Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests
my son had a couple of very annoying years between 4-7 where he would seem behind compared to other kids on certain things such as motor skills and physical (hand&#x2F;leg) coordination. he was also huge for his age, like trapped in a larger child&#x27;s body.<p>when it was time to send him to school our neighbors who knew him (because he hung out with their kid) suggested to send him to an IQ test because they figured he might be highly intelligent (&quot;same as their kid&quot;).<p>they believed that their own son was very bright too but I thought it&#x27;s only because both parents were closer to 50 than to 20. their child also had no real children friends and mixed mostly with adults - hence also talked like an adult (and seemed smarter than average for that reason alone - he was total sh1t with being a kid though but he knew how to recite grown up books and read&#x2F;write long before school ...)<p>anyway - bear with me, I promise to connect these things<p>eventually we sent our son to do an IQ test and it came back inconclusive. we were told to test him again in a years time. (he was a mixed kids growing up with 3 languages which might also have altered how he performed on the test). Long story short he had a difficult first year in school with the teachers telling us that either a) he is too smart and should be moved forward a class, or b) he needs to go to a special school because he is dumb, or c) he should probably be tested for both autism and ADD. We decided to do none of the above and give it another 2 years to see how it play out. Eventually he settled into his surrounding and turned out one of the best students in class.<p>another case: my best friend&#x27;s kid is diagnosed with autism (&quot;somewhere on the spectrum&quot; they say). He is incredibly active for his age and more than other kids. His parents who are both very ill (ALS and MS) are used to seeing a doctor every few weeks to get injections, ... they have more exposure to doctors than to any other grown ups in their life, and meanwhile their friends are also all people who have &quot;sick&quot; kids. Whenever I play with the kid I think he is pretty normal, except for that he is a lot smarter than anyone else. Like a smart boy stuck in a smaller childs body.<p>Another example: my gf is a nurse and occupational therapist. she literally works with disabled kids who are on the spectrum, have down-syndrome, cerebral palsy (to name the most common problems). She says if somebody has autism you can sure as hell tell. There is no &quot;maybe&quot;, or &quot;somewhere on the spectrum&quot;- yes some cases are milder but she thinks that some doctors just diagnose and presribe solutions for things they don&#x27;t fully understand themselves.<p>could it be that a lot of these kids simply go through stages in their childhood at different speeds? like not every kid fits into our &quot;systems-thinking&quot; model and maybe totally grows out of it a year later? The horrid thing here is that the moment way start treating their behavior as a disease it has good potential to actually become one, ... which brings me to the last example.<p>I worked with a US company remote. we were all on Jitsi every day even we weren&#x27;t meeting so the mgmt could keep tabs (this was the rule for some reason). The assistant to the CEO a mid 30ies lady insisted that her child had autism. She constants forgot to switch her mic to mute and I could see how she talked to that child. He would get regular slaps in the face and get screamed at - then he would be told to take his meds. Also I think they might have been on some deal where they get benefits because their kids was &quot;disabled&quot;.<p>idk what to make of this but the whole medical profession seems like a racket to me. especially in the US (where this disease seems more of a fashion than anything) ... I hope these kids don&#x27;t wake up one day and realize the crimes that have been committed against them.<p>I&#x27;m glad I put my foot down and not put my child on pills (just to put money in some idiotic Dr. med. pocket). I would have destroyed my child! (and I see what it&#x27;s like whenever I look at my best friends kid!