World Autism Awareness Day

A few months ago the U.N. declared April 2 "World Autism Awareness Day." I am on vacation from my job, where I spend my days with lots of autistic boys, so personally I am not spending a lot of my awareness on autism today. But it's always there to some degree, when I see kids out in public and something about their behavior sends up a red flag for me.

I was pretty blown away by the new statistics on autism which I heard today. http://www.worldautismawarenessday.org/site/c.egLMI2ODKpF/b.3917065/
When I was in grad school 12 years ago, I learned that the prevalence of autism was 5 in 10,000. When I was doing my round of clinical training at the CDMRC/CHDD, we diagnosed about 1/3 to 1/2 of the children brought there for assessment as falling somewhere on the autism spectrum. I remember worrying that I was seeing something that wasn't there, like when I first learned about various disorders and felt I had all of the symptoms. I remember thinking that this very rare disorder was not seeming so very rare. When I started working, I had many autistic students.

Today, I heard that the incidence of autism is currently 1 in 150, and 1 in 94 for boys. One boy out of ninety-four born today has autism. That is INSANE. Or enough to wreak major havoc on education, society, and the future. What is going to happen to all of these people as they get older, and who is going to care for them?

We will, I guess. We will have to think about giving our time, our resources, and our care to people who need it. We will have to educate our own children about disability and difference, so that they can connect with and relate to people who are different from themselves. And we will have to choose our political leaders carefully, because whether or not we care to fund social services and education, we will have this population of autistic people living with us. So we can give them good education and support as adults, or we can deal with the consequences of not doing so.

I should not neglect to mention that despite many the difficulties and challenges which my students face and which they present to me as an educator, they are people. Individuals with distinct personalities and quirks that are funny, fun, and sweet. Many of their traits and habits and ways of thinking remind me of myself and the fact that we all have some elements of autism in ourselves. Because people with autism just fall in a part of the spectrum of human conditions. They just have more trouble keeping those troublesome tendencies in check.