Symptoms of autism - could you have missed these kids?

Testimony before the House Government Reform Committee by James Smythe

• Your child urinates or defecates somewhere on the floor every day.  He does the same every night in his room, because he is up at least two to four hours between one and five AM every night.  If you go to visit friend or relative overnight, his behavior will be even worse, because he is in a strange environment.
• If you don't know where he is, and what he is doing, you know that you may regret it.  He likes to play in the toilet, leave the water running in the upstairs tub, and open the door and leave.  He doesn't know about traffic.
• When your child is up at night, he moves the furniture in the room regularly, sometimes pushing an entire dresser through the drywall.  He spends hours jumping from the highest places he can climb to onto the hardwood floor.  He laughs or screams uncontrollably, as if drunk.  No one in the house can really sleep … night after night.
• Your child only eats a few things: carbohydrates and sugars.  He carries the food all over your home, and crumbs are everywhere.  When you take him to a restaurant, he runs to strangers plates and begins eating their french fries without any acknowledgement.  Or he puts his hand in their drink to get some ice.  He may do this at any time during your restaurant visit, while regularly crawling to the floor to eat someone else's food left there.
• He will not sit, but must jump from all of the furniture in your home for hours at a time.  He will push any lamp, picture, book, papers or porcelain pieces on the floor without thought, sometimes clearing an entire counter with one sweep of his arm.  He is not angry, can't be disciplined, and doesn't seem to feel pain. 
• He sometimes opens the car door while you are driving.

Testimony to the House Government Reform Committee by by Jeana Smith

Jacob is a beautiful child who has abnormal sleep patterns and has lived with continuous physical pain.  His lack of sleep keeps me up all hours of the night, and by the time  I finally fall asleep, it is time to wake the kids up for school and start the day. We are constantly working with Jacob to help him understand the outside world so that we can maybe go to the grocery store, the mall, the gas station or McDonald's without him getting hysterical from sensory overload from all the fluorescent lights and sounds.

What may sound like water dripping to us may sound like a massive water fall to an autistic child. What may sound like squealing tires to us may sound like the Indy 500 up close to a child like my son.  On days that he is "overloaded" from sound, colors or lights, we can't go anywhere. Autism does not only isolate the child that it affects.  We can't take the family out to dinner or out to have fun. When the other children may be waiting in anticipation to go have a day out with mom and dad, one of us will have to stay home with Jacob because he is so agitated.  If one child has a school program and Jacob is frustrated, then we have to see that crestfallen look on the child's face because both mommy and daddy cannot go, since one has to stay with their brother.  We know if we take him in public,  there will be a scene.   Little things such as this "rob" life's enjoyment from our other children.

Testimony to the House Government Reform Committee by Shelley Hendrix Reynolds

When he was 17 months old, Liam started exhibiting some different behaviors.  He was constantly taking off his shoes and screaming when we dressed and un-dressed him. He wouldn't let us brush his teeth anymore.  He started staring into space when he watched a video on television and wouldn't move if you stood in front of the television.  He couldn't tolerate playing in the sandbox anymore.  He didn't want to sing favorite songs anymore and would just scream "No! No! No!"

 We assumed he was just asserting his independence since he was almost 2.   

Somewhere along the way he developed chronic, non-specific diarrhea ...sometimes 8 to 10 times a day.   

A month before Liam turned two, visited my parents who live in Tennessee who had not seen Liam since the first week of July, 1997.  They were shocked by the changes in him.  My mother was alarmed at his lack of response when we tried to speak to him.  She urged me to have his hearing tested.  I had his hearing tested. It was normal.

 By April of 1998 I realized Liam was no longer saying “Momma” or  “Daddy” so I took him in for a speech and language evaluation.  They told me that my 27 month old child had the language capacity of an 8 month old.  This was a child that only months before would chime in “EIEIO” at the appropriate moment when singing “Old MacDonald.”

There are those who will argue that we are better at diagnosing autism today than in the past and that these children were once considered mentally retarded.  However, according to a recent study, the mentally retarded have followed normal population increases and remained a steady constant while the autistic population has exploded.  Is autism just the diagnosis du jour?  Hardly. I would truly  like to know where the parents of these autistic children were that did not recognize that their children were not talking, were spinning constantly in circles, doing odd things, abusing themselves, not making eye contact, having serious gastrointestinal disturbances, eating and sleeping problems, experiencing a failure to thrive due to malabsorption and suffering from excessive allergies.  You cannot miss these children.  

Autism:  Present Challenges, Future Needs - Why the Increased Rates? - Congressional Hearings

I don't have to read a letter to experience the heartbreak.  I see it in my own family.  My grandson Christian was born healthy.  He was beautiful and tall.  We were already planning his NBA career. He was outgoing and talkative.  He enjoyed company and going places.  Then, his mother took him for his routine immunizations and all of that changed.  He was given what so many children were given – DTaP, OPV, Haemophilus, Hepatitis B, and MMR – all at one office visit.  That night Christian had a slight fever and he slept for long periods of time. When he was awake he would scream a horrible high-pitched scream. He would scream for hours.  He began dragging his head on the furniture and banging it repeatedly. Over the week-and-a-half after the vaccinations, Christian would stare into space and act like he was deaf.  He would hit himself and others, which was something he had never done.  He would shake his head from side to side as fast as he could.  He lost all language.

Autism ‘linked to mercury vaccine’

The MMR first dose is given between 12 and 15 months, with diphtheria and tetanus and the second dose of MMR at three to five years.  Like tens of thousands of other children, Melissa Wickens, 10, underwent a full course of inoculations. When she was just 14 months, after she had received her MMR jab, her life changed.

From being an alert, normal child, her behaviour became erratic. Typically, when she arrives home from school she throws down her fluffy red school bag and pulls everything out of it. In the kitchen she snatches a box of breakfast cereal and crams flakes into her mouth. Later she smears strawberries over herself and her bedroom upstairs.

She has already broken several television sets and throws chairs around the sitting room and pulls down shelves. Melissa, who was given the MMR vaccine in 1992, has severely regressive autism and inflammatory bowel disease.  “On the same day as the MMR she started a high-pitched screaming,” said her mother Marion Wickens, from Brighton. “Over the next few weeks she cried inconsolably, started to bite herself and to pull out her hair, resulting in bald patches on her head.

“She used to have a lovely sparkle in her eyes but they went blank. She couldn’t understand ‘Where’s mummy?’ any more. It no longer registered.” She concluded: “Melissa wasn’t born autistic, she regressed.”