
Sad story.
We are all autistic now.
It took five people to write this article....
Yes. In general, if one child is actually autistic, the odds another sibling will be are 1/4.
I have noticed a tendency to classify all low intelligence children as autistic to gain access to more funding (in the US, at least) as well as classify children without good social skills including nerds as “on the autism spectrum”. For example, a kid with Down’s Syndrome or microcephaly could be slapped with an autism label, too, though both of those conditions in and of themselves depress intelligence.
Given that all FOUR children were classified as autistic, I would say it is more likely mother and children had below average intelligence, poor social skills and/or another psychiatric issue.
The man may have snapped when told his daughter and children were assigned by society to a category from which they’d never escape, would always be dependent on others for care/supervision. And if the older kids were actually autistic, dealing with a tantruming 13 year old boy is difficult for any man and she had 3 younger kids about to hit adolescence ...
I think he saw it as a mercy killing once society gave them the diagnosis that let everyone write them off.