babyshrink.com

Following up on yesterday’s post is an interesting new finding from the University of North Carolina, where researchers are confirming more evidence for an actual structural brain difference in babies with Autism.

Please excuse the “science geek” in me, but this stuff is really important for us to understand. It will help us to better diagnose and help even very young children with Autism-related difficulties, and it will help us to screen out those who SEEM to have Autism, but don’t (see yesterday’s post).

For my non-science-geek, non-shrink parent readers, this is the bottom line here: It’s important to really be watching the quality of your baby’s social development. Your baby’s glances, smiles, gestures and babbles in his first year of life tell you a TON about whether he’s developing normally. The article highlights the importance of “Joint Attention”, which is what your baby does to attract and sustain your attention, in order to share something interesting with you. If he likes doggies, when he sees one, he’ll try to get your attention so that YOU can see the doggie — and get excited by it — too. He’ll want to share his interests with you, even if he doesn’t yet have the words to tell you about them. By the end of his first year, you should see him doing this more and more. Children with Autism have trouble with this — and now we have more information as to why.

If you’re interested in more, check out the summary article here.

And as always, post a comment with your questions or thoughts, if you’d like.

Aloha,

Dr. Heather
The BabyShrink

I’ve written before about the confusion and difficulty around the diagnosis of Autism in young children (before the age of 3).

My regular readers know that I’m a strong proponent of Early Intervention screening, and also of early intervention therapy services. This means having your local Child Development center see your child BEFORE the age of three, should you have any concerns about her development, social interaction, or communication skills.

But you also know that I am loathe to jump on the autism-hysteria bandwagon. I worry that there are many other problems that are being missed because we’re jumping to the Autism diagnosis too quickly. Issues of sensory, cognitive, medical, environmental, or even genetic problems can be missed when a diagnosis is made too quickly. Also, the range of child development is so wide, that what can SEEM abnormal may not be. And I blame my field; many of us are so concerned about the number of developmentally delayed children out there, and so few of us are adequately trained to truly evaluate for Autism in the early years, that too may children are mistakenly diagnosed as Autistic. And then their REAL problems go undetected — and untreated.

If I had a million bucks (or ten) I’d start a training foundation centered on the intensive training of Early Intervention clinicians in the detection and treatment of Autism-related conditions — and other problems that might SEEM like Autism, but are NOT. We need a nation-wide (heck, world-wide) training initiative so that psychologists, pediatricians, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, special instruction teachers — indeed the whole range of Early Intervention professionals — can get the advanced training we all need in this very specialized area.

In the meantime, you can read this very interesting article at Time.com summarizing some of the newest research on signs of Autism in the very young infant. It also helps to explain why this is truly a very difficult disorder to diagnose in the early years. And if you missed it, there’s also a link to a popular post of mine on the diagnosis of Autism.

Click here for the Time.com article, and

click here for my own article on Autism.

Aloha,

Dr. Heather
The BabyShrink