In this camper population, I guess I don't see many misdiagnosed children. The autistic children I see at camp are the real deal. You can't talk them out of being autistic. It would like trying to talk a stone into being a frog.
That's why I consider Savage's remarks about the 99% so completely asinine. I'm sure there are kids with lesser disabilities being diagnosed with "autistic spectrum" for a variety of reasons. If that was his point, I wouldn't disagree.
But his contention is that 99% of autistic children can be snapped out of it by yelling at them. What an idiot.
Regarding the explosion in autistic diagnosis, I don't really know the exact reasons for it, but I can speculate. One reason is that they are correctly identifying it more now, rather than just calling autistic children retarded or crazy. And of course there are false diagnosis and fraud, but I don't think the number is enormous.
In the years I've worked at the camp I work at, the percentage of male campers with autism has gone from about 5% to about 85%. Again, these are not kids with mere attention deficits or behavior problems. These are kids who will rock in place for three hours and recite the dialog to "The Emperor's New Groove" complete with sound effects from the opening frame to the end. Or a kid who will cut intricate snowflake patterns in construction paper for six hours straight and be happy about it. That sort of behavior. All the time.
Another major reason that the percentages at my camp have moved so strongly towards autism is the fact that so many Downs Syndrome kids are aborted, they've almost disappeared from the camper population. They used to be the vast majority 25 years ago. But that's a whole nuther issue.
“It would like trying to talk a stone into being a frog.”
Is it the endless prescriptions creating the effect? Is the chicken before the egg or after?
How do you explain a 10 fold increase in a few mere years?
The autistic children I see at camp are the real deal. You can't talk them out of being autistic. It would like trying to talk a stone into being a frog.
I couldn't agree more with you in re "the real deal" autistic. There's no mistaking it.
And the borderline cases; that involves other issues, so many that "spectrum" has been morphed; and I understand why, on the charitable side; and why; on the bureacratic abuse side.
But his contention is that 99% of autistic children can be snapped out of it by yelling at them. What an idiot.
I understand your sentiment, in re genuinely austistic children. But since so many who are not autistic are now called "autistic"; again, the real are included with the not "real". That's the problem with the one word "invectives" created by liberals and their bureacracies. Everyone becomes as Pavlov's dog whether snarling for or against.
We see this in politics, day after day, no? Don Imus "n" word. Banned, shamed, punished. Jesse Jackson "n" word; no penalties because he's one included as a member of that particular "invective" - he's okay to use the word. Nutz!!!
One reason is that they are correctly identifying it more now, rather than just calling autistic children retarded or crazy. And of course there are false diagnosis and fraud, but I don't think the number is enormous.
Our experiences differ, Dead. I do think the number of "mis-labelled" is enormous. I'm from an area of the country which gets off on labelling people. San Francisco Bay Area.
I'm not there anymore and in place where there just isn't that much labelling, in the news. But in conversations with various pharmacy workers, I'm blown away by the amounts of medications for depression in children. It's way overdiagnosed, IMHO; and for similar myriad of reasons as were those in the SF Bay area mis-diagnosed.
The regional splits on the "bureacracy" and how meds and labels have been assigned has resonancy for me. I do understand it; and I'm disgusted. In the past two years alone, I've seen children moved from category "depressed" to "autism spectrum". I don't necessarily trust that this is due to "better accuracy" in diagnoses.
What I see is that this entire nation has been put at odds with each other based upon a larger schematic involving politics and money.
The anti-war left in the West was huge on ADD/ADH, and I wouldn't be suprised to learn this was due the fact that then, the military could not accept those "applicants" who'd been on retilin.
The military has revised those standards; but also tightened their standards in different ways. However, the west gets what it wants.
Whereas, in The South, where I am, has lots of "depressed people" because of all their "backwardness" and in being "racists" - I read the press; I read the MSM. I've read all their "4-score" anti-Southern articles about rednecks, and gun/religion clingings. It just isn't too hard to connect the dots in re regional differences in how each region is "presented" to we, the people.
The thing which hurt me from the get-go is in knowing these genuinely autistic children may be looked upon with very ugly attitudes, as tho their label is "false" and this is all due "over classification". On the flipside, there are so many non-autistic children being harmed by all forms of treatment that were and are entirely unecessary; but can create life-long problems for them which may have never come up in the first place.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, and since education wasn't being taught; please be advised that all these "special classes" were grown to amazingly huge proportions. It's how the unions figured employment, endless employment for adults who were or would like to become Union Members.
The more the real results of CA's indoctrination pub ed system became known, the more these special labels, and the monies for those programs grew.
Is there a connection. Causal? Correlation? Simultenaous big bang?
Parents have been terrified into accepting diagnoses from the SCHOOLS themselves, and demanding the parents comply, in the West. It shall come here to the South, but be phrased a bit more 'Southernly" in order to accomplish the same as was done in the West.