Kim Dull www.modernparentonline.com (Coming Soon!) I’m a mom to three kids. I have a daughter, who’s almost seven. (I was going to refer to her here as Princess BossyMcBossypants since she thinks she’s in charge of the household, but that seemed a little excessive. So we’ll go with Princess.) I have a son, who’s five and a half (heretofore referred to as Monkey Man). And I have another son, who’s almost four (let’s call him Bubs). Princess is what you’d call “neurotypical,” or “typically developing.” In other words, she’s a normal stubborn, bossy, temperamental, yet ultimately very sweet and caring little girl. Bubs has some slight developmental delays. He receives therapy for speech, fine motor, and social concerns. But we’ve been very lucky that he’s pretty much caught up with his peers thanks to early intervention and the services provided by our local school system. But this story is about…
Tag: diagnosis
Dr. Som The Pensive Pediatrician Editors’ Note: Some years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that childhood primary care physicians –family practice and pediatricians — screen for autism in well-child visits, as well as screening for other developmental delays. One autism screening tool is the M-CHAT, or Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, which is validated for children between 16 and 30 months of age. The following is Dr. Som’s plea to her fellow primary care physicians to use the M-CHAT regularly. Ode to the M-CHAT Parents with toddlers we know you can read. 23 questions is all that we need. Answer yes, answer no, is all that you do– Just five short minutes when your child is two. It need not be English. Try Hebrew, Chinese, Turkish, Polish, perhaps Japanese. What’s up, doc? You cannot? No, not today? No copier. No pens. Insurance won’t pay? But Adam’s autistic,…
Sharon Morris sharon-theawfultruth.blogspot.com I’m a new arrival to Planet ASD. I use this analogy deliberately as it does feel as though I have stepped through, or fallen into, a wormhole opening to another universe. I wonder where all these research papers, all these treatment models, all these parents and children, and their courageous stories have been. Where have they been hiding? How was I so blind to this ever-expanding ASD community apparently living right under my nose? Sure, I’d heard of autism. Though I hadn’t given it a lot of thought. And when it had crossed my mind in years past I considered the possibility of an autistic child with ignorant terror. Now I am a new, life member of the autism community. Prior to Harri’s ASD diagnosis two weeks before his second birthday my mummy mantra was ‘This too shall pass.’ This idea was a lifeline during his incredibly…
Emily Willingham daisymayfattypants.blogspot.com biologyfiles.fieldofscience.com Image by Countincr, from Wikimedia Commons Hannah Poling’s family entered the national spotlight when they revealed that Hannah’s autism-like symptoms may have been linked to a reaction to several childhood vaccines at once in combination with her mitochondrial dysfunction. Her case was not the first revelation of a possible mitochondrial disorder (MD)-autism spectrum disorder (ASD) link, but because of her ultimately successful vaccine injury suit, she became the avatar of the vaccines-cause-harm movement — which almost eclipsed the real scientific and therapeutic feature of her case: the mitochondria. About Those Mitochondria First, a little bit about mitochondria. A review paper, published in Molecular Psychiatry and open access, gives a fine and detailed overview, so my summary here is brief. The mitochondria do the heavy lifting for the cell’s energy needs. They take the chemical remains of what we eat and transfer that energy into molecules that…
Christina Goodney Bailey My son was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome when he was four. The first time someone suggested that Sam might have autism was just after his second birthday. Between those two milestones, we saw two pediatricians, a developmental pediatrician, and a speech pathologist, with inconclusive results. For two years, my husband and I rode a seesaw of emotions, playing “Does He or Doesn’t He Have Autism.” When Sam spontaneously shared his blueberries with a playmate, we breathed easier. When he spun a rattle repeatedly, we worried. When Sam imitated me sweeping, I called my husband triumphantly. When he had a meltdown on the playground after another child attempted to interact with him, I left quickly and did not mention the incident to anyone. We combed the Internet, reading countless checklists designed to alert parents to behaviors that might point to autism. We were confused, as our son seemed…
Great video. Clear information. Maybe the perfect video to send your family when you are trying to explain a new autism diagnosis.
Researchers from Columbia University have asked for our help in reaching out to parents on their project, which has such similar goals to The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. We hope that parents of children with autism who can participate, will. Thank you, -Shannon, Liz, Jen, & Emily, TPGA Editors Dear Parent, We are researchers at Columbia University’s Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy studying autism. We are currently collecting life stories from parents about their experiences in recognizing their child’s autism, seeking professional help and navigating the system of services. The goal of this project is to gain a better understanding of the road to diagnosis. Parents have different experiences and observations of their child’s development and they have different personal resources with which they access care and services. Parents also differ in the type and extent of their support networks and social relations. And finally parents…
Liane Kupferberg Carter http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liane-kupferberg-carter Though this essay references legislation and congressional matters specific to New York State, the entire autism community could benefit from improved insurance coverage. -Eds “Your child has autism.” It’s a devastating diagnosis for a parent to hear. But it’s a one-two punch when your insurance company then refuses to cover the critical, medically necessary therapies your child desperately needs. When our then-2-year-old son was diagnosed with a developmental disability 16 years ago, a team of medical experts prescribed a rigorous program of therapies. However, state-funded early intervention services were only able to offer us an hour and a half a week of speech therapy — for a child who wasn’t talking. We found private therapists to work with our child. But when we tried to file an insurance claim, the insurance company turned us down flat. “We don’t cover educational treatment,” they told us. We appealed.…
Susan Senator www.susansenator.com When Benj was a very little guy, he used to sit on my lap at the beach, holding on tight to some little palm-sized truck or being. He did not like to move from there. I was his base. He took a long time to get himself into the sand, and even longer to play in the waves the way he does now. It worried me, of course. All the other little kids were sitting on their fat, puffed-up diapers and digging, crying, yelling, laughing, pointing. Benj could do all of it; he just had to do it from my lap. I tried pushing him off, prying him loose, setting him down, showing him how to play, but generally, he preferred my cushiony self. Sweet Baby. But oh, God, was I worried. He wasn’t like Nat, but he wasn’t like Max. So what was he? He was…
Mir Kamin Woulda Coulda Shoulda (wouldashoulda.com) For the first time in a very long time, it felt like things were okay. Good, even. Things were going to be great, in fact, and once I got the kids settled in to our new town, new house, new life … things would only get better. So there I was in the office of the one and only psychiatrist in town our new health insurance would pay for, who would also see children younger than twelve. My son was only seven, but for the past year he’d done well on an anti-depressant to help control his anxiety. I’d had reservations about medicating him — of course I did — but it helped. It helped a lot, actually. All I needed from this doctor was a new prescription for the medication that we already knew was working fine. I’d brought his medical records and…