Is it just me, or is this NOT news?

[conuly]

Could places like Silicon Valley be breeding a whole generation of kids with autism or Asperger's syndrome?

Because I distinctly remember talking this subject to death only about five years ago. And, uh, three years before that as well. And last year, maybe?

And yet, the comments (don't read the comments) are acting like this is a wildly new proposition, and as it is SOOOOOOO new they are deeply, deeply suspicious of it. (Especially because it doesn't mention vaccines at all, but that's all right, lots of people are willing to promulgate equally absurd non-vaccine hypotheses as well. Maybe people have too much sex! Maybe they use too many birth control pills! Maybe it's artificial sweeteners! Wait - could it be vaccines??? Or some sort of hormonal imbalance that I'm making up right now?

And there's always the eugenicists....

(Do NOT read the comments!)

As far as inheriting autism goes, I've said it before, but to recap:

I'm pretty sure both parents were/are what's called "the broader autistic phenotype". One day I have to explain how I grew up, our whole family functioning as a little self-contained unit that didn't particularly want or need anybody else. (This was actually a great way to grow up, but by my teens I could see that other people didn't live quite like that!) And I'm pretty sure both grandmothers were/are as well. And we ALL know my mother's father was autistic, that's not even a possibility that he wasn't.

Now, my mother swears that she knew about me from the time I was a baby. And I believe her - I remember being dragged around to doctors as they tried to get me diagnosed, to no avail. (Apparently, bright children who could talk just didn't get autism diagnoses back then. Remember this the next time somebody points to their bright, verbal child and says "This child is autistic because of vaccines, it's an EPIDEMIC!" Very often when people do, I reflect that the kid is no different than I was at that age.)

At the same time, when I started researching the subject (after I admitted it to her), she didn't want to talk about it for a while. She thought I outgrew it or it "wasn't that bad" or whatnot. How she could hold both views simultaneously I do NOT know, but there it is.

She's gotten better about it, and recently she randomly brought up that a friend had said that if I wasn't "so aspie" she'd think Jenn was on the spectrum. (I don't see it myself, but possibly for the same reason my mother... wait, I'll get to it.) And that brought up the whole issue, again, of who in the family might be anywhere near the spectrum at all, and my mother, at the end, scoffed "C'mon! If that's all your criteria, half the world must be autistic!"

And I think I finally figured out the issue here, and I pointed it out to her - if my idea is correct, and there's a heck of a lot of it floating around in her family and the people she's chosen to associate with (including, y'know, her husband my FATHER) - she doesn't know what normal is. She thinks her family is the epitome of normal, but you know, her cousin Frances thought Schlomo was a normal name! (And it is to some people, just like we're all normal to my mom.)

That's a tangent, but it's a bit more interesting I think than the link, which, y'know... isn't really news.

Comments

[steorra]

Not knowing what normal is is definitely one of the things I run into when I try to figure out where I fit. Not that I think I and my family are the epitome of normal - it's always been obvious that we are definitely not normal in certain ways (such as being a homeschooling family) - but it's still often hard to figure out what normal is, and so what the actual ways are that I am and am not normal (and that my family is and isn't normal).

The other thing that adds a lot of complication is that there are several causes that my not-normal-ness can plausibly be attributed to, and it's not always clear which one is the cause, or if it comes from the interplay of several factors. Does a given eccentricity come from being homeschooled? From growing up without a TV? From natural autistic traits? From absorbing my family's values and culture when these are substantially different from those of much of North American culture? From something else?

(For example, as a very young child, I disliked (at lesat some forms of) human touch, including hugs. My parents decided to teach me to like hugs, and were successful. My disliking hugs/human touch might be seen as an autistic trait. My mom always attributed it to the fact that I was born three weeks early, and was put in an incubator, so didn't have as much touch as a newborn would/should normally have, and may not have bonded normally with her.)

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

So utterly NOT news.
Speaking for my family, Me, My partner, my aunt liz, my grandfather, HIS mother, her sister, (and on my maternal grandmother;s side) great auntie bett, great uncle ger. As the genetic diversity gets wider, the AS gets somewhat less, so in an enclosed pressure cooker like SV, I'd hardly be suprised tis getting more.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

I thought the whole autism/Silicon Valley thing was old news. I've been hearing about it for years.

As for genetics, I've never been able to figure it out for my own family. My dad and mother both had lots of friends and were very social and never appeared to have any social skills problems. Neither did either of my siblings, although lately my sister has suddenly started admitting to what she thinks of as Aspie traits, although hers sound more like social anxiety to me than Asperger traits.

[conuly]

Just because it can run in families doesn't mean it has to, right?

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

Um, I fell into that trap with my youngest. Relatively NT still isn't NT sometimes(I know you're saying that, I'm backing you up).

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

As for my family, my mum, my brother, me, my kids, my brother's kids. Basically all my mum's progeny.