Autism Test - Good or Bad?

My name is Stephanie and I am currently a student at Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada, who is studying to become and Educational Assistant. I have had the privilege, in reading and learning more about the current issues around Autism and receiving a person perceptive. This has help me tremendously and I feel that it is important to support one another and share resources. Therefore I would like your help and expanding my knowledge.

Last night I happened to catch CTV News @ 11:00, where they had a story about "Autism Test". They had discussed that in come cases Autism can be detected as early as 6 months, and would like to put an Autism test in effect. They propose the statement that "all babies should be screen for autism - twice before the age of 2 years."

In your personal experience, Do you think that this would be a good idea or necessary? What do you think are the pros and cons?

It is argued that this will help children in receive better treatment, and become diagnosed where otherwise might have gone undetected. However on the flip side, there is still not enough resources, and will create a 'boom' causing an overload on doctors and educators.

What do you think - Should babies been screen for Autism?

Thanks in advance,

Steph

One one hand I think it is good because I knew from the time our son was around 18 months old that things just weren't adding up- but I was so afraid of my child being labeled. Besides, I loved him SO much the way that he was. Plus, I was getting mixed messages from asking other parents, "Hey, do you think he is developing normally at this point?" where previously he was indeed developing just the way he was supposed to. Something happened between 15-18 months of age. It would have been nice to have had a doctor who would have recognized that things just weren't working right at that point so that maybe we could have gotten help sooner.

On the other hand, I think it is hard because again, my son did not show symptoms that early at all. He was normal. Plus, there is such a wide range of developmental things going on in every child that age that I think you will get a lot of false diagnosis'. I think that the other thing is that for the "conspiracy theorist parent" they will think that perhaps this is being pushed so that speech, OT, and physical therapists can have more money. I think we need to look a lot more into what is going on with predispositional genetics that make our children more sensitive than others to vaccines, for example and other environmental factors. We also need to be focussing on what is messed up inside of their bodies by finding if there are metabolic disorders (a common misdiagnosis for autism), other things that can be found in the blood, what is going on in their brain like an EKG for seizure activity and brain damage, etc.

I don't think it is physically going to hurt any child to be screened...but if labeled, that label can freak a lot of parents out and cause a lot of unnecessary heartache and confusion as well as stigma when a child is introduced into a school setting. Personally, my son who has a higher functioning form of autism is being "dumbed down" by his speech pathologist. For a year now, she has been trying to get my son to say "I want ______" instead of "(his name) wants ball)". He has already met this goal and has done this consistantly for the last 10 months. It's redundant and leads me to believe that either she is not wanting to push him or she thinks he is stupid because there are times when she wants him to say something and he will just look at her and say, "no! Don't want to".

Thats what I think

One one hand I think it is good because I knew from the time our son was around 18 months old that things just weren't adding up- but I was so afraid of my child being labeled. Besides, I loved him SO much the way that he was. Plus, I was getting mixed messages from asking other parents, "Hey, do you think he is developing normally at this point?" where previously he was indeed developing just the way he was supposed to. Something happened between 15-18 months of age. It would have been nice to have had a doctor who would have recognized that things just weren't working right at that point so that maybe we could have gotten help sooner.

On the other hand, I think it is hard because again, my son did not show symptoms that early at all. He was normal. Plus, there is such a wide range of developmental things going on in every child that age that I think you will get a lot of false diagnosis'. I think that the other thing is that for the "conspiracy theorist parent" they will think that perhaps this is being pushed so that speech, OT, and physical therapists can have more money. I think we need to look a lot more into what is going on with predispositional genetics that make our children more sensitive than others to vaccines, for example and other environmental factors. We also need to be focussing on what is messed up inside of their bodies by finding if there are metabolic disorders (a common misdiagnosis for autism), other things that can be found in the blood, what is going on in their brain like an EKG for seizure activity and brain damage, etc.

I don't think it is physically going to hurt any child to be screened...but if labeled, that label can freak a lot of parents out and cause a lot of unnecessary heartache and confusion as well as stigma when a child is introduced into a school setting. Personally, my son who has a higher functioning form of autism is being "dumbed down" by his speech pathologist. For a year now, she has been trying to get my son to say "I want ______" instead of "(his name) wants ball)". He has already met this goal and has done this consistantly for the last 10 months. It's redundant and leads me to believe that either she is not wanting to push him or she thinks he is stupid because there are times when she wants him to say something and he will just look at her and say, "no! Don't want to".

Thats what I think

but unless the involve looking at the triad of impairments instead of blood and skin then all tests are going to be flawed

Autism is neurological not phychiatric

so any testing has to be on an observational level because no scientist in the world kows fully how the brain works so how can anyone hope to rewire

The screening tools such has the ADOS abd the CHAt both are the best tests on the diagnostic market

shell

If any one is interest here is the video of the News Broadcast... Go to http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/bplayer/ElevenP.html and click on the video dated OCTOBER 29,2007. You can always fast-forward through other stories to get to "Autism Test". Thanks again.