The New Autism Numbers
It was shocking enough a few months ago when I heard that 1 in 150 children had autism, but now it’s been raised to 1 in 100 children. That’s from 560,000 to 673,000 American children who now have autism. Doctors and researchers are wringing their hands about the increase. Their asking themselves how the disease is acquired. Is it genetic, enviromental, or what? Also why is this increase only seen in American children?
I would suggest to you that the numbers of children having autism now is not increasing. I would further suggest that what is actually happening is that the definition of the term autism is being stretched to now include children who we would have called naughty twenty years ago. Or better put, children who don’t behave in a conformist way that society says they should be behaving in now have some form of autism. It seems like just another way to dodge responsibility for ones own actions maybe even to include bad parenting.
Now you can take my words out of context and mix them up so that I’m saying kids with autism are just a bunch of brats with bad parents and that the parents are responsible for the autism. That is not what I said and it is not what I mean.
I am not a medical professional nor am I an expert on autism. I don’t even know anyone who is autistic or who has a child who is autistic. This is only my opinion and I could certainly be wrong. However I was taught that autism was when a child couldn’t communicate with the outside world except through some kind of art, hobby, or talent and that they could not be taught nor learn to function like a normal child without pain or some kind of trauma. It was like they were in another world, a world of their own. This does not describe 1 in 100 kids.
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