This is an article that started to surface yesterday or one
of them but all the same basic information. I watched it travel around the
autism community on facebook and read the comments that came up in regard to
the information. I didn’t comment just read because I knew this was going to
stir up a tornado of opinions and it didn’t let me down. The feeling in regard
to this article are very mixed with some people considering it fear propaganda,
some saying it’s no surprise, some felt it lacked information and it does. Some
felt it was very important in regard to awareness and others felt it would be
harmful to the cause.
Here is
what I felt for what it’s worth. Autism is beyond a doubt on the rise all over
the world in my opinion for two reasons. Doctors are diagnosing more and more
kids are being affected. Not one or the other but both. Girls with autism are
being overlooked because the affect is a bit different than boys. Similar to
ADD and ADHD because with that many girls don’t have the hyperactivity that
boys do so often it’s overlooked also. There are so many different degrees of
autism from severe to mild each and every diagnosis is a difficult one. It is
not simply mapped out and clarified so easily to a parent or a physician. You
might have a 3 year old like my son who isn’t talking and then again you might
have a 3 year with aspergers who speaks fluently.
No
matter how much fact there is to this article its important because the CDC
will take it and it will be used to grant more funds towards care, at least that’s
the idea we hope. Once a parent has an autism in diagnosis in hand, the funds
to move forward with the right therapies is detrimental. That isn’t always
available to people and some insurance companies won’t even touch it. The sad
truth is the more the prevalence the more funding, research, and education will
be made available in the long run. Kind of a scary truth but that is how our
government works.
If
there is fact to this article at all we need to view it as important and take
is seriously because even kids who don’t seem to highly affected will struggle
in school and with peers. I have met some adults on this journey who didn’t receive
a diagnosis until much later in life and struggled for a very long time to understand
people and the difference they had. Once they finally discovered they had a difference
they had to find a way to understand that to.
If we
blow this article off as completely untrue than we risk the possibility of
blowing off kids who need the help. Blowing off the opportunity of more funding
being granted towards a cause people are literally selling items to seek help. We
are just a number to the CDC, health care system, and government. Our children
and the adults are literally a statistic and that’s it. There is no care or
empathy involved towards any of us so unfortunately that number is very
important in the big picture. Funding for Autism is at the bottom of the list
and we complain about it for good reason, so take that 1 in 50 no matter how
you really feel about it. If you have been coping with autism for a very long
time, just received a new diagnosis, or your child has had 7 meltdowns by noon
and you are crying on the bathroom floor with autism on your mind it doesn’t
matter to them. You’re either 1 in 88 or 1 in 50 on a piece of paper that
passes by a desk with the slim chance of a signature that reads…help.
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