Having a non verbal 22 year old autistic nephew, a 18 year old autistic granddaughter and a 30 year old deaf/autistic son I disagree with you. Autism is on the rise , no doubt about it.
Autism is real. Autism has always existed. The diagnoses have changed.
It used to be underreported, it is now over reported.
I’m with you.I have a son who’s 24 years old who developed normally through junior high school then I observed that he seemed to slow down in his development but I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
He graduated from highschool with only minor problems but I observed he didn’t seem to want to mature mentally like a normal teen would.He was NOT interested in sports,cars or much of anything other than his computer.
He began his freashman year in college and it seemed as if the bottom fell out.He was having all sorts of problems with school.We had him checked out by his doctor but he said everything was ok physically and he couldn’t see the problem.
So we took him to see a psycologist who after a couple of years of testing determined he had Aspurghers Syndrome.A higher form of autism.
My son is a very bright kid,young adult and it pains me to see that he is not turning into a succesful adult with a career of his own.
I was told that since it took so long to determine that he has Asperghers Syndrome it will take that much longer to help him develope the sociol skills he’s going to need to live on his own.
The problem is that real autism is being dragged into “autism spectrum syndrome”. My cousin’s son was diagnosed with Asperger’s. I consider him normal if a bit anti-social. Profound autism is rare, unless we define it very broadly. The Autism epidemic is like the obesity epidemic- caused by changing definitions.
I have to wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with the lead these kids ingest from Chinese toys. They don’t get symptomatic until after toddler chewing phase. I wonder how the increases line up with imported toys, blankets, teethers, etc.