Vaccinations and Autism

The first question I have been asked by anyone who hears my daughter has autism is, " do you think it is from vaccinations?" I have been asked this questions by daycares, teachers, nurses, and nearly anyone I have come in contact with! My answer is always a resounding NO! I feel very strongly about this, and so here is my stand on the vaccination issue. If someone chooses not to vaccinate their child, that is fine, however, my response when I hear this, it make sure you are doing it for the right reasons! SO many people are making this decision based on false information. I would like to address these issues, and show you some research and hopefully share some information that will be useful!

The first thing to address, is when did people start believing vaccinations caused autism (specifically it is the MMR vaccine that is thought to be the culprit). The MMR vaccine was introduced in the United States in the early 70's. It was not until the Wakefield study was published in 1998 that people connected the vaccine and autism. The study involved 12 children. 12 children and the world changed their minds! In 2010 it was proven that Wakefield faslified his study (several studies have tried to recreate his findings and been unable to, this is the test of a hypothesis, can it be recreated?). The study actually stated that the MMR vaccine had a correlation between a bowel disease and autism. The MMR allegedly caused both. People picked up on the autism part of it (not even the bowel part that was included in the study.) People began to be paranoid we had an autism epidemic! The reality is, there has not been an increase in autism. What has increased is the criteria that needed to be met.

It used to be that autism a diagnoses only given to severe cases (I am using this info from a lecture with a woman who has worked with autism for over 30 years. She has her Ph.D. and is an educational psychologist) such as kids unable to communicate who had severe autism the image you get of kids who rock and handflap all the time. It was then changed in the 40's when Aspergers was first diagnosed. It was not added to the DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual) until the DSM IV came out. Then later, PDD-NOS was also added. We havent increased the number of kids with autism, we have simply increased the circle of kids who fall in it. This is not a bad thing. Children with autism simply come from a different mold, why force them into a mold they dont fit into! If changing your parenting style can solve a lot of kids behavioral problems, why not do it? Why force a kid in a mold they dont fit?

So how do we know a kid with autism didnt get it from a vaccine? The brain of an autistic person is different from birth. They have more white matter, more short connections (within one hemisphere of the brain) and fewer long connections (which connect the two hemisphere and share information to each other) without making this even longer, this explains a lot behavior we see in autistic kids. Most likely a child with autims shows signs from birth, but we dont recognize them until we realize the social factors (which start to show between ages 1-3 also when they receive the MMR vaccine). You may notice your childs gross motor skills (why yes, my child sits alone, crawle, etc) but we often dont look at social skills in young children. I can look back at my daughter now, and realize there were problems before she was even a year old!

I feel very strongly on this topic. I beleive every person needs to make the decision to vaccinate their child based on their own study and beliefs. We dont answer to people, we answer to God. It is my desire, though, for peopel to find accurate information to back up their decision! We did spread out our vaccinations with Grace, but mostly because she doesnt have a strong immune system and was often sick. With Emma, she got them all at the scheduled times. What are your views on vaccinations?

websites used for this:
www.wikipedia.com
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro98/202s98-paper1/Taverna.html
http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20060816/autism-affects-childs-entire-brain

Who's the leader in your family?

I have been watching my two daughters play all afternoon and it is a riot!! Emma comes up with the ideas, but then it is funny to watch Grace take over and lead the playing! Emma does a great job being patient with Grace and helps remind her to use her words. How do the siblings in your families get a long? How do you resolve struggles between siblings? We often work on turn taking to try to solve problems. We are lucky that both girls are honest about fights so its pretty easy to solve disputes! We use a turn taking card when they fight over the same toy. Whoever has the card gets the toy, and then after 5 minutes or so we swtich. They girls like the card and have fun giving it to the other sibling! What do you do?

Our trip to the ENT

I took Grace to the ENT today to get her checked out to see if we need to take her tonsils out. She has had one case of strep after another over the last 6 months. The Dr. did a strep test today and we are waiting on the results, if she doesnt have strep right now, we are going to wait to see if she gets it again, if she does we will be having the surgery! Over the last couple of months we have had her diagnosed with an egg allergy and with lactose intolerance. Her speech went from that of a 9 month old (at age 2) to in the last 3 weeks she is starting to say simple sentences! I am hoping if we can get the strep under control we can start to see even more improvement in her speech!

Meet my family!

There is so much information I would like to share, I think I overwhelm my own mind! So I will start simple :) I have a beautiful 5 1/2 year old daughter (Emma) who is incredibly smart, outgoing, and I am convinced she is going to be a writer or an actress she has such an imagination! She was always ahead in her milestones, and she was talking in complete very understandable sentences by the time she was 2! My husband is her stepdad, her dad is as involved in her life as we are (we happily share custody). Then my husband and I had our second daughter (Gracie), she is now 2 1/2. Looking back we are able to see differences now that point to what we eventually found out. She hit her milestones much slower than her sister, but was not necesarrily behind. She had sever torticollis from about 3 months until 8-9 months. At around 12 months she began saying a few words, and even was able to say our dogs name! Then at 14 months she lost her speech and began to have tantrums that terrified me! She would bang her head on the ground for hours and scream and thrash around and hit things. We went through a process of trying to figure out what was going on. Long story short, we had her assessed two completely different places and came up with the same diagnoses, PDD-NOS and SPD. PDD is Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, also know as a form of autism. This is often given to younger kids who are not old enough to meet all the social criteria for straight Autism or Aspergers. All three are considered autism. SPD is Sensory Processing Disorder. Kids with Autism often have this, but kids without Autism can also have this. It is when people do not process sensory input the same way other people do. My daughter is sensory seeking (where other times people are overly sensitive to sensory stimulation). One of the first things I want to be clear about is my position on vaccinations. I very strongly am against the idea that vaccinations cause autism! There have been very conclusive studies to show why this is not true, which I will happily show these studies later! I am 29 years old, and my husband is 37, there is a history of autism on his side of the family, and I was adopted so we do not know if it is in my side of the family or not. We love our girls, and have been through a struggle (and still do!) to get the help we need for Grace and balance that with Emma, to make sure she doesnt feel left out, and that she knows she is important! We are Christians, and I feel that has played the most important part in our journey! God is the strength and the comfort we have always had to go to during this time, I hope with this blog I will be able to help someone else who may be in the same position we are! Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Under Construction!

I am excited about the start of this journey! Unfortunately I am also learning along the way! I am excited about everything I want to share, and hope you will come back to visit me soon as I work on this page!