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To: lepton

My autistic nephew is so smart with certain things. But he repeats the same thing over and over...just like Rainman. About 5 years ago he ran into the mother of a girl in his class at the Circle K. EVERY SINGLE TIME he writes me a note, to this day (which is often on the computer), he says "we saw Kayla's Mom at the Circle K." It's so...hard to understand the way the mind works. I've always thought autism was the opposite of mental retardation. My brother was a certified genius his wife, extraordinarily bright. Her Father, literally, a rocket scientist. You find autism in very intelligent homes. I wonder if there's ever been a study to that effect. Years ago, my Father's friend, Josh Greenfield, had an autistic son. This was before it was such a common thing. Josh Greenfield was a writer, most known for his screenplay "HARRY AND TONTO" with Art Carney and OH, GOD Part II. He was married to a very well known Japanese Artist. They had an autistic son, Noah. He wrote one of the first books on the subject. It's called "A Child Named Noah." I met Noah many times when I was young. I think we were about the same age. He may have been a bit younger. If you were to tell me then I would have an autistic nephew it would have been unheard of. But in the last twenty five years something has happened. Something in our way of life. Something.


131 posted on 08/25/2005 2:56:17 PM PDT by Hildy
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To: Hildy
My autistic nephew is so smart with certain things. But he repeats the same thing over and over...just like Rainman. About 5 years ago he ran into the mother of a girl in his class at the Circle K. EVERY SINGLE TIME he writes me a note, to this day (which is often on the computer), he says "we saw Kayla's Mom at the Circle K." It's so...hard to understand the way the mind works.

I know a woman who when she was a child was considered severely mentally retarded, and yet was capable of presenting every person she came across with a different impression of her capabilities and keeping it all straight. Whenever we have gone through an airport, she nearly always finds someone that she has met in the past and correctly identifies them.

She was part of a special program that taught her how to read, yet after she moved to a different school district, she managed to convince the staff that not only could she not read or remember most of her letters, but that she could not dress herself. It took a slip-up on her part where she was showing a younger child who was there how to spell her name and his name on a chalkboard during a conference to prove to the new staff that she could read. The staff all thought her parents were nuts.

She was retarded, but not THAT retarded. It was all a game.

133 posted on 08/25/2005 3:22:43 PM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: Hildy
You find autism in very intelligent homes. I wonder if there's ever been a study to that effect.

Dr. Thomas Sowell wrote a book on it and a number of columns -- not a study exactly. But he tried to do a scientific analysis of the commonalities of late-talking children. His child did not talk until very late and has been diagnosed on the autistic spectrum.

I purchased the book for my daughter when we were first noticing Andy's problems, but the doctors were denying that there was a problem.

I think Sowell's book is called "The late talking child", or something like that. In any case, he wrote a column about his son and his frustrations of raising him as a single dad. The response to the column was so great that he formed a support group to share backgrounds and stories. He then put all of the resulting information into a matrix, or data base, and made some very interesting observations and wrote a book sharing some of the stories. His observations may, or may not, have any validity -- as he freely admits.

Sowell wrote that he did not have time to continue this research and do a proper study, but he offered his preliminary findings to any scientist who wanted to take this on as a project.

Among his findings was that something like 90% of autistics have an engineer, mathemetician, or musician, in their close family -- father, mother, grandfather, uncle, aunt. That one lept out at me and made me wonder why ALL of my grandchildren were not autistic, to say nothing of my own kids!

BTW, Sowell's son (who must be high functioning) eventually learned to talk and has graduated from college and was pursuing a career in computers at the time the book was written -- 10 years ago. As I remember, Sowell's son learned to play chess before he learned to talk.

You mention that "something has happened in the last 25 years". THree things, I think.

1)The definition of autism has widened.
2) Parents no longer hide these children from the public.
3) The number of vacinations given to babies in recent years has multiplied exponentially.
I do believe that to certain sensitive children, the vaccinations are an exacerbating problem. My compny health plan provided me with a handy chart yesterday on childhood vaccinations that are now required -- a baby is vaccinated for 15 different diseases by the time he is 15 months.

I noted that the MMR is now recommended at ONE YEAR! That is the vaccination that is suspect in my grandson's autism and he received it in its mercury-laced form at 15 months. He might have been fine, had his parents put it off until he was 2 or 3. His younger brother had those shots separated and administered much later, and he is just fine.

149 posted on 08/26/2005 7:13:49 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
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