Why do you think there are so many children diagnosed with autism these day?

Question

I am a teacher and have worked with many autistic children. I have been a teacher for 26 years and never have I seen so many autistic children or so many children who are taking medication for their ADD, ADHD, ODD and other behavior problems. When I started teaching in the early 1980's there were no children with any of these problems! I teach a class of 23 children and 9 are on some sort of meds and 2 are autistic.

Answer 1

We are over diagnosing ourselves these days with learning disabilities trying to find scientific/biological reasons for why things are the way they are. I have ADD, but I wasn't diagnosed until I was 27. By that time I was already a college graduate and was just finishing up my Master Degree after I have completed a teaching certification program where my GPA was a 3.91. The reality is that you probably had the same number of children with the same number of problem 20 or so years ago - but they weren't diagnosed and in many ways that was better. They over drug kids today and they make to many excuses for them. Its a really sad development.

Good Luck!!!

Answer 2

Todays world is alot different than when I was a child. Parents are gone all the time, kids are raising themselves, there are far more pollutants in the air, more immunization requirements and chemicals used on our foods. I work with children who have autism and other severe behavior disorders and disabilities. I believe autism is caused by the immunizations. I have a child who has autism. He was a happy smiling baby until he got an immunization. Then he changed literally overnight. 1 in 166 children are born with autism of some variation. This is way too many. I would love to find a cure so that the children I work with could be "normal". Until someone does and autism no longer exists I will continue to do my work and help the children with autism learn lifeskills and anything else I can teach them. I don't believe ADD and ADHD exist. I have said this many times. I believe those are some form of autism. Doctors just see kids who are hyper and quickly diagnose ADD or ADHD, give them meds and send them on their way instead of spending time getting to the real problem. ODD is just a bored child who has no rules layed down for them by the way.

Edit to my answer: Children will give you exactly what you expect of them. If you expect the child to be "bad" that is what you will get. When the "bad" students come into our room I let them know what I expect of them. I have high expectations. I expect good behavior. I have yet to have a serious problem with a child I have been told is terrible.

Answer 3

go the www.cdc.gov site and see about the national childrens health study. it is not just a problem here it is an worldiwide epidemic. i have lived in two nations and my child is the first of the epidimec. she will grad this year after being dx at 20 mo old the me caanda uk etc has a far bigger per capita problem than us. i alos have background in science and think mercury not in the shots but in the lights it is in the fluorescent lights the increased used of chemicals and plastics in every day eveythng that was not in use 25 yrs ago. teflon is in everything now and being found to be bad.


for you my teacher friends. go to www.cdc.gov and see autism
www.medlineplus.gov health studies
www.disabilityinfo.gov and
www.nichcy.org to learn more.

we parents have just finally got the combating autism act passed now if it ever gets funded. we are pushing to find out ourselves. you think it is bad at school? try it 24/7. some parents have 4 or more kids with autism. I have one. it is soo hard.

PS age has no difference. Must of the parents I know had kids in thier twenties. I had mine at 20 so age is no bearing. They say we parents are more educated than the avg parent. This is true.

Answer 4

I think doctors and educators know more now. When I was in school and a child was bad they were punished. When they were "slow" they were lumped into one spec. ed. class. We now define the different special ed classes from LD to EMH to BD to CD etc.
We've learned that most if not all can learn given the right circumstances where as before autistic kids if they were diagnosed were often times told they should put their kids in a home etc.
My husband was in a generalized spec ed class in the 70s (HS grad of 82). They tested him but didn't label him with anything. They knew he had an audio problem if he heard it he couldn't do it but if shown he could but that was about the extent of it. Our son was just diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder and exhibits every one of the tendancies dad had as a child. I'm sure Dad has Asperger's down to his very definate OCD that was diagnosed.
Thank goodness we do diagnose better today and educate better today. My son has a chance my husband was never given.

Answer 5

Definitely one reason is better diagnosis. My dh was on Ritalin when he attended school in the 80's but was never diagnosed with anything. I assume he has ADHD or autism spectrum but he doesn't have any formal diagnosis other than dyslexia. He doesn't have eye contact when he talks with you, can't sit still for more than 2 minutes, even though he runs 70 or 80 miles a week. Both of my children have these kind of symptoms also and both have been diagnosed with PDD-NOS which is autism spectrum.

Answer 6

The latest studies said there was a correlation with people having children at an older age. It would be interesting to see the age of the parents of the autistic children. As far as ADD, I don't know.

Answer 7

Autism is a vague diagnosis and every time a child does not conform to social norms we (society) think there has to be a label/diagnosis for it. If you can't pinpoint what is "wrong" with Little Johnny he must be sick/mentally ill. Why can't a kid just be odd?

Another possibility; as another poster suggested; is all the crap in our food. We eat a chemical experiment at every meal. What indeed are the long term effects of all of those preservatives?

My final pet theory I have is that a lot of parents are older when they have their kids and they don't have the patience for a loopy screaming 3 year old running around. Give him drugs to slow him down and keep him quiet.

Answer 8

Well, there might not have been children DIAGNOSED with any of those problems in the early 80's, but they were there. Thing is, we're more aware now that these are problems that affect their behavior, instead of just calling them bad kids, so when a child is more out of control than normal, parents are checking to find out why. We as parents have a different attitude about it now, we're not as content to just write things off as being 'weird little quirks' or 'he's such a brat'. While it's still true, of course, that kids can just be quirky or abnoxious, if it goes beyond what one would expect, we're checking it out, finding out what needs to be done, and hopefully learning behavior management to teach the child to control it themselves. Unfortunately, there are a lot that just put them on the drugs and don't bother to do anything more, but that's another issue. Also, my philosophy is this. Autism, ADD, and ADHD can all be affected by environmental factors, autism in particular usually takes environmental factors to bring it out. We live in a society that has a different cleaning product for every little step of cleaning in the room, there are more products coming out every single year. The more toxins we're exposing our kids to, the more we're going to see neurological disorders affecting them, that only makes sense. But nobody thinks about that when they grab their bottle of bleach and mops the floors, ya know? And, I know this will hit a sore spot with you and I don't mean to offend you, I'm not saying you are one of these... but teachers and schools have a lot to do these days with the dx'es. You cram 30+ students into a classroom and have one or two students that won't sit still. Teacher mentions to mom, 'you might want to talk to your dr., and see if there's anything wrong.' Mom takes the kid to the dr., tells him that Bobby won't sit still and teacher mentioned you bring him in. Dr.'s are handing out these dx and drugs to keep little Bobby from being a 'problem' to the teacher, when it could just be that Mom and Dad aren't working with the teacher to make SURE Bobby is behaving, and nothing is being accounted for slight processing problems the child might have. Some kids HAVE to squirm while working or they cannot process the information. But that's not allowed. Back in the early 80's, more than likely your classroom size was smaller, and things like squirming could be overlooked. I've known three kids personally who went through the exact process I just described, and I worked personally with these kids and there was nothing wrong with them, other than lack of discipline at home. I'm not saying these disorders aren't real, they are very real. But, I think there's a laziness when it comes to diagnosing them, a joining forces between the dr.'s and the schools, so to speak. I can't find the words to word it properly, but I'm hoping you understand what I'm saying. It's a lot of different factors. For autism specifically, I think it's the same thing, we have more environmental toxins that are affecting development, but also, it's better diagnostic procedures. Not that long ago, kids with autism were institionalized because they felt it was a form of schizophrenia, so society didn't see it as much. And the slighter cases were just seen as being quirks, just their personality. I didn't mean for this to be so long, but there are really a lot of different factors that contribute to it. My child's autism is very mild, I've been working with him myself for two years and he's improved tremendously. Hopefully, we can avoid meds all together, as they just add more problems. But I chose to NOT have him officially diagnosed, I stopped just short of them doing that. Once they confirmed what I already knew, I stopped the testing. I didn't want him diagnosed for many reasons, but that doesn't take away the fact that he has it. I know I'm not the only one that has chosen this route, for autism or any of the others,so really the numbers are higher than reported.

Answer 9

that's difficulty-free to fling an opinion obtainable, noticeably in case you want it to be genuine. I truly have achieved the study and realized a lot, and enable me allow you to recognize, we fairly do have a project. there are a variety of of going to Congress and the courts to attempt to clean up the mess we made with vaccines, pollution, insurance organizations steerage docs no longer to seem for clinical causes, and so on. There are truly 1000's of docs you'll locate by using googling "autism health care professional" or "DAN health care professional", and so on. that are treating those little ones for his or her pollution and pathogens; many are dropping their diagnosis. My little ones now no longer have autism.

Answer 10

Genetic predisposition added to ever increasing toxins in our environment is resulting in more and more children within the wide range of the disorder. It's not overdiagnosing. It's more children with the genetic predisposition being assaulted by environmental toxins. (When I started working with children it was rare too (in the early 90's). Now there are three diagnosed in my son's class of 25 in Kindergarten.