Does any one actually know kids like this?

[westcoastnortherner]

Yes, Yes I know it's a Daily Mail article, but are there really that many kids like this out there?!

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2101292/They-wear-nappies-drink-cola--dont-know-open-book-One-teachers-terrifying-insight-5-year-olds-failed-parents.html#comments

He hasn't got a diagnosis though, catgirl, and it doesn't really prove that there are an army of people out there chasing diagnoses because they can't accept that their child is a bit odd. I was really responding to lesley33's post anyway.

ASDs are of unknown aetiology/cause but really there is limited support for environmental factors "causing" ASD in the way that has been mentioned - certainly parenting style as a causal factor has been entirely disproven. Potentially there may be factors related to, say, pollution or diet or experiences of stress in the womb that need to be investigated further, but it's not a matter of childrearing. There are significant differences in the neurology of individuals with AS.

There are other disorders which have similar presentations to AS which may have a more environmental basis, attachment disorder being the most prevalent of these (but controversial in its own way).

I dont disagree with anything you have said birds

Catgirl- what you are saying is that your relatives are creating a self fulfilling prophecy.

"The environment given to a child with any condition can make a huge difference. So if your child is struggling with speech it is more important to get weaning and chewing right because they cannot catch up in the same way that a child with no "problems" can."

Not entirely sure what you mean by this? The majority of speech difficulties and disorders have nothing to do with oromotor ability.

Yes birds - in this particular case I believe they are creating issues where they did not exist in the first place.

One of my boys only stopped using nappies at 7..he has a long list of disabiltities but was put into a mainstream primary school...so he would be on this stupid list in the daily fail....yet I notice they don't mention how many kids in the stupid report have SEN....load of tripe, complete sensationlist bullshit. ! There is much much more to this !

And you know, catgirl, if what you were saying came from your extensive observations of him across a range of situations and contexts, knowledge of AS and other disorders which may present similarly, testing of his cognitive ability and linguisitic and communication proficiency using agreed tools and discussion with others with professional knowledge and skills in understanding AS, I might agree with you. If all of those things have been repeatedly done, and no diagnosis has been given, perhaps (though I have known pretty clear-cut cases of AS not to be diagnosed until the early teens for many as professionals will often advocate for a wait-and-see approach with borderline cases as these difficulties often become more apparent over time). However, it doesn't actually sound as though you really know a lot about AS at all, and yet you have made your own diagnosis.

As has his mother and grandmother working

why is their diagnosis more valid than mine?

this topic does canvas opinions

and we've all got one.

Cloth nappies...

I used traditional terries with dd1 and she was fully trained by two yes.
With dd2 I used them sometimes and and sometimes disposables as she was at nursery and childminder earlier and she was past three.

Of course all children are different and two is hardly a scientific sample, but my mums been saying for year disposables hold potty training back cos the kids don't know they are wet...

I am not talking to his mother or grandmother, catgirl, so I can't really comment on the validity of what they are saying. I presume, though, that his mother spends more time with him than you do?

Maryz I would never seek to comment on anyone elses situation and can appreciate that it must be highly frustrating to have these comments made to you by your family.

I am commenting on my DNs situation and I think it is different because of the way his GM is and the history. I would not presume to make a judgement on anyone elses individual circumstances

Yes Maryz, just making the point that this -

children who, given the basics of parenting would be NT, but are being handicapped by their parents lack of knowledge or time or willingness to teach essential life skills

has no relationship to AS or its dx, no matter how much some people would like to believe it so.

1944girl, I didn't find using terries that difficult. Once in a routine, the washing etc was quite straightforward. I also didn't find that it made much difference to length of toilet training (3y3m for latest day dry) and one was dry day and night at 2yo in a mix of cloth and disposable.

maryz - this thread is about the article in the DM. which makes some very dodgy claims re: presence (or not) of SNs. and many posters (not just here, but over on SN too) have attested to the fact it is hard to get your dc seen by paed before school age.

what I have been tying to point out is that is is not clear whether these children have SN or not. some will, some won't.

and agree with working re: environmental causes too. there is no way I meant parenting/childrearing practices to be included in that - more the pollution/diet/environment side of things.

All this talk about the fight for diagnosis is worrying. I am getting worried about my DS because his speech delay is continuing and because of various other behaviours. Not massively worried, but it's on my mind IYSWIM. I just feel like something isn't right. But I couldn't even get him a hearing test (to rule this out as a cause of his speech delay), the GP refused.

As for me - I have some Aspergers type traits but not others, I think for me though it is learnt. It wouldn't be enough for a diagnosis, but the ways in which I feel 'not normal' have quite a big impact on my life.

I think that starting toilet training as soon as a child could sit made toilet training easier for an AS child. Toilet timing method which relied on reflexes of the child to catch wees made it easier conditioned children into not weeing into their clothes. Prehaps there needs to be research to find the most effective way of toilet training rather than the least messiest (ie. pull ups).

There is no way that parenting causes ASD. That theory has been well and truely debunked by twin studies. However I think that some parents of AS children are on the spectrum themselves as AS is genetic. Having an AS parent has advantages as well as disadvantages. An AS parent is often consistant in expectations. However having AS can make it harder for a parent to get their child's needs met because of weak communication skills.

I feel the problem is parents not making any attempt to seek help. My local children's centre had a session on potty training, but very few local parents turned up. A child who is having lots of accidents at four years old needs to be evaluated for special needs.

I think the figures are vastly inflated and the causes are oversimplified in the article.

There are a lot of children whose skills are not what they could be because of social disadvantage and environmental neglect, but the article tries to sell it that this is quite common and across the social strata which I doubt there is hard empirical evidence for.

The only children in my career I have seen who were neurotypical but in nappies at primary were those who had suffered severe neglect and were attending clinic with their foster carers e.g. they had actually been removed because of abuse/neglect.

There is an issue with children beginning school later and with delayed development, but we don't really know all the reasons behind this. I notice the good old DF commenters on the article blaming nursery attendance etc but actually, in areas where this sort of developmental impoverishment is witnessed good nursery care has been shown to impact positively on outcomes for children.

I absolutely know there are families whose children do not access toys or books and where children are strapped into buggies in front of the television with dummies in their mouths. I've been in those homes, I've seen it. Usually though, those families are quite poor and living chaotic lives - often blighted by drug or alcohol addiction and some of the other vices that go with that, prostitution, parents in prison, limited social cohesion in the community. It goes a bit deeper than "laissez-faire" or "trendy" parenting choices....

working9while5 - Actually, there has been some recent research papers (can't find the links right now though) that shows that there is both a structural difference in the brains of people diagnosed with Autism AND another research paper that shows a deletion on a particular chromasome in the majority of people with Autism in the studies. We are coming ever closer to finding the physiological reasons for Autism, thanks to medical advances.

I'm quite sure that in 30 years time, we will KNOW what causes Autism. And IMO, there IS a genetic link in at least some cases. In my family alone, 50% of the last 3 generations have a diagnosis of some form of Autism, totally independantly, diagnosed in different hospitals, by different teams of Doctors, with no connection between the 'patients' as they ALL have different surnames.

My Maternal Uncle was diagnosed in adulthood (in his 40's) with Aspergers Syndrome. My Dbro was diagnosed with Aspergers BEFORE his Uncle, when he was 7yo. My Dbro was the first person in the family to get a diagnosis, and it triggered my Uncle to go for tests. When my DD was 4yo, she was diagnosed with HFA (High Functioning Autism) - this was 4 years after my Dbro's diagnosis - which at the time, I had NO knowledge of, as I wasn't even in CONTACT with my maternal family AT ALL. I then had two more dc, and my 3rd DC, my DS2, was ALSO diagnosed as being 'on the Autistic Spectrum' when he was just 3yo. A mere 4 years after my DD's diagnosis.

It didn't help with my DS2 that as WELL as my dodgy genetics, his FATHER had been diagnosed as Autistic when he was 12yo, and attended a SN school for dc with Autism...so poor DS2 got dodgy genetics from BOTH parents!

I DO take great offence at people that say that environmental factors cause Autism. When it just ISN'T the case.

Environmental factors may cause children to display some similar behaviours to someone with Autism - but they still don't necessarily have Autism. Unless they do - in which case their environment wouldn't have changed that! A crap environment won't CAUSE Autism - but it will stop a child with Autism from progressing in the same way they would in a loving 'normal' environment. There IS a difference!

Sorry, working9while5 - I should have read your posts on the last page before posting that - I totally misread your posts. I apologise. But what I have written still has meaning.

And as for the Terry nappies debate - my DD WAS in terry nappies. As I have said before, she wasn't dry during the day until she was 9yo, and at night till 12yo. My DS1 was in disposables - and was dry day AND night by 18 months. If a child has a toiletting issue, I disagree that terries will make the BLINDEST bit of difference.

And how would a teacher be able to tell that a child was wetting through an undiagnosed SN, or through lazy parenting? If that child is wet, then they are still WET and they still require changing. It's going to take the same amount of work either way. And surely if it was just through 'lazy parenting', then the child would get the hang of toilet training pretty quickly once at school. If they didn't, then surely that POINTS to an undiagnosed SN?

And one more comment - could the sharp rise in accidents in the first year of infant school be correlated with the dropping age at which children are expected to START school? When I went to school, no school took ANY children under 5yo. So the YOUNGEST child in the school had just had their 5th birthday. Now some children start school full-time the day after their 4th birthday - a full YEAR earlier. And I think some people that are slightly older, i.e. my parent's age and above (48+) forget that the school starting age has dropped by a whole YEAR in that intervening 25 year period since I started school.

@HuntyCat. No, obviously, if a child has toiletting problems due to SN or whatever, nappies won't make any difference. The theory I'd heard was that disposables had pushed back the typical age for potty training for NT children. So whereas standard age for potty training for an NT child used to be 18months - which left plenty of time for slower-than-average children to be out of nappies before starting school or nursery - the standard age is now about 2 1/2 years, and if your child is slower than average you might be struggling.

I'm not an expert but this theory seemed plausible (and I do know an expert paedeatric urologist who thinks it's probably true, although never been rigorously tested.)