Mike is 12 and is entering puberty, and he is noticing the changes in his body. We too have noticed how he is starting to sprout pubic hair and has begun to notice girls. My wife laughed hysterically when, upon discovering said pubic hair, he exclaimed, “I’m turning into a sasquatch!!” In the past six months we have noticed that he has asked more than one ‘girl’ to kiss him, including his married after-school teacher among them. So yes, we are kind of freaking out about puberty.

Perhaps we were unglued because his two older brothers were (comparatively) less demonstrative in noticing the fairer sex upon entering puberty. Or maybe because autism did not give Mike a ‘filter’ that neurotypical children have when expressing themselves; he just says what’s on his mind. As parents of an autistic child, any verbal expression (appropriate or not) is like gold; we just want to keep hearing it. So we have begun weaving social stories about girls and kissing and appropriate behavior. Personally, I hope this works for at least a little while; I don’t think I’m ready to give Mike ‘The Talk’.

Puberty, in and of itself, may have unintended effects on his developing brain and cognitive ability. Research has shown that there is an association between fetal testosterone and autistic traits. To many in the research community, it is not simply a coincidence that a diagnosis of autism is made four times more often in boys than in girls. To this end, I worry about what effect the influx of testosterone during puberty will have on Mike. Could it ‘worsen’ his autistic traits? Could it blunt his cognitive development? Could it make him more aggressive?

These are certainly possibilities that tend to keep us up at night, but are comforted in part by knowing that Mike is learning to be empathetic, and has a degree of self-awareness. Just like noticing the physical changes in his body, he knows when he becomes angry with others, and is apologetic and often embarrassed by it. He readily takes note of babies and younger children who are crying and wants to “make them happy again.” He has initiated greeting our neighbors, and has asked to play with some of the neighborhood kids.

Big change.

Not all of change is bad per se; his verbal and comprehension skills have markedly improved in school and his brief chats with us have slowly progressed to often conversational proportions. His teacher confided that she is thinking of submitting him for consideration for a self-contained class in a General Ed school (otherwise known as a satellite program). Mike has shown he has the capacity to do more academic school work, as opposed to being vocationally-inclined only. With this thrilling possibility brings change, and change always brings the possibility of failure and regression. Mike has thrived and become transformed at his current (out of district) school for the past three years after languishing in-district as the Special Ed department struggled to develop its resources and plans. The thought of returning him to a similar setting is tempering our enthusiasm but reinforces our feeling as parents that our son has more possibilities open to him now. I have quietly begun to think that Mike is inching toward the higher-functioning end of the autism spectrum.

His desire to someday become a paleontologist/chef/zoo keeper/book writer is not so far-fetched after all. Big change indeed.

It seems Mike is poised and ready for bigger and better things, despite all the pitfalls inherent with puberty. My little boy is growing up. I hope his mom and I are ready.

As if we didn’t have anything else to worry about with a child with Autism, having a child who literally towers over other children in a public venue is akin to putting a sign on his chest that screams “Look at me! I am different!” As much as parents with Autistic children will attest that they have developed thick skins, we yearn for times when our children blend in, if only for a scant minute or two. We are in fact okay with, and often celebrate our children’s unique traits and abilities, but are achingly aware of the public stigma of Autism.

Mike, as anyone who has ever met him will attest, knows everything there is to know about dinosaurs in general, and T-Rexes in particular. His room could be converted to a Jurassic Park gift shop if we ever needed a second income. His dinosaur-related DVD collection is better than most libraries. He knows how to find dinosaur toys, books, pictures and memorabilia on eBay, Amazon, Google, and lesser known websites. He has re-drawn the pages of a pirate book (“Captain Flinn and The Pirate Dinosaurs”) and replaced the human characters with his dinosaur toy friends (they each have a name, of course) with elaborate detail.

You get the idea.

So we progress through the show, which ends with a volunteer from the audience being asked to the center of the stage. None of the ‘little kids’ want to come up; some take a step forward, but quickly run back to their moms and dads. There are three; perhaps four kids in Mike’s age group in the audience that still hesitate at what might be in store up on stage. Mike has his hand raised patiently, waiting and hoping to be picked. His eyes never waver from the emcee. There is no fear, nor trepidation; no anxiety which often destroys the public outings of many families affected by Autism. For that brief instant, he stood out in ways those other children could only aspire to: he was without fear, and for that, he blended right in with them as they screamed with glee.

As much as dinosaurs (and to a lesser extent, crocodiles and other toothy animals) are a major focus for Mike, he is progressing; becoming more conversational, empathetic, and academic. For this we thank the tireless work of his teachers, and his brothers, and everyone who has connected with him. This outing also taught my wife and me that Mike will continue to teach us things about ourselves, and we can’t wait for more of those lessons.

The documentary that you are about to see was not filmed in the 1940′s although you will think it was. This film, out of France, was released in September, 2011 by Sophie Robert.

In just 52 minutes, you will see the culmination of 4 years of investigations among psychiatrists and psychoanalysis practitioners in France. Robert met over 40 professionals in putting this documentary together and yet, now that it is complete, 3 of those professionals are suing Robert in an effort to have the movie banned by the court.

I don’t want to give it all away but you will see Autism described as madness, a result of incest (or incestuous needs), a mother’s failing, a father’s failing and so much more. You will see a family that lived with and against this system.

This is a french film which means that English subtitles had to be added and they can be difficult to read at times. But it is still very much worth it to watch this film.

Awareness is more than just making the world understand Autism… it also means putting the past behind us and making things right. And watching this, while it may be painful or frustrating, it is necessary.

THE WALL, OR PSYCHOANALYSIS PUT TO THE TEST FOR… by runmagali
(If it does not load, hit reload/refresh or click the link above to view)

Now that you have seen the film, please check out http://www.supportthewall.org/ where every effort is being made to stop the abuse of autistics in France.

Starting to get international attention, they are planning on holding a press conference on January 26th in New York City to launch an international petition against the abuse of autistics in France.

Coincidentally, that is also the date that Sophie Robert will receive her court decision… will the movie be banned or not?

Share this movie. The more people that know the truth, the sooner this “psychoanalysis” can be stopped.

Have you thought about it?

I have.

These are just some of the questions I asked myself:

• Would I see the sounds I hear?
• Would it be beautiful? Would it be painful?

• Would I feel the ridges of my finger prints when I rub my hands together?
• Would I feel anything at all?

• Would people expect me to have special skills?
• Would people expect me to have no skills at all?

• Would I speak the same language as everyone yet still not understand anyone?
• Would I be unable to speak any language but understand everyone perfectly well?

• Would I require constant control over myself and my environment?
• Would I lose control easily?

• Would I really need hugs?
• Would I really not want to be hugged?

• Would I notice the flicker of a fluorescent light?
• Would I not notice the dangers all around me?

• Will I be loved for who I am?
• Will I be hated for who I’m not?

Even though some of these pairs seem like opposites from each other, would I still answer yes to both? Would my answers change from day to day?

Would I be able to explain these things to other people? Would I want to?

Would I be me? Would I be less than me? Would I be more?

There’s so many more questions…. I quickly find myself becoming overwhelmed by it all but strangely, as much as I’ve thought about this a lot, it never really hit me like this until I asked myself…

If I had Autism…

Technically Speaking

To start at the top, there is PDD (Pervasive Development Disorder) which is a group of disorders including Rett’s, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).

Within the Autism Spectrum Disorder, there is actually another group of disorders including:

• Autistic Disorder (also called “classic” autism)
• Asperger’s Syndrome
• PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified or “atypical” autism)

So being “on the spectrum” and “having autism” may not mean exactly the same thing although some people, even professionals, may use them interchangeably.

I should also mention, Fragile-X is a genetic syndrome that is not autism but may cause autism.

Something I need for you to know

First and foremost, you need to understand that every single person that is on the autism spectrum is different. That means that every single symptom and situation is different.

From here on out, everything I tell you may affect a lot of autistics but not all.

Common Symptoms

• Communication Impairment
  This can be broken down into a few areas, such as:
  - Literal Thinking. This happens when a person is unable to, or has great difficulty, in understanding such things as irony, sarcasm, metaphors, expressions, etc. To use a phrase such as “I laughed my head off” would be interpreted by an autistic literally, they picture that your head actually came off.
  -  Inability to Understand Non-Verbal Queues. Many autistics explain that they are unable to tell what others are thinking by reading facial expressions or body language. Recognizing a person’s emotions is very difficult unless stated specifically and literally.
  - Anxiety. Extreme fear of social situations often makes socializing near impossible. Autistics often prefer to avoid social gatherings despite having a strong desire to be a part of them. Autistics often feel like foreigners, speaking another language, in a place where they do not belong.
• Sensory Processing Disorder
  Despite being a separate disorder, SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder) is quite common among those with autism. This is broken down as such:
  - Hypersensitive.  Autistics often have an aversion to loud noises, lots of noises, bright lights, flickering lights, scratchy clothing (such as wool, seams), strong tastes, food textures and more. Anything that can overload the senses. Sometimes a simple hug can feel very painful all over.
  - Hyposensitive. Often times, people with autism have a high tolerance for pain, sometimes not even realizing that they’ve been hurt.  The same is sometimes true of all of the five senses. While a person may hate being touched at times, sometimes they have an overwhelming need to be touched. Often weighted vests, blankets, etc can help.
  - Filter. While not a sensitivity, often the brain lacks the filter than most people have to remove background sounds, smells, sights, etc.  For example, when you go into a restaurant, the music, kitchen sounds and other people talking all fade to the background so that you can hear the people you are talking to. With an autistic person, this is sometimes impossible… they hear it all at the same time, at the same level and become overwhelmed.
• Routine / Repetition / Patterns
  An early warning sign is a child’s need to follow a strict routine, make repetitive sounds or actions to excess or to create patterns out of objects rather than play with them.
  - Routine. All children need routine but children with autism especially need it. A break in routine can leave a child feeling completely lost, out of control and overwhelmed with anxiety. The severity of this varies greatly.
  - Repetition. Children with autism often repeat words, sounds or actions over and over again for much longer than what you would call a phase. These are usually single words, small sounds or small actions… repeated over and over again.
  - Patterns. Often children will line up cars in a straight line, put their cereal into grids or lines, single out single elements from a more complex pattern or anything else along similar lines. Rather than actually playing with objects, they’ll find more joy in aligning them somehow.
• Stimming (Self Stimulating)
  Stimming can be defined as a person’s need to produce an output, a way to fill one, more than one or all of a person’s senses (input).
  - What is it? Stimming comes in many forms but some notable occurrences include arm or hand flapping, moaning, head shaking, spinning, hitting oneself, moving one’s hands in front of their own eyes and so on.
  - Why do it? Stimming is done either to satisfy a need for input, such as a craving for deep pressure or to hear something, or as a way to block out other input, such as moaning so they no longer hear all of the other noises in a room (fan, television, people, etc) or to feel deep pressure so that they no longer feel the scratchy fabric of their clothing. These are just examples of an infinite number of possibilities.
  - Stop it? Some people wish to stop their child from stimming which, depending on the circumstances, can be beneficial or harmful. If stimming is done for self satisfaction and interferes with their ability to perform needed tasks, stopping it may prove beneficial. However, if the person is stimming to block out other overwhelming stimuli, preventing them from doing so may lead to a meltdown.
• Meltdown
  So what is a meltdown exactly? Is it just a temper tantrum? Can a child be disciplined out of it?
  - Temper Tantrum. A means to get ones way, or to express extreme dissatisfaction with being unable to get ones way.
  - Meltdown. A complete loss of control over one’s faculties do to overwhelming anxiety, fear, pain, sensory overload or other outside pressures. A meltdown is very much akin to a reaction one may have to being tortured.

Epilepsy/Seizures

Approximately 20% to 35% of individuals with autism have a seizure disorder. About one in four autistic individuals begin to have seizures during puberty. The exact reason for the onset of seizures is not known, but it is likely that the seizure activity may be due to hormonal changes in the body.

Sometimes seizures are noticeable but most of the time, they happen so subtly that it can not be detected by simple observation.

Wandering/Elopement

In 2008, Danish researchers found that the mortality rate among the autism population is twice as high as the general population. Often times, a parent reports looking away for only a brief moment to find that their child has wandered off. Often times, they are found in neighbor’s pools, nearby woods, on highways and more.

People with autism seldom recognize the fear or danger in wandering off from the comfort of their surroundings.

Severe vs Savant

As a spectrum, autism can range from one extreme to another where one person may not be able to speak, use a toilet or dress themselves to another person that can remember Pi to over 25,000 places.

In the past, a person was considered “severely autistic” if non-verbal but today we now know that a person can actually have a normal or even high IQ despite verbal or other impairments. This means that just because a person can not speak, use a toilet or dress themselves, that there isn’t a very smart individual in there wishing to express themselves.

Also, not all savants are autistic even though “autistic savant” is when we hear the term most.

While autism can be a life long, debilitating disability for some, and while it may provide savant, superhuman like gifts to others, the fact is that for the most part, autism is a disorder which leaves people somewhere in the middle. Unable to handle a regular classroom, social setting, conversation and more but able to live independently with proper treatment and therapy.

Why an autistic person might not look me in the eye

One common recognizable sign or symptom of autism is the person’s inability or desire to look at a person’s face, or look them in the eye. Several well known autistics have described the process as “taking thousands of pictures of a person’s face every time I look at them”.

This is understandably very overwhelming and so, to avoid being overloaded into a meltdown, sometimes they will refuse to look you in the eye.

Other times, it can be described as simply a social awkwardness where they feel too much anxiety or discomfort with doing so.

Also, as with everything, this is not true of all people with autism. You’ll find that a good number of autistics really have no problem looking at you.

Causes

Other than Fragile-X causing some cases of autism, no one knows the cause for the rest. Genetics and other environmental factors (which includes vaccines) are often discussed in the media but no matter what you’ve read, no one knows the cause with 100% certainty.

Treatments / Therapies / Diets

There are countless treatments available although ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) is the most widely used and approved method.
The most common therapies that help children are speech therapy and occupational therapy.
Diets proven to have the most positive effects include the GF (gluten or wheat protein free) and CF (casein milk protein free) diets.

No one treatment, therapy or diet will work for all people with autism although most have met with some success with at least some people. Because of this uncertainty, there have been some people who take advantage of the situation and create “snake oil” remedies which cost a lot of money yet don’t really work.

The truth is, though, that because no one knows the cause, no one knows the cure. As of right now, autism is a life long disorder with no cure.

Everyone agrees that the best chance an autistic person has at an independent life is via early intervention, which means receiving a diagnosis between the ages of 2 to 3 followed by receiving therapy, treatment and other help as soon as possible while still in the early development stage of their life.

How can you help?

• Be understanding. Reading this is a great first step. The simple fact that you have taken a moment to know some of the characteristics and symptoms means a lot to a person with autism or their parent. Now that you know what stimming is and why it probably should not be stopped sometimes goes a long way toward understanding the person that is doing the stimming.
• Do not judge. When you see a parent with a child that is screaming on the floor at a restaurant or grocery store, don’t be so quick to think that they’re a bad parent or a bad child. Perhaps that child is autistic and having a meltdown due to outside stimuli which feels like a constant stream of pain… such as torture. If you felt what that child has just been feeling, you may react in the same way. Autism can NOT be disciplined out of a person. It is hardwired in their brains.
• Be accepting. If you know a child with autism, accept them for being different and needing to stim or be alone sometimes. If you’re at a party and you see someone on their own, be kind but respectful if they request to be left out of the group. If you employ someone with autism, give them a little extra room to cope with the crazy atmosphere around them and don’t be too hard on them if they avoid the X-Mas party. There are many ways you can adjust your own expectations to be accepting of their differences without having to necessarily give them special treatment.

So Remember

All people with autism are different. No one symptom is common among 100% of people with autism. No one therapy, treatment or diet works. Not all autistics are brilliant, not all autistics are non-verbal and not all autistics are dependent nor independent.

Chances are, you know someone on the spectrum and not even realize it. They may not even realize it either.

Please print this or copy it and share it with anyone wishing or willing to know more about autism.

Thank you.

Answer:  because according to the Choice Law you make the choices that you do because at some level (conscious or unconscious) the results work for you; there’s a payoff.  Caution:  be aware that you may have some blind spots to the impact of your payoff system (I did!).

You would think that rational, normal-thinking adults would not repeat behaviors that leave them feeling guilty, frustrated, and upset with themselves!  However, if you’re like me I’ll bet that you could come up with a list of personal examples where you’ve done this:

• You eat when you know that you shouldn’t.
• You smoke when you really don’t want to smoke.
• You give in to demands when you know you should stand your ground.
• You lose your temper when it’s the last thing you wanted to do.

Let me repeat this:  the Choice Law says that we choose our behaviors because we perceive (consciously or unconsciously) that they will serve a purpose…generate some level of value for us…no matter how illogical this sounds.  I’ll bet that you have life-examples, perhaps the ones I listed above, that cause you to know that what I’m saying is true.

So how can you use this information to continue to strive to strengthen your relationships with your child rather than cause possible long-term damage to your relationship?  Well, I’m not a psychologist so all that I can tell you is what has worked for me:

1. Write out a list of the three most nonproductive responses towards your child that you tend to repeat.  Be specific about what you do and/or say.
2. Write down one to two sentences explaining why you find this nonproductive pattern negative.
3. For each of the nonproductive responses listed above write down the perceived outcome or payoff that is maintaining the nonproductive response(s).  This will be the hard part and might require a trusted friend to help you.
4. Once you find your payoff for your nonproductive responses toward your care-receiver you need to establish a course of action for positive change.  Here’s a cheatsheet for 29 ways to positive change:  http://zenhabits.net/the-habit-change-cheatsheet-29-ways-to-successfully-ingrain-a-behavior/

The bottom line:  at some level, our negative responses towards our children’s challenging behaviors are often shaped by the outcomes we think OUR behaviors will produce.  People have a tendency to do what they perceive will work.  Finding your payoff and plotting a course of personal change will help you to regain personal control and positively strengthen the relationship between you and your child on the spectrum!

As you know, sometimes the journey to self-discovery is not easy, in fact, it can be downright difficult.  But it’s worth it because in the end you can look yourself in the mirror and know that you’ve done everything possible to be the best parent that you’ve been called to be.

Michael Woods (Founder of Relational Crisis Prevention)

The Choice Law states that at any given moment children have choices…and they will always choose to do what they think will work for them!  Doesn’t matter whether they are boy or girl, tall or short, or mild to severe on the spectrum!  It’s the law and here’s what it says:

You do what you do because at some level (conscious or unconscious) you believe your choice of behaviors is going to benefit you.

It’s a very highly reliable law of behavior and if you take a few minutes to reflect back on your life history you’ll know that there’s truth to it.

Let me say it another way because it’s important that you get this:  if your child did not perceive his/her behavior as generating a positive outcome for himself he would not do it.  Plain and simple.  No matter how illogical or strange his behavior may seem he is engaging in it in order to create some potential beneficial result.

Let me state it yet another way because it’s really really important that you get this if you are going to successfully trouble-shoot challenging behaviors:  if your child chooses to engage in a behavior again and again it is because it produces (at least from his perspective) a potential beneficial outcome.  Conversely, if your child does not engage in a behavior again and again it is because it did not produce (from his perspective) a beneficial outcome!

Therefore, one of the first steps in reducing crisis behaviors or de-escalating crisis behaviors is to determine what the perceived beneficial outcome is from your child’s perspective.

But hold on because that’s not where I want to go with this blog post!

The direction that I want to move towards is the understanding and application of how this life law applies to YOU and how YOU respond to your child’s challenging behaviors.  If you’re like me, you’ve responded to your child in ways that causes you to shake your head in disbelief and ask yourself:

• “What is wrong with me?”
• “Why on God’s earth do I keep doing that?”
• “I hate myself when I do that, so why do I keep doing it?”

Good questions.  Answer:  people do what they think will work for them. But that’s just part of the story.

Let’s talk more about this idea applies to parents in my next post…

Author:  Michael Woods (Founder of Relational Crisis Prevention)

First and foremost let me say, no, I do not believe that vaccines cause Autism. That does not mean that I do not think that there could be situations where a vaccination could trigger an already pre-existing condition (like Autism for example) which would cause a regression.

Do I think vaccines are perfectly safe? No, of course not. Not even their inventors and marketers think they’re perfectly safe. Everyone knows there is a certain % of people that have adverse reactions, allergic reactions, side effects and sometimes, even cause death.

Do I think that the recent Wakefield news means anything in regards to the vaccine risks? No. They simply proved that he lied, fabricated his evidence and findings. It doesn’t prove anything about what vaccines do or do not do though, just that his findings didn’t prove anything one way or another.

I have said since day one that if you have concerns, ask your doctor a million questions and demand a schedule that you feel more comfortable with but please please please do not deny vaccinations entirely.

Here’s the thing, this is where I think that things have gone wrong:

1. People forget what these illnesses can do and what they’re like.
   Most of them don’t sound so bad, most of them many people had as children themselves and again, weren’t so bad. But you’re remembering and thinking of a very small piece of an entirely much larger picture. These simply “cough and get over it” illnesses do kill people! Some disfigure, some kill.. some simply clog the medical community with thousands upon hundreds of thousands of hospital visits.
2. People think that an all but gone illness can’t come back.
   If it’s not gone, it can come back. In fact, that’s the very nature of these illnesses in the first place… to spread! It’s particularly ironic in a country like the US where most people complain about the immigration rates that they’d possibly think that an illness that still inhabits other countries could never actually find their way back in.
3. People forget that there are babies, elderly and other lower immunity tolerance people out there.
   Yes, measles as a kid is rough, but in a senior citizen? Deadly. Whooping cough means a hospital visit for most people, it means almost certain death for a baby. When you or I talk about the illnesses these vaccines prevent, we picture ourselves and our children but in reality, much like the flu, it can kill people that are less equipped to fight it off.

Listen, without vaccines, I believe that by now, we’d probably be seeing a word wide population decrease at this point, rather than our continuing increase.  If nothing else, we’d certainly have far less medical resources to be keeping us healthy. I mean, think about it… how bad is health care where you are?? How bad would it be if a few million people every year were in there with all these diseases that are preventable?

Do I promote getting vaccines? Yes.
Do I also promote safe vaccine schedules? Yes.
Do I promote more research into all of the dangers of vaccines? Yes.
Do I promote more research into finding better and safer ingredients to be used in vaccines? Yes!

The way I see it, if they can pump out a newer and better cell phone every 3 months, they can have new and better vaccines as well.

Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that I am happy with the way things are… or that I think a certain % of vaccine injuries or deaths is just acceptable. The numbers can always be improved!

But don’t ever think that I am supposed to be out there inciting fear, panic and further division within the Autism community. That simply is not my goal. I understand if it’s not yours either but let’s be honest, many who do hate vaccines, and vaccine makers, do push the boundaries too far. They want others to share in their hatred. They want others to take up a pitchfork and fight along side them.

I am not that person.

Ask for a safer schedule, petition to have more research and safer vaccines created. But never think that not preventing many illnesses is a good way to maybe lower the risk of Autism.

Stop listening to Wakefield, stop listening to anti-vaccination people, stop listening to conspiracy theorists, stop listening to pharmaceutical companies, stop listening to marketers, stop listening to pro-vaccination people… stop listening to me!

Use some common sense, use some rational thinking… do your research, do your reading. Look at the numbers, look at the history. Ask yourself, if it’s all a risk, if it’s all about choosing from bad and bad, why would you opt for denying what you know will be prevented?

Option A prevents X, Y, Z and may cause Q
Option B prevents nothing, so you may get X, Y, Z and still may cause Q anyway
Which makes more sense??

My wife suggested that I make my blog’s tagline “using common sense”… because I pride myself in doing just that. That’s all that I see in this matter, is to use common sense.

Fight for safer vaccines. Fight for a safer schedule. Fight for more safety with our children!!

But never forget that safer actually means taking the vaccines. It does save lives.

This is my official stance on vaccines. I know it’s a hot topic, I know not everyone will agree. Please do not get mad if you don’t. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and as such, I would never think poorly of you for yours. We need to support each other in pushing for the discovery of the true cause, a way to help those that have Autism and for more resources in schools, work, housing and more. Let’s work together.

As is normal in jounalism, 20 minutes of talk time generally gets you about 3 or 4 lines in a news story. In this case, I’m pretty happy with what they quoted from me, what do you think?

Few swayed by fraud finding in autism study

Here’s what they didn’t print.

“Do you believe Wakefield was honest or fraudulent?”

I honestly have no idea but what I do know is that it’s so strange that there is no real investigation, a criminal one. There are claims that he hurt the children, that he paid the children (or their parents) and that the results of all this, if the results are fraud, may have directly caused many deaths.

We’ve been hearing about this study for 13 years, it’s been discredited for several, he was disbarred last year and in all this time, we still have no real answers.

“Do you think this news story will change anything?”

No, I don’t. People who are anti-vaccination read the studies that support their stance. The people who are pro-vaccination read the studies that support their stance. Everything else, they each dismiss.

To be honest, I’m rather sick of anti-vaccination people pulling the 7 degrees of separation game with every doctor that finds no vaccine-autism link in an attempt to link them to some big pharmaceutical company. So some guy’s grandfather had a neighbor that worked as a janitor for some company… is that really a reason to believe he was paid off to say something just to discredit Wakefield?

Why does it work one way and not the other?

Why is it ok to find these links to discredit every doctor out there that says what you don’t agree with but you don’t even bother to question the very public, very obvious controversies surrounding the one doctor that does say what you agree with?

If you question one doctor, or a group of doctors, you have to question them all. Believe no one, do your own research… ALL OF IT.

“Did this story or any of the stories about this make you question vaccines?”

Not really, no. It was pretty clear my son had Autism before his MMR vaccinations and even if there was some question, I’d rather take the Autism risk than the disfigured or dead risk.

No, this controversy is the one big controversy that divides the Autism community and it makes me sick. I get asked the question a lot and usually I don’t answer because I don’t want one side or another hating me. I just want everyone to support each other.

I don’t believe we’ve found the one cause, I don’t even think there is just one cause. But I am pretty sure it’s not vaccines causing anything.

“What do you mean by this is the one controversy dividing the Autism community?”

Well, we’ve had studies, just in the last year or two, that have suggested links to Autism with living next to a highway, with IVF, with jaundice, with premature birth, with oxygen deprivation during birth, with tylenol during pregnancy, with flouride in the water… I could go on and on. Why aren’t people fighting over any of these studies? Why isn’t there some big panic over any of these things?

Why does this one issue have to be so huge that it’s causing people to snap? I mean, this morning a company that makes toys and products for Autistic children posted the link to the Wakefield story on their facebook page and some moms were furious… lashing out at this company for posting a story to discredit such a wonderful man, and to slam all these parents… and so on and so forth.

I mean, seriously. Calm down. They shared the latest Autism news. That’s all!

“So it’s been 13 years now, you said, you think that’s enough?”

Oh yeah. I mean, not a single soul will have their mind changed by these latest news articles. It simply adds fuel to the fire in terms of dividing the community even more. It prolongs the argument.

All this energy in fighting could be spent on getting more teachers out there that understand Autism, getting more employers that are patient enough to take on some Autistic teens, getting housing built that’s affordable and with available help to those adults with Autism that will need it.

I don’t know what the future holds for my son but if he gets to be my age and this argument is still going on, then he’ll have missed out on a lot of services and information that could have been made available if we could just move passed this.

“So why do you think that this continues then?”

People are very passionate about this, this is their children. There’s nothing you can be more protective of than your own child.

I feel bad for the parents who for a while have a normal child, who hugs and speaks and then shortly after they turn 2, they lose all words and no longer look them in the eye. I would look for someone to blame too. If they had just gotten vaccines, I would be pretty angry too.

No news story is going to convince them of anything. When you have that much anger and frustration, it’s passion. They’re fighting for their children.

How much time has been spent with us fighting?

The problem with New Years Resolutions is that most people only make them once a year. Really, we should be dedicating our lives to improving ourselves every single day. But that’s a whole other story.

Those of us with a child that’s been diagnosed with Autism know that we’ve been making resolutions with every therapy session, every IEP meeting… with every milestone that’s been missed.

Then New Years Eve rolls around and as we watch friends and family gather to ring in the new year, we’re “stuck” at home because there’s no one we’d trust with our children that aren’t old enough to be out partying for the big night.  The neighbourhood babysitter just isn’t going to cut it on these nights.

While we sit and wonder if everyone’s talking about how “stuffy” or “over protective” we are while they’re drinking it up, we are content with our decision… here’s why.

People celebrate the turning of the year over to a new one but really, is tomorrow really going to be different from yesterday? Not likely. You may write the wrong year on your rent check tomorrow. Otherwise, chances are you won’t feel any different.

When you have a child with Autism that’s missed so many milestones over those short few years between 2 and 5 years of age, you not only learn to really appreciate the little things but you learn what’s really important.

Pulling down the calendar off the wall to put up a new one is not cause for celebration.. your child saying “I love you” is. Your child using a toilet for the first time is. Your child looking you in the eye, giving you a hug… kissing you! Now that’s cause for celebration!

There’s nothing wrong with resolving to make your life better in the coming year but don’t ever think that I’m missing out on any celebrating when I’m at home with my boys on New Years Eve.

I’ve made my resolutions already… many times. I’ve had my celebrations and they meant the world to me.

It’s because I’m not out partying that I’m not missing a single thing.

So what is my “New Years Resolution” then? The same as it is every day:

To strive to be the person that I would like my children to grow up to be.