CDC: Rise in Autism Prevalence

The number of autism cases in the United States appeared to jump dramatically in 2014 according to new estimates released Friday, but researchers said that changes in the format of the questionnaire likely affected the numbers.
The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Center for Health Statistics shows that the prevalence of autism in children ages 3 to 17 went up nearly 80 percent from 2011-2013 to 2014. Instead of 1 in 68 children having autism – a number that has alarmed public health officials in recent years and strained state and school system resources — researchers now estimate that the prevalence is now 1 in 45.

Three Siblings Living with Autism

A mother of three children, Stephanie Hervey, is frequently overwhelmed: three of her children have autism, a social and communication disorder.“Some days are so hard. They will cry for hours and hours. And there's nothing you can do. You start to wonder, did we do something and could we have prevented this?,”said Hervey.

Half of All Autistic Kids Will Run Away; Tragedy Often Follows

Within hours one day in April, two children went missing hundreds of miles apart from each other.On the surface they appear to have little in common.

Savannah Martin, 7, died in 2011 after
she drowned in a pond near her home.

Angelo Messineo is a 16-year-old from Georgia. He was found alive on a horse farm four days after he disappeared from school on April 16. Alyvia Navarro, 3, of Wareham, Mass., was pronounced dead hours after she was reported missing, drowned in a pond near her grandmother's home, on the same day.

They are just two of the thousands of children who went missing last month.But Angelo and Alyvia have one thing in common, and it's a trait shared with at least one child who goes missing every day in America. They are autistic.

Holiday Message to Autism Parents

Susan Moffitt, an editor at Autism Key, is the single mother of high functioning autistic twin sons who are now fifteen. When not advocating for them, she pursues her multiple creative passions of fine art, piano composition, and writing.

For those of you who followed my articles in the past, you will know I’ve been out of the autism loop for a while, consumed by the affairs of my immediate family of sixteen-year-old twin sons with high functioning autism. 
Having seen them to their junior year of high school, I can tell all of you with younger children that it does get better.  Not withstanding the day in and day out rigors of dealing with autism, the myriad ways you work to bring your child to higher ground do, in fact, manifest in the expanse of time.

New Pets May Help Autistic Kids Socially

Getting a pet may help children with autism to develop their social skills, if the furry friend is brought into the home when the child is about 5 years old, according to a new French study.
Researchers found that children with autism who got a pet after age 5 showed improvement in their abilities to share with others and to offer comfort, whereas those who had a pet since they were born, and those who never had a pet, showed no such improvement.

Tommy Hilfiger Opens Up on Daughter's Autism

Designer Tommy Hilfiger is featured
in a public service announcement
for Autism Speaks.

Tommy Hilfiger and his wife Dee have more in common than just design success -- they both have children affected with autism.
Hilfiger said that one of the reasons he chose to appear in a public service announcement for the philanthropy Autism Speaks was to honor his16 year-old daughter, Kathleen.
He said that she when was five years old, she was given the diagnosis of being “developmentally delayed.”

Autism and the Hypothetical Child

From Huffingtonn Post's Todd Drezner.

Given how many autistic people there are in the world, it's odd how much of the conversation about autism revolves around children who don't exist. The most common such child is the one who is "indistinguishable from his peers." This is the child who will supposedly emerge after successful therapies or treatments for autism leave the child essentially "normal."
This hypothetical normal child is closely related to another, younger one--the 1- or 2-year-old who was typically developing before the signs of autism became apparent. These two types of hypothetical children are linked by the assumption that their autism obscures their "real" selves. The hope for parents is that if the autism can somehow be removed, the real child will re-emerge.