Anyone read 'Send in the Idiots'? Idea that changlings or children raised by wolves actually had SN

[BatFoxHippo]

Not sure I explained it very well but for anyone who hasn't read the book, there is a theory that children who were said to have been snatched by fairies and replaced by an imposter child actually had SN and their parents/society were trying to explain their differences however they could.

Similarly children raised by wild animals were not how they were because of being raised without human contact but they were abandoned because parents could not cope with them. I studied child development and they used these rare cases of children recovered from the wild as proof of how important human interaction was. I remember wondering how the heck you accidently lose a baby and it crawls off to join a wolf pack.

So your theory in a nutshell is that the mental condition of these discovered children is nothing to do with the years/months of being raised by and living amongst animals but everything to do with Special Needs they had been born with?

And that this SN was the cause of their abandonment by their parents the first place? It had nothing to do with lack of human contact

And this is your counter argument to what the Child Development studies claim? This is your finding? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I've come across lots of changeling stories in folklore and I did wonder if their origin was as you say. Interesting, but very sad as I think some of the changeling folklore must have served to help poor families come to terms with their rejection of disabled children they had no means of supporting. Other changeling stories were probably imaginative ways of explaining difference. I haven't read Send in the Idiots though.

NatGeo its not my theory, its an idea discussed in a book written by an autistic person about his experience in a special school. He meets up with his former teachers as an adult and one of them tells him about these theories. Its a good book, funny and full of interesting ideas about politics and relationships and all sorts.

I thought it was interesting because realistically how would an a child, NT or otherwise, end up living in the wild? If it was a regular practise (deeply unpleasant as we find it now) to abandon children who weren't developing typically, it would explain why a few children ended up being being adopted by animals. How would they get there otherwise?

Corrimony I think it would also let the parents have the fantasy that their perfect child, the one they should have had, is living and being looked after (as I understand it the human child is taken to live with the fairies or imps or whatever?)

Yes, BatFoxHippo, the human child is taken to live in fairyland and I think you're right about the fantasy of the perfect child. I wondered about postnatal depression/psychosis when I read some changeling stories too. I agree with you Polter, and I love to learn about people from the stories we tell ourselves.

I've never read it, but when I started meeting children with autism (dd's friends from school), it occurred to me quite independently, that people would explain the unusual behaviours and failure to conform to social norms in children with autism, as "changelings"!

Yes zzzzz it really is worth reading, even for people without a special interest in autism.

Just googling 'exposure' now. I never realised it was so widespread.