A few weeks ago, I received an email from a worried grandmother. Among her other concerns, she wondered whether she might have been the cause of her twin grandchildrens' autism:
The children were difficult to handle as infants, and still are. However in their infancy they were constant criers which caused great upheavel in the home. At times my daughter, at my suggestion, would just let them cry it out for no matter what we did they were never consoled. Is this an environmental trigger? If so, I am also the root of the cause of the disability,Of course, I explained that "environmental triggers" do not include allowing children to "cry it out," and that she could not possibly have caused her grandchildren's autism. But reading that note made me realize that this grandmother is not alone in her misconceptions about what autism is - and about its probable (or possible) causes.
While there are tremendous disagreements about what causes autism (and what, if anything, cures it), I believe we're all in agreement on the contents of this new article.
My idea of environmental triggers do not include parenting or discipline techniques. Triggers to me is being exposed to a substance or element. This would be more on the lines of refrigerator mother’s and we also know this is not a cause for autism.
Children with autism who has symptoms as an infant can show different signs. For instance my child was completely opposite, he never cried unless it was night, a loud noise or bright lights and at those times it seemed he over reacted and had a hard time to stop crying.
I would venture to say if a parent let a child cry it out, or not, these children were probably going to have autism regardless and knowing why the child has autism may be a question needing to be answered for yet many more years to come.
Absolutely agree, Sandy! The term “Environmental triggers” is usually intended to mean “toxins in the environment.” In the case of autism, there are many theories about what such triggers could be (vaccines, environmental mercury, pitocin at birth, ultrasounds, etc.) – but no way to know which, if any, is responsible for any individual child’s autism.
Lisa (autism guide)
Wierd…ok by what evidential standard are we saying these things do not cause autism? Number of studies? P values? RR?
But if you look at the research the vaccine/autism correlation is much more poorly documented than in any of these other things. Some of them I can’t even find a study on.
Clearly there’s some weird bias in the blog regarding vaccines. It’s also weird that the blogger has no desire or knowledge to educate people on how to discern compelling studies from not-so compelling ones.