You’re thinking in black and white and the situation is usually grey.
A lot of children on the spectrum have gut/immune disorders and co-occuring mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders.
For many of them, this is inherited, meaning one or more parents share some of these challenges.

A parent with untreated mood, anxiety or compulsive disorders who also struggles with addictions or rage related to intolerances is more prone to overload, social isolation, reduced educational achievement, less likely to get good professional help and less likely to have a stable marriage or extended family (who may well have similar features). These people are more vulnerable to abusing themselves, their partners and their children.
So it’s not about deciding who are the ‘good people’ and who are the ‘bad people’. It’s not about deciding who are the ‘real’ or ‘pure’ autistics and who are the supposedly ‘created’ ones, its about understanding autism and its features more deeply.

I have the same phenol/salicylate problems as 80-90% of people on the spectrum. Like 80% of them I’m also dairy/gluten intolerant. Like 20% of them I’ve had primary immune deficiencies. Like 30-50% of them I deal with co-occurring mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders. Am I from a background of abuse? Yes. Does this mean the abuse caused my autism? Well abuse, neglect and trauma are not good for neurological connections, not good for nervous system development, not good for health, not good for communication or bonding.

But there’s enough agoraphobia, social phobia, depression, suicides, alcoholism, addiction, bipolar, dyslexia, ADHD, receptive language processing problems and three other relatives diagnosed on the spectrum with these other people not from my background, to feel fairly certain that its also the case that severely challenged parents simply run greater risks of not being able to manage or seek and get good professional support.

If one thinks autism is some mystical condition all of its own, then one can’t imagine that such things could all contribute and that the treatment of each piece can help reduce the severity of the combined impact called ‘autism’.

Some people with autism have no gut/immune dysfunctions, no co-occurring psychiatric challenges, no receptive language processing disorders, but if that’s ‘pure autism’ then these days, its actually in the minority of those diagnosed.

As far as I know there is no abused-caused autism.
But there are undiagnosed severely challenged parents with at least autistic traits who sometimes resort to abusing themselves as well as their children and that the child who is the greatest challenge (ie a child with a disability) is sometimes the most likely target of abuse in any challenged family.

when we talk about typicality, the the 20% for whom gut/immune/metabolic disorders don’t figure, are certainly not typical. And whilst 50-70% may not have co-occurring mood, anxiety or compulsive disorders, the 30-50% who do are such a significantly large group that they could hardly be called atypical.

The old stereotypes of pure cases are today’s minorities.
Typicality is about majorities.

… Donna *)
http://www.donnawilliams.net

thanks for the letter.
I guess the short answer is that folks with RAD have missed the programming for the old fashioned version of ‘love’ (as the concept was understood in the 60s and before the consumer, TV, computer generations).  Whilst I don’t want to romanticize that era, which had its own pitfalls, what I’m getting at was that ‘love’ was less linked to ‘how much will you spend on me this Christmas’ and ‘how long do I have to be with you being bored before I can go play my computer game’ etc.

I can imagine things that would make a kid with RAD worse - addictions.
And the consumer ‘machine’ is currently advertising its goods as ‘highly addictive!’ as if this is the new way of saying ‘excellent value’. Wow, people are worried about tobacco, but what of the psychologicial, cognitive, emotional, social, communicative and ultimately physical health effects of all this push of ‘highly addictive’ techno consumption? And children will ultimately be born to similarly addicted mothers who barely bonded prenatally, so busy were they interacting with their addictions, without a beer can, syringe or cigarette in sight.

Fact is it comes down to the new global corporate driven consumer religion of excess.

I’ve seen a pair of new borns brought up by the TV, staring blank faced at their older siblings channel choice - MTV and the movie channel on Foxtel. They seemed utterly hypnotised.

We know babies bodies will react to the screams from the idiot box, by age 3 they may have physically mapped, heard and seen yet not understood so many killings, attacks, melodramatic psychodramas etc they’ll be numb to stimulation by anything less, then likely introduced to computer learning designed for addicted kids who are understimulated by real life and find it foreign, gawky, awkward.

Prevention?
I guess raising the subject is a start.
Far and wide would help.
But understanding that excess means imbalance and prolonged imbalance is the very essence of ill health on a variety of interconnected levels, personal and interpersonal, private, social, global.

I’ve met kids with both RAD and ASD (and of course many with ASD who don’t have RAD but its opposite, highly entangled co-dependency issues, and those with neither and only ASD). You may find The Jumbled Jigsaw interesting as it shows how many conditions can become an integrated part of the information processing side of ASD.

Many conditions easily go hand in hand. I understand that the children today being diagnosed with ASD more often than not have other things going on too. The days of ‘pure cases’ seem a thing of the past (if they ever existed) and are no longer the ‘norm’ in todays ASD diagnoses.

Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net

Hope the world is listening to what you are saying.
We are continually evolving and i have often asked what will happen if we carry on with the current work and lifestyles. We seem to be communicating less face to face than we ever did consequently every action has a reaction and in my opinion you are not far from the mark.
We have adopted a child who is awaiting diagnosis of either RAD or ASD and feel very concerned about the future.
Do you have any ideas to prevent it going on to the next generation?

Yes, some captive wild animals spin, pace, rock, harm themselves, eat their excrement (not necessarily for added nutrition, though of course some animals do) and show signs of mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders.

One could ask if they have been separated from real belonging, unable to bond with those selected by their human captors as their mate, whether their parents struggled to form adequate bonding under captive conditions (and many are so stressed and depressed they fail to mate or breed in captivity). And what of THEIR inheritance of RAD? What is the consequence for their lack of processing of a simultaneous sense of self and other necessary for bonding, mating, breeding in captivity… no wonder their human captors often have to revert to artificial insemination.

We could easily compare this stress to today’s excessively busy, demanding, voyeristic, judgemental society in which many mothers can barely move without feeling watched, talked about,…..real or not… and children can barely cry, tantrum (which is natural in infancy) or touch things without someone freaking out because of public liability dramas and guidelines.

Magazines and reality shows promote the common view its OK, entertaining and normal to group as public audience to gawp and comment and VOTE on whose in, whose out, who has cellulite…. its a crazy crazy world…. and one can’t go for a five minute walk without being expected by one’s social network and work pressure to go on a leash (called a mobile phone) and check email and phone messages as soon as one is back from this ‘relative freedom’…. and this has really only been since the 90s.

I don’t think we realise how we replaced moralism with freedom then with the glass prison of voyerism as normality. One is no longer allowed to be solitary or dislike attention without being pathologised for it, needing a kind of ‘doctor’s note’ to justify one’s DIFFERENTNESS in a world with an ever narrower bunch of accepted guidelines on what’s ‘normal’ which are the greatest social myth of our time.

Even studies which ignore a diversity they aren’t designed to capture (too hard to ‘control for’) then justify this unreality and we lap up everything that justifies not rocking even uncomfortable status quos. We’re sedated by passive interaction with the idiot box that brought us up. We fear individuality beyond conformist prescriptions of how to trendily non-conform. We have ‘habits’ in a world which promotes addiction as the reinforcer of consumerism and corporations are progressively our gods and our governments.

Ah, she sighs. Had no idea I was THAT deep! I’m scaring myself this morning. The things I type before medication! Seriously, I don’t think, then type, I type, then realise the thoughts that must have been in there… sometimes I totally surprise myself. In any case, I’ll leave this wild mania just spewed forth and go tame myself. In spite of this gothic word-fest I assure you I’m a happy and optimistic soul and I have a great compassion for this insane world.

…. artists…. I’m safe with a paint brush.

Donna

… Donna *)