Study: Parents don’t notice autism signs in babies
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Another study corroborates the view among some researchers that parents aren’t very good judges when it comes to spotting the early signs of autism in their own children. Published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, this new data points to the fact that signs of autism are often present in a child well before a host of childhood vaccines (including the dreaded MMR) are ever injected into those nascent immune systems.
One problem with our current conception of how autism develops is that we have tended to base our assumptions on the self-reporting of parents. But parents, for whatever reason, don’t seem much good at noticing the early markers for subtly mutating conditions like autism:
For starters, the study found little to support the observations of some parents that their baby showed symptoms of extreme social disengagement from birth. But it also cast doubt on the accuracy of parents’ reports that their baby’s descent into autism was sudden and dramatic.
In specific, the researchers found that the biggest changes in babies who develop autism come between 6 and 18 months of age. But of the parents who participated in the study, 83% did not notice the same first-year-of-life changes observed by the researchers.
The study does conclude, however, that autism is not present at birth, and develops slowly over the course of the first three years of life. Whether there is an environmental cause, or the seeds of this terrible condition are manifest and lie dormant for a short time after birth has not been determined.
It may have something to do with the age of the parents, but no credible study yet exists (and many have been undertaken) that shows a correlation between vaccines and autism.
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David,
This study totally supports the experience we shared with my sister and her autistic child. He didn’t speak and wasn’t walking, or even crawling around, until almost three years old and she wouldn’t even discuss the possibility that there was any sort of problem.
It caused quite a rift and we ended up never talking about our own son’s development, who at a year younger was fast-tracking all the little milestones.
Finally, a first grade teacher suggested at a parent conference that they have him tested because he seemed disengaged and was progressing slowly. My sister had viewed his problems as behavioral and only after seeing several specialists accepted that it was more serious.
Although we still don’t really discuss it because she’s so sensitive, I think she’s realized that she was ignoring obvious signs and clinging to doctor comments like “kids all develop at their own pace”.
My understanding is that early recognition and specialized treatment helps considerably in improving long term results. I realize it’s impossible to be objective about your own children and any criticism is painful, but it’s a terrible time to be in denial.
JoPo,
Interesting. I think you’re right about parents. I can say that my wife and I had our own episode with this kind of thing when it came to our firstborn, who didn’t crawl or roll over for the first 8 months of his life. We chalked it up to differing developmental speeds, and then found out (thanks to a very observant pediatrician) it was because he was extremely far-sighted. Fortunately, vision is something that is more easily corrected than autism.
The problem is that parents (and doctors) don’t detect the early signs of autism, then notice them later…and blame them on vaccines. [Every single study shows no link.]
Refusing vaccinations puts our entire society at risk because of misapprehension, fear, and the need to blame something/someone.
There is a lot of great stuff about this at True/Slant. This is one of the best articles of 2009 (the one by Amy Wallace).
http://trueslant.com/paulsmalera/2009/11/04/qa-with-amy-wallace-author-of-wireds-autismvaccination-article-an-epidemic-of-fear/