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Anyone have an autistic child?

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ChadTower:

Those "non scientifically valid" things could easily be solving a different problem and the people just don't know what.  When you have someone up in a news conference saying "I took X out of my kid's diet and now he's fine" no one ever asks them "so what is the science behind that result".  They just know they did something and now their kid has improved.  They rarely have any idea why.

CheffoJeffo:
In an interesting twist of timing and small worldisms ... I just received an email from one of Mrs. Cheffo's sisters and it turns out that the economist who has most recently proposed that precipitation is linked to Autism (I had previously jokingly dubbed him 'RainMan') is one of her professors (she's doing her Executive MBA at Cornell).

http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/news/WaldmanAutism.html

He has also previously tested occurences of Autism against cable TV subscription rates and reported that it was a causative factor in 18% of cases, so I am a little suspect of his methods and conclusions.

As others pointed out back in 2006, "He's found it -- umbrellas cause Autism!".

Having said all of that, I would be interested to see the underlying data and methodology because, to my mind, there are several issues that would need to be accounted for and none of the press coverage, either now or in 2006, seems to talk about it.

 :dunno

Ummon:
I've recently encountered someone who has an autistic son. As an infant, and on the doctor's insistence, he was subjected to an 'accelerated immunization schedule'. Apparently he didn't have any serious reactions, though she thinks the incident is what caused his autism. She skipped it on her daughter, who is normal.

On the diet thing, she's noticed that a gluten-free diet has helped in his overall development. Beyond that, though, she doesn't know much about diet and food quality in general, so I'm helping her with that, and I bet it will do even more for him.

On the 'questions' thing, I'd just tell 'em straight up. They may not understand all the words and meanings of things, but kids in general are receptive to intelligent answers.

CheffoJeffo:
This morning I received a PM from a kindly BYOACer (Thanks again -- and I agree that Kaylee rocks!) pointing me to an article entitled New Theory Of Autism Suggests Symptoms Or Disorder May Be Reversible.

It is interesting that just this week Mrs. Cheffo and I were discussing the anecdotal observations behind the core premise of the study -- that our Autistic kids appear normal when they are feverish. We first noticed this a year ago when my youngest was running a fever of 105 -- he was almost completely "typical" in his behaviour. This past week has seen the stomach flu tear through Casa Cheffo and we noticed the same thing with both Autistic kids when they were running fevers.

And now this paper has been released. There may be something to it.

I had intended to refrain from posting until I had reviewed the paper behind the article, but I am finding myself out of my depth and it will take me some time to bring myself up to speed. Some of the potential therapies suggested are things that were discussed at that last big conference that I went to.

shmokes:
I didn't reread this whole thread, so I might already have mentioned this, but has anyone here read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime?  It is a lovely book, and the protagonist is an autistic 15-year-old boy.  I have a very good friend who coincidentally had an autistic 14-year-old boy when I read the book.  I had her read it and she was floored at how well the author nailed it.  Obviously there is a wide range of symptoms based on the severity of any given case, but apparently the kid in the book was a virtual mirror-image of her son.  At any rate it's a wonderful book which I suggest to anybody, but especially to parents of an autistic child because I think it would make them smile about things that usually don't.

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