Autistic Children

Hello MrNiceGuy. I do not know everything anymore than any body else does, but I would ask you a question. If autism is not caused by mercury poisoning, how come autism started and was discovered about 1943, about the same time that childhood vaccines started to become widely used? (mercury, called thimerosal, has traditionally been used as a preservative in vaccines.) If autism was genetically based it would have been mentioned in the medical literature from the 1800's.

It is mentioned in the medical literature, it just iasn't labelled Autism. People with symptoms that we now call Autism would be labelled 'simple'. Often, they would be hidden, kept out of records, and kept of of family tree charts, because people were ashamed of them.

That's just one of the several autism myths. There is no evidence whatsoever that age of parent has anything to dow with Autism. Not even the slightest hint of it,a ctually.

I appreciate your sentiments, and a lot of what you say is true. However, I do feel that even if every parent of a child with Autism prayed nightly for their ASD to go away, it would not happen. It isn't about faith (or lack thereof) in God. Miracles can happen, but you're asking a hell of a lot there.

Please don't get me wrong that I said autism is a horrible sickness, I am a mom of a son with autism, I have done my best to train my son with whatever knowledge I have he has learnt a lot, some things like speech even though we do our work of training them God has to open their mouths to speak, I meant campared to mental retardation or any other sickness in autism some skills are learnt by the children very fast but speech and some social behaviors they are very far behind I love my son with autism very much and I train him to the best of my capacities but In India were we live we lack all the resources of training In US all the facilites available so it is okay , I never lose hope to teach my child so don't get me wrong,I just vented out my feelings.

I admire your dedication to prayer for autistic people. I do howevever object your idea of autism being a horrible sickness. The reason so many autistics kids don't get anywhere is because other people view them as hopeless and that there isn't anything we can do about it but try to educate them. If you believe that something, in this case autism, is horrible, then you are setting up these kids for failure. There are many phases for parents to experience when their child is diagnosed, one being denial, and that is understandable, then there is grief, parents have to mourn the loss of the dreams they had for their child, but to give thhe children a life prophecy of never being able to do what "normal" kids do is wrong. I have just read a book called "Son Rise" by Barry Kaufman. It is an excellent book and while not all autistic kids are the same it helps parents embrace their child instead of giving them a self-fulfulling prophecy that they will never be able to do this and that. Mr. Kauffman's son was diagnosed autistic when he was younger and now he's graduated college and has no signs of autism. It's all about approach and instead of feeling sorry for what you don't have and having a negative impact on your child's life, do something that will help them, whatever it takes, cause if that child was "normal" you wouldn't have a problem embracing them. C'mon people it's not the end of the world. God chose you as parents for an autistic child because he knew you could handle it. If you are truly interested about autism read that book, it helps.