Saturday July 8, 2006
Key To Early Diagnosis Of Autism May Be In The Placenta
“But My Kid is Low-Functioning… You’re Not… What You Wrote Does Not Apply!
excerpt:
The point I am trying to make here is that gaining skills, learning to talk, learning to take care of onself, is not a sign that the autism is being beaten back, that the war against the autism is being won, that the shell of autism is being stripped away. It is a sign of development– just as it is in normal kids (or else it is rote-learned acts that spring from conditioning rather than development). Normal kids are born nonverbal, unable to walk, unable to control their bodily functions, unable to take care of themselves… but if they are given appropriate help from their caretakers, they develop and learn, and they become more able to do these things over time. Is that a sign that something is being beaten back in battle, that some shell that makes the infant unable to talk is being stripped away? No, of course, it does not mean anything like that. It means that the child has learned, that his brain has made sense of sensory input and developed. Development is what happens when the brain can make sense of its surroundings, and is stimulated in such a way that the newly-formed neurons are placed in a meaningful way.
I was subscribed to you with my homeschool user name but for whatever reason never did sub with my regular one, until you made that comment a few days ago in my regular blog. I’m so glad you commented because I hadn’t read any of the blogs I subbed to with my homeschool ID in so long! I kinda slacked off there, heh. Anyway, thanks for the second link in this entry, that page is pretty fascinating. I have to take it in sections at a time because it’s overwhelming, but it makes for educational reading for me.