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I like Tony Attwood. He sees people as people of all shapes and sizes not conditions of all shapes and sizes. I am fed up with people describing differences as disorders. I am fed up with mild v severe. i am fed up with Asperger's study of 22 people being treated as a valid exercise at all. I am fed up with people saying people with ASDs have no empathy. I am fed up with patronising medics, social workers, care workers, nurses, housing peopleeducational people. (Not all are that of course.) People are people and should be valued for what they are, not devalued by pejorative labels. That was what I agreed with about Tony Attwood. Also, I have found it profoundly more helpful reading the writings of ASDsand talking to ASDs than the kind of mumbo jumbo that is put out about ASDs by people who frankly do not know what they are talking about. It is not helped by the media who talk about it as a behavioural disorder, and play up cases about people with ASDs that may well not be ASDs at all. The bridge metaphor is brilliant but not maybe a good idea for a group of people who find grasping the concept of metaphors difficult? If only there were a few more Attwoods for the UK lucky Oz I reckon.

Hi Sue, Don't let the b**t*rds get you down! First, I really know what it is like for you as I have been through similar with ASD stepson on several occasions. It is really scary isn't it? What I have finally had to do is remember that I exist too. Firstly, you need to see your GP about you and how it affects you and spell it out that you cannot cope on your own. This is really hard because you feel that you should be able to and that you feel a sense of failing having to admit that you cannot cope alone.But it is important that you can give your best to your daughter and clearly these sort of incidents drain you and probably your daughter also feels awful afterwards It is jolly hard to be a teenager if everything is going well as there is so much confusion about the changes taking place. If as I suspect there are other adverse factors at play that are causing the overload then you need to try to identify them. Firstly she may be being bullied or picked on. J behaved very similarly at same age and we subsequently found all his lunch money was being stolen and he was being beaten up by older boys on a daily basis. Also, as secondary school kicks in there can be a serious problem as the teaching method and course content are not usually right for an ASD in mainstream. Homework for example used to cause stress as he had not understood what he was doing or how to do it. And whole class teaching is a nightmare for ASDs. Also she may want to be like her peer group but is finding that she is being shunned or is becoming aware that she is different. You need to choose your moments for communicating to get the best results. You also need to allow your d lots of personal spaceso that she can get away from everyone if she is stressing out rather than have to be with others that makes it worse for her to control. I am not sure if your daughter realises that you are on her side. This is really important. I am never on the side of the school or the doctors or anyone else. You are there for her and you are absolutely vital in that role as the loving mum. You are not the authority figure or the rule maker you are mum. You may feel that you are not appreciated. Tough! maybe you are not but you still got to stick in there. Next, what diet is your daughter following ? This can adversely affect her ability to function at her best if it is not optimised. You also need to consider whether meds might help her mood. Now you need to get out the chain mail armour and go back to her GP and say excuse me but I need support for coping with my daughter. I am not prepared to be a punchbag because you cannot do your job might be a bit strong but if you are getting nowhere you may need to get tough. You may even have to consider changing her GP to one that is better able to meet her needs. Also you should get an assessment done by SS for your daughter. I know it is a double edged sword and we have to watch for the SW trying to blame the parent for the child. A v common occurrence. Also, are you in touch with any local support groups. Do you have any access to respite care so you can recharge your batteries and give child rearing your best shot. Are there any buddy type arrangements that could share the load with you. MIND sometimes do this sort of thing and sometimes local carers groups organise it as well. If you get stuck in the bureaucratic glue pot you can also contact your MP. They can sometimes push buttons in the right places to get you help you need. Sorry if this seems a lot. Feel for what you are going thru <'> If you want to go into more detail and I can help I will happy to take a PM or email neunbar9@aol.com

Anyone who uses a microwave oven, beware. I did not believe it till I found it out but it musses with your entire blood system because the white corpuscles cannot recognise the microwaved foods and go into overdrive for ages and reduce immune system function. You type in blood and microwaves on a search engine and see what comes up. And the phone thing is also about any phone that is a freestander and about broadband wireless connections and being within 80 meters of electric pylons and mobile phone masts. All these are slow fryers of people. Actually even remote controls can be a problem. But hey. What do a few mutations matter?

Hi, It seems to work OK to me. Near the bottom you click the line for international customers and it takes you off to the payment form. Hey, maybee if it doesn't work thats good too cos you save money. :>) Sorry its late at night and been a long day. Hope it works for you.

Check this article out. http://www.autismtoday.com/articles/How_to...elped.asp?cat=1

Xylitol is a naturally occuring sugar made from the bark of the silver birch tree and has been used in Finland where it was developed for yonks, just after the second world war anyway. It has the unusual effect of not raising blood sugar levels and actually occurs naturally in the body as well as plants and in fact bypasses all the know bad effects of the white powder. Use it myself and am still alive. try this link http://www.xylitol.com.au/g/176/about-xylitol.html

The answer is because they have to get past the RAF and USAF of course. Uplifting thought.

Try this link http://www.autismfromthesoul.com/home.htm If you are hyperlexic you get a bonus of lots of free web books too. You all have a nice day now.

This is awful. Should you sue the GP he has to lose. Wrong jab is clin neg. I shall pray for your child's wellbeing and hope anyone who has a god will do the same.

Hyperlexia is a variant of autism and a savant skill. Florrie who I know reads about 1500 (1500 really) text book equivalents a year. She is in her 40s and has been studying certain areas for about 25 years. As she has 3 overlapping all consuming interests that means that she has read about 12500 books on each subject compared to say me who think I am doing well to read 40 textbook equivalents a year so even if I only read on one consuming interest, in 25 years I would have read 1000 textbook equivalents. So she has read 37.5 times more than I have in that timeframe. The downside is that because she has Hyperlexia she cannot form a Gestalt or whole and so while I can pigeonhole all that I have read and organise it and critically think about what I have read, she cannot. She stores her facts in one huge box. Also because she has an auditory processing problem as part of the Hyperlexia she cannot remember or has not taken in as much of what she has read as I would. But in spite of that she retains say 10% of what she has read compared to about 30%. So overall she has a factual knowledge gain of a factor of 10 over me a neurotypical. Also, because of her single database she both cannot access it very quickly or extract from it very quickly. And sometimes she comes out with something that is not what she wanted to say at all even though it makes perfect sense. Also she does lots of malaprops - cross flannel cherry for cross channel ferry for example. But there is another plus factor. Because she has all her facts in a single pot she makes connections that would never occur to a neurotypical. The other thing is that she is a bit of a word genius. So she can remember lots of words that I cannot even start to without any immediate purpose. In Florrie's case she remembers all the ingredients on labels or tables and charts of information. OK so back to the thread. Hyperlexia is a condition that is highly correlated with ASD and ADHD but it is not the same and can co-exist. Caught at an early stage and with intensive input there can be remarkable improvements and the ability to form a gestalt can be recovered. Lindamood Bell Learning Processes in the USA and with an office in London run intervention programmes with a number of US states. On their website there is a good amount of information on how they both identify hyperlexia and treat it. They have a research aspect and have now treated several thousand people with hyperlexia and have good results for getting improvements in the weakened comprehension starting in the bottom 3% of all people and getting them back into the normal range between 25% and 75%. Snag is that there is nothing like it available in UK through state provision and it is expensive to deliver. But I do not think that hyperlexia is the same as ASD which seems to creep ever wider and wider in its definition and as a result leads to ever more inappropriate treatments of those with a dx. It is a major problem that our state education system and most qualifications are based around a single model of learning when there are between 7 and 9 different learning styles and the styles that are best for ASDs are not generally applied to them. It is also a major problem that ASDs are seen as being akin to mental illness or retardation when thay are neither. By and large the ASD person has an atypical profile and our state is locked into a model that endorses only the typical and deliberately and systematically excludes and devalues the atypical. One obvious way this occurs is through the use of IQ tests that are designed to neutralise any distortions and whose results are of little value to anyone. And these are a core part of the definition of ASDs. Another is that psychologists are devalued in the NHS and generally work to psychiatrists who are in global terms overdue for extinction like the dinosaurs that they are. Now that neuroscience is advancing to understand and identify differences in brain function it is actually absurd to think that a process of sitting down and chatting to the patient is a sensible or relaible basis to reach a diagnosis. Finally almost all the research that is commissioned about ASDs is a complete waste of money and time and is so fragmented as to make it impossible to draw any wideranging conclusions. So practical steps: Get hold of Lindamood Bell "Visualising and Verbalising Kit" and try to get on a course to learn how best to use it, they run in London sometimes, or if you have lots of dosh like about ?20k use their programme and whilst if there is autism present that will not go away, there a good chance that the downside of the Hyperlexia will be significantly diminished. There are Hyperlexia Associations in both USA and Canada that have lively active and informative websites. There is also a tangental chance that work with speech and language people dealing with Semantic Pragmatic Disorder may also be able to work to help improve the downside but it is a risky thing. There is also an organisation called AFASIC who are involved with all aspects of speech and language difficulties. If you can engage with Dan Morgan, Clinical Director at Lindamood Bell in London he would be able to explain the condition to any medico and leave them for dead on what they know about everything to do with a range of conditions. USA Canada and Australia are light years ahead of UK. Any further help, please PM me. And good luck and keep fighting its a war we are fighting and we will win.

Lets say yes it could. It could without lots of complicated research articles because antibiotics can and do "kill off" good flora in the gut. The gut is where the processing takes place that results in the transmission of stuff to the brain which is where the ASD arises. So if the good flora is "killed off" the bad flora can flourish and as a result the transmissions to the brain go wrong then the "overload" of the immune system can occur. This is only one way that immune system can go into overload so ASDs are caused by a variety of things that give rise to an immune system overload vaccines, allergies, viruses acn all have the same result. Ken

The slightly worrying aspect is that I know of a faster one by one of NAS approved list consultants who told an adult she definitely did not have an ASD within 45 seconds. And you guessed it, they were well wrong. I also know a Prof who got her wrong by the same process of not carrying out an asessment! Hey ho and mad the world is.

The "evidence", oh the "evidence"! Pharmaceutical companies have produced item after item that has been lauded as "safe". Thalidomyde The early female contaceptive pills Seroxat Valium Loads of them. 20 years after everybody knows there is something wrong there is finally the research "evidence" and meanwhile Pharms destroy peoples lives and make lots of profits. If the following scenario is correct then Autism and related PDDs are developmental disorders although I think they are simply differences and it is a neurotypical medical desire to regard a difference as a disorder. The cause is almost certainly related to immune system overload resulting in neural pathways developing in a different way. Medics call it a disorder but it is simply a difference. As a result there is a distortion of the typical development with visual and or auditory short term memory underperforming other senses function at heightened levels smell, touch, taste etc The overload in some cases is caused by heavy metal toxicity and a predisposition to be unable to detoxify and this can arise in a variety of ways including from cumulation of vaccinations such as MMR which are now given far more prolifically than in the past. But it can arise in other instances too for example due to the use of antibiotics with resultant temporary imbalancing of the immune system and this can in turn increase the damage to the gut and that in turn affects the supply of key neurotransmitters in the brain. What is clear is that the Government and the NHS are now as vulnerable as the Pharms to legal action and the sheer scale of potential damage claims is ENORMOUS nd that is why anyone involved with an autistic person should be aware that the institutions they assume are there to help are actually on the other side. You will find that there are: Failures to record bad reactions to MMR and other vaccines Deliberate delays in diagnosis and treatment Deliberate misinformation and misinterpretationabout facts Deliberate failure to commission appropriate evidential research Failure to support anybody who puts there head above the parapet to cry "foul" Witchunts as with Wakeman and others Those of us who remember some of the cover ups that took place on nuclear and toxic chemical leakages should realise the sheer scale of this ###### up means that multinational Pharms and a number of states and their healthcare systems are all in danger. Across the board there are people afraid to say what they really think because of the repurcussions for them and their children. If this is indeed reality, it is the most flagrant abuse of human rights ever.

I actually think the diagnosis makes little difference in itself and can have either adverse or positive outcomes. What really matters is what action flows from the dx and whether this is helpful or a hindrance. In theory a dx ought to enable appropriate interventions. But this is very hit and miss. There is little consistency of approach across the country and in some places the dx leaves you up a dead end or there follows an ongoing "battle" with ed or ss about provisions or there is a lack of will to support from the HA. Elsewhere there are some excellent efforts to improve service delivery and generally dx is both quicker and earlier as long as it is straightforward but it can also be a quagmire. There are major issues with adult services or more accurately the lack of them so what I think everyone needs to do is keep pressing for better provision and eventually it may happen. In Devon for example there are no proper adult services Health and SS cannot agree strategy, neither has apparently any resources although they have enough resources to tell you there are none. However, I think that you must feel some relief at finding out what your son had and the time to dx was not excessive as it is in some instances. I just hope you see it as a diversity and not a disorder and that your son is able to express his individuality and uniqueness and not be subject to "normalisation" strategies. Stepson's education plan said "he must learn to understand the needs of others" no reference to the needs of others to understand his needs though.