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Before 1990, 1 child out of 2,500 was said to be autistic. This year, it is said to be 1 out of 88.

My daughter worked in a social service agency whose main mission was to work with autistic kids as a therapeutic support specialist.

She told me that about 1 in 25 of her clients was genuinely autistic. The other 24 basically just had poor parenting and/or home environment.

Every one of these homes (the 24/25th) had televisions going at full blast, often multiple sets. The kids had all the latest in video games, X-boxes and the like. But the parents had no time to help them with their homework, get outside tutoring or even turn off the televisions or video games long enough to actually talk to the kids.

It didn't matter if the family was black or white.

A small number of them would actually take her advice and start spending some time with the kids reading books, playing a board game, tossing baseballs in a local park or anything which didn't involve electronics and funky techno sounds. Every one of these kids improved. As a side benefit, so did their non-autistic siblings and the parents.

But the majority of them just tolerated her visits as a condition to keep their government checks coming.

Damn, I just multiplied 88 x 25 and came up with 2,200. Why is that so close to the 1 in 2500 diagnosed in 1990?

Thanks for relating that. It's really sad and those 24 that aren't autistic are being penalized during the start of their lives, hopefully the majority of them can overcome it later in life.

It is good to see there are some in social services like your daughter that are genuinely trying to help and at least getting some results.