Staying in the loop

Yesterday I went to an Autism and ADHD workshop. It was hosted at my church building and put together by church members though some presenters were not LDS and it was open to the public. 

I thoroughly enjoyed going to the meeting, mostly because it reminded me of all the wonderful experiences I had student teaching. I love the students I worked with and have fond memories of my time with them! 

Also, it's important for me to stay current with my field. Even though I don't plan to work after having my baby, I'm still passionate, and will still be passionate about kids with special needs. Ironically, or hypocritically, I haven't been reading recent news or events regarding teaching those with disabilities - hence no blog posts about it, haha. But hey, as much as I may try, I can't do everything. I just haven't admitted that yet.

So here's a mini story to get back into the groove of things. Jacob was 7 years old when a speech therapist taught him to type and therefore express himself. Jacob is nonverbal and is diagnosed with autism and mental retardation. Well you can read how the therapist taught him to type in this huffington post article. The therapist would ask Jacob to type something, and then she would physically guide him to type out the answer. (At this point in the story I scoffed - sure, she's "guiding" his hands...) Jacob has never been taught how to read and has showed few signs of communication throughout his life. Naturally I was quite skeptical of this whole scenario, and I still am, but apparently, he is now 19 and communicates with his parents via typing. How amazing is that? I gained confidence again that Jacob in fact did learn how to type and communicate with others and that his mental retardation was misdiagnosed. But then why, 14 years later, is the same speech therapist teaching him how to type? If he is intelligent, and can communicate and type on his own, then why does he still need her help?

Two things. 1. I sincerely hope I am misjudging the speech therapist and that these incongruencies are easily explained. 2. Regardless of the truthfulness of this story, people who are nonverbal have thoughts too. It just takes a little creativity to help them express those thoughts. 

I'll close with Jacob's own thoughts: "For people with autism, every day is an unending struggle to remember that we are not so different after all. You can help by smiling at us, by welcoming our presence and encouraging our participation. In the end, it comes down to recognizing God's image in every single human being."

What are your thoughts?

I find this quite hard to believe...

This article reviews the CDC study that found 1 in 6 US children (ages 3-17) have a developmental disability. I haven't read the actual study so I will be brief about this.

Background

There have been several studies showing that autism, adhd, and other diagnoses are more prevalent now than ever. The common man criticizes those findings saying, "they are finding what they want to find" or "autism is not more prevalent, but now that we know more about it, we can better find it."

Issue

True or not true: autism, adhd, and/or developmental disabilities are more common now than 10 or 20 years ago?

What I think

No. The article mentions causes behind the rise in diagnoses: "Researchers said the increase may be due in part to more preterm births and parents having children at older ages. They also said that improvements in screenings, diagnosis and awareness have pushed the numbers higher." If anything, I think it's the latter. I find it hard to believe that cases of these disabilities are rising by 30+% per year! At this rate, in a few years, all of our children will have some diagnosis.

What struck me was how the data was collected: "The surveys are representative samples of U.S. households and asked PARENTS to report diagnoses of ADHD, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, autism, seizures, stuttering or stammering, moderate to profound hearing loss, blindness, learning disorders and other developmental delays." PARENTS. Did you catch that? Do you see anything wrong with that? I do. Parents are not doctors and (no offense please) without the training and experience, can we trust their diagnosis of their own children? Yes, they know their child better than anyone. Yes they can research up on adhd (click here to learn what the symptoms are and you'll find that all children show some or most of them at one point in their lives). But I can't trust these surveys to accurately represent the disabilities that these children have.

Note: I am not discounting the reality of these disabilities, this is why I went into Special education after all...just the sudden and extreme rise in numbers.

Am I being unreasonable? What do you think: is the rise in cases of autism, adhd, and developmental disabilities legitimate?