Slacker Blogger

Yes, once again, I've let several weeks go by without blogging. Oh well.

Let's see, Harrison has had his second session of swim lessons the past two weeks. Hutton wasn't able to repeat his class, as there wasn't an opening, so instead he went to the playground with me instead of clinging tightly to his swim instructor. Yeah, Hutton wasn't willing to float in the water during his lessons. Needless to say, there will be private lessons in his future.

Last month, during the second week of classes, Harrison got a report card, saying that he was doing fine in the class, but wouldn't bob his head under the water, and in order to move up to the preschool 2 class, he had to bob his head three times. I told him this, and he was quite indignant, claiming he had bobbed his head under twice, and could do it three times. OK, great! So, when we received the report card from this month's classes, guess what it said? If you said, "Harrison didn't do the bobs again!" you're correct! Arrgh. I asked him about it after class, and this time he didn't bother with false indignation, and just said, "I don't want to get water up my nose." All right.

Later, while watching some Olympic swimming, I pointed out to Harrison that all of the swimmers were putting their heads under the water. Hmm. I pointed out to Hutton that all of the swimmers could probably float in the water before they learned to swim, too. Well, we have more swim lessons in our future, I guess, if I want one of my boys to be the next Michael Phelps. Ha.

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On Monday, after leaving the pool after Harrison's class, I drove by this bear statue in downtown Kirkland. The sun was shining down through the open sunroof of the car, and I just got this feeling of...not really enlightenment, but along those lines. It was a sense that everything would be all right with Hutton. He's had a pretty good summer. He and Harrison have been playing very well together, though of course, they have their "brotherly moments" meaning there's is violent fighting over Xbox controllers, etc.

But, Tuesday, my sense of not-really-enlightenment was tempered a bit when Hubby and I took the boys to the UW to participate in a scientific study on Autism. Now, I don't really feel that "Science" has given us too much in the autism world, so far. At least mainstream science, or the scientists who seem to believe that autism is solely caused by genetics. But, this study was interesting, in that it involves families with one child affected by autism, and one or more children without autism, as well as neurotypical parents. So, since my family fits that mold, and I saw the poster about the study at the UW, I figured, what the heck. (Plus, the fact that they were going to pay us $250 for a few hours of our time and a little blood didn't hurt!) But really, I figured I'll do my part for science, but didn't expect much from science in return.

When I filled out the paperwork, there was a clear statement that by participating in this study, there really was not anything that would be offered for your child with autism, but this was to help future generations. Hmm. We'll see.

So, I entered the study with my normal degree of skepticism. We showed up at the UW and soon were being weighed and photographed, as well as having our heads measured. Then, we split up. Hubby and Harrison went to get blood samples drawn, and were then free to entertain themselves for the next two hours, whereas I went off to answer questions about Hutton's social, speech, and motor skills, and autistic behaviors for two hours, and Hutton got to play various games and answer questions for two hours. I finished my questions early, and went to sit in and watch Hutton on a monitor for the last twenty minutes or so of his interview.

Let me say, this was just odd. I know from previous testing done by a school psychologist that Hutton doesn't do well in these interview situations. He gets bored, and doesn't really enjoy answering questions or chatting for two hours. I watched him, as the interviewer asked him to tell her a story based on some pictures, show her how to wash his face at the imaginary sink she showed him on the table in front of him, then asked him questions about his friends, family and school.

Question: "Who are your friends, Hutton?" Answer: "Mommy, Daddy and Harrison!"
Question: "Do you have a girlfriend?" WTF? He's 6, and has autism!
Answer: "Amy!" Hey, pretty good!
"Is Amy in your class?"
"She's in my pony class!" She's my friend's daughter, but they did, in fact take a pony class together.
"Do you want to marry Amy?" Again, WTF? He's 6! I don't think he even knows what marry means.
"Yeah." I noticed Hutton answered yes or yeah to many things that I didn't think he understood.
"What do you think is good about being married?" Super duper WTF!
No answer. "What do you think is hard about being married?" Again, no answer, or yeah. Can't remember.
Finally moving beyond marriage questions for the almost 7-year-old boy, who of course, is highly marriage focused. What 7-year-old boy isn't?
"Are you bullied at school?" Yeah, I'm really sure Hutton has any idea of what bullying is.
"Yeah." Call CPS, stat!
"Do people make fun of you?"
"Yeah." Hutton has never hear the terms bully from me, and I've talked about being mean, but not "making fun of."
"What makes you angry?"
"I'm happy!"
"What does it feel like when you're angry?"
No answer.
"What does you feel like inside your body when you're angry?"
"My brain is inside my body!"
"What makes you sad?"
"Be happy!"
"What does it feel like inside your body when you're sad?"
"Yeah."

You get the idea. Oh, and throw in Hutton asking what time they were going to turn off the lights every other question, and looking at the various video cameras and asking when they were going to turn them off. At one point, another researcher mentioned that because of Hutton's high vocabulary, they gave him the questionnaire for older kids. OK, you can see how well that worked. I have no idea what the first hour and a half were like, but based on what I saw, he may as well have answered, "I like tacos!" to every question.

Afterwards, Hutton and I left together, and he asked again when they were going to turn off the lights, and I figured out it was because they were overhead florescent lights, and those tend to annoy Hutton, and he hadn't spent a lot of time under florescent lighting all summer.

We then went for the blood draw. Hutton has had blood drawn before for medical tests, but this time he wasn't going for it. They managed to get the three vials, and he got a lovely SpongeBob bandage, plus a big doggie sticker, and some juice. He looked pale and sweaty, though, so we waited a few minutes before leaving, and I told Hutton how strong and brave he was.

So, that was our contribution to science.

Putting Things in Perspective

I was reading Time magazine this morning, when I came across this startling statistic:

"33.2 Years of life expectancy for women in Swaziland, where the HIV infection rate is nearly 40% and life spans are the lowest on earth"

Thirty-three. That's how old I am now. If I lived in Swaziland, chances are good I'd be dead or dying, as would most of my peers. That's pretty crazy.

Speaking of horrible living conditions, I read the following on Kim's blog, then saw it on another online Autism group. It's long, but well worth reading. Autism is a huge, and growing, issue worldwide that needs to be faced. This really struck me:

We were in North Korea where their solution is to send children with autism upon the first symptoms to a remote institution where their life expectancy is less than 2 years. Most starve.

Even in 2nd world countries with strong economies -- lots of Starbucks -- conditions can be horribly bad - I have been in Autism institutions where these children are literally warehoused in shocking conditions.

You are permanently changed from the experience of walking through an institution and seeing 3,000 children with autism - some tethered to their beds lying in fecal matter as a result of chronic diarrhea and untreated medical problems.

Yep, reading that makes my own struggles to help Hutton with biomedical treatments for Autism seem no less important, but far more reachable. My hope is that the money going to Autism research will actually go that: real research with real solutions for a real problem.

You'd Think Nearly Every Child Would Have Autism

There was a study released last week, led by an economics professor at Cornell University, that said the huge increase in Autism is the result of...that's right -- TV! Please, go kill your television, immediately! We must end Autism!

Oh wait, let's not get hasty. Let's think about this a moment. The study tries to link a very complicated disease that involves not only brain development, but the immune system and the gastro-intestinal system as well, with findings based on statistics. Hmm. An ECONOMICS professor using STATISTICS is telling us the cause of Autism. OK, I'm not going to jump on your bandwagon just yet, dude. And the researchers, "admit that their findings are not “definitive evidence” because they could find only indirect evidence of the amount of time that autistic children spend viewing television." [The Sunday Times, UK Oct. 22, 2006]

Yes, that's right. This seriously flawed study used statistics to link the high rates of Autism in California, Oregon, and Washington to the high incidence of cable TV and round the clock kids' programming starting in the 80s. But wait, they didn't use actual stats of TV watching in kids with Autism, but rainfall stats. Huh? I'm not following. Oh, I see, areas with high rainfall (CA, OR and WA) must have higher TV watching, because that's what you do with kids when it's raining, right? You couldn't possibly, say, play with your kids, inside, with -- what are those things called? Oh yes, toys -- when it's raining? No, no, you must be watching TV. Because it's raining. The higher rainfall causing more mold and mildew, and keeping kids indoors where there's poorer air quality wouldn't have anything to do with it. It's all TV's fault. Well, I could almost see part of the TV thing. After all, TV casings contain the toxic flame retardant deca-BDE (which was banned in the EU this summer), that, along with all the hundreds of other toxins floating around in our homes, could have something to do with Autism. But this study says, no, it's definitely "television watching" that's the problem.

So, we have the above "scientific study" released last week, as well as one from Vanderbilt University, done by *cough* real scientists. The Vanderbilt study, "of 743 families, in which 1,200 members were diagnosed with autism, has found evidence of a mutated gene [MET] that is involved in brain development, the immune system and the gastro-intestinal system..." [The Sunday Times] Hmm. So, do I think Autism could be from the above mentioned gene mutation, or do I think it's from TV? I wonder.

Oh, and a friend of mine has a 2 1/2 year old son with Autism who has NEVER WATCHED TV in his life. Yeah, I wonder.

No offense to any economists out there, but where Autism is concerned, I'm going with the developmental neurobiologist's research.

By the way, the picture above is not of one of my kids. It's probably some other child who, if the cockamamie Cornell study is right, is doomed to have Autism.