When children are off the spectrum of good behaviour

emel says:

09:44am | 19/10/11

Thanks TChong,
The link between food and behaviour is not proven but is yet again consolidated into the public psyche by articles like this.
The increased prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder can mostly be attributed to 3 factors :
1. Increased testing
2. ‘Disorder trending’ (think ADD / ADHD in the 90’s)
3. Poor parenting skills.
Having an Autistic child is very stressful, and extremely difficult . Autism robs many families of the joy of intimacy and regular family life. Sadly, a proportion of the industry that is growing around ASD will perpetrate any old rubbish to make a buck (therapists included - Speech, Occupational and the rest).

It is only a matter of time before we see ‘Natural’
therapies joining in on the caper.

amy says:

11:19am | 19/10/11

yeah…I know Im not an expert but I thourght autism was a “head” thing..what does diet have to do with it?

Carz says:

11:22am | 19/10/11

@emel, parenting skills have absolutely nothing do to with a child having an autism spectrum disorder.

emel says:

12:22pm | 19/10/11

Carz,
I never said that bad parenting had anything to do with properly diagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorder. I do contend though, that many of the diagnostic tests are so broad in their anaysis that often children (whose parents display very poor behaviour management skills) are incorrectly labelled as having ASD.
Try typing a worrying behaviour into Google. Whether it is unusual eye movement or wetting the bed, the word AUTISM leaps out at you immediately.
Where have all the ADHD children gone? The only good difference between over-diagnosis of ASD and ADHD, is the decreased propensity to administer highly addictive drugs to sort it out.

xar says:

08:13pm | 19/10/11

emel - ASD and ADHD have a number of distinctly different features, though can be co-morbid diagnosis. The kids with ADHD certainly didn’t disapear, but that focus on ADHD and concerted efforts to prevent misdiagnosis and examine other causes of behaviour (such as the success many families have with trialing illimination diets) mean it is a better understood and better diagnosed condition now than before. FYI natural therapies have been “in on the caper” for ages now, I conclude from your not being aware of this and the large scale of quackery peddled to parents that you are not terribly informed on the issue. Also - my Autistic son didn’t rob us of the joy of anything, ellements of parenting are only difficult in relation to getting education department and the general public to understand his diagnosis and provide the appropriate supports and/or awareness.
AMY - it is a neurological disorder, it just so happens that often parents find their kids are also sensitive to certain foods/additives and that can exacerbate some of the difficulties of ASD.
the diagnostic criteria is not ridiculously broad at all, though if you didn’t fully understand the list of criteria and how it is evaluated and what constitutes the level of impairment required to be diagnosed it is easy to be confused. The features of ASD are just do not present the same as a child with a behaviour management problem in the form of crap parents - key components of the diagnostic criteria would be missing.

xar says:

08:15pm | 19/10/11

oh my, i can so relate to the pokemon comment! I know far more about them than I ever needed or wanted to know!

KH says:

06:53am | 19/10/11

Indeed.  The TV show is a drama - with a script.  The kid may be perfectly well behaved in real life.  The writers were trying to make his character annoying so the slap could be justified (or not….......which is the drama!) so in a short space of time they had to show the most annoying behaviour they could come up with.

Lexi says:

07:08am | 19/10/11

Having taught a whole lot of great kids on the Austistic Spectrum, I can’t say I rushed to the notion that he may be autistic.

Let’s leave any diagnoses of ASD etc to paediatricians and just watch the show for what it is - a social commentary on the paradigm shift in parenting styles.

The “wogs” favoured an older fashioned approach of having high expectations of children. The “hippies” favoured a child-centred approach of believing that every experience is a learning experience and the child is just expressing himself.  The pointy end of this is where those parental decisions impact on those around you. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction - thus, The Slap.

Steve says:

11:00am | 19/10/11

Is there any physical test for Autism detecting an actual difference, or is it a diagnosis based solely on behaviour?

I ask because if its diagnosis is trending up, is that because of a widening criteria for autism, or is social and parental factors increasingly leading to behaviour which then diagnosed as autistic?

Catsidhe says:

11:25am | 19/10/11

@ Steve

There are physical signs, some of them quite subtle. There is, I’m told, a characteristic Aspie Gait, for example, and there has been research done to measure, describe and quantify what this is. (It’s one of those things which it is said is obvious when you know what you’re looking for.)

We tend to have co-ordination difficulties, especially co-ordinating actions needing, eg., both hands. (Juggling is not a recommended profession.)

These traits, however, can be trained and mitigated to varying extents.

It tends to be the behavioural signs which are noticed, and can most easily be checked off a list. And these behaviours are reflections of underlying cognitive abnormalities. Eye contact is one, because keeping steady eye contact feels threatening to us. Conversational difficulties, through ones understanding of what people say being on a different level to how they intend it. Hearing difficulties, but no hearing loss (Auditory Processing Deficit). Hyperfocus and (paradoxically) high distractibility. (Which is why HFA can be diagnosed as ADD.) Characteristic patterns in the subscores in an IQ test.

xar says:

08:18pm | 19/10/11

Steve - another interesting one is a tendancy towards slightly increased head circumference. Differences in the way neurological pathways are formed and function show up on scans too.

Baker says:

10:35am | 19/10/11

Agreed, mid way through I was so annoyed with the charaters and just wanted to get it over with.

JH says:

08:31am | 19/10/11

exactly right, you can’t claim Autism or on the spectrum for a misbehaving kid that is playing to a script.

my kids do the exact same thing because they are little demons but can behave like perfect angels when they want something. it’s just nauty behaviour not a sign that there is something wrong with this kids brain, stop jumping to conclusions

St. Michael says:

12:37pm | 19/10/11

Your sense of compassion is as inadequate as your grammar.

Kiddo says:

12:59pm | 19/10/11

I so agree Bernadette with the excessive diagnosis’s and labelling we seem to have nowadays that is used to excuse bad behaviour.

On the Slap though I dont think the kid was autistic, and I wonder why the author feels the need to look for something that explains and perhaps excuses the kid’s behaviour.

xar says:

08:30pm | 19/10/11

what you fail to recognise is that this is a physical neurological difference - the way the brain works is NOT typical and the reason nobody advocates treating kids on the spectrum in the way you suggest is that it demonstrably doesn’t work. In fact, the more people try the approach you recomend the worse the behaviour gets. I am fully aware how confronting it is for people to understand any negative behaviours associated with ASD, but in the same way that you cannot expect a child in a wheelchair to get up and walk just because everyone else does or presume that removing ramps would facilitate that child suddently being able to use their legs, you cannot expect that failing to provide appropriate supports, early intervention and a degree of compassion would help a child with ASD learn to suddenly change behaviour that results from a neurological difference.

Nic Riley says:

11:21pm | 19/10/11

Oh Amen, xar!

ibast says:

11:40am | 19/10/11

I was the same but ended up watching it anyway because they bumped Crownies.

The show is about much more than the slap.  The incident is just the thing that links the characters.  The show is really a weekly insight into each character.  It’s an effective vehicle.

This show, along with Crownies, has restored my faith in Australia’s ability to produce good television drama.

I’m not sure why we are micro-analysing a fictional child’s behavior here.  It’s kind of a pointless exercise and a daresay not the point of this article.

I think the director wanted his behavior to be borderline in order to heighten the conflict in the show.

fairsfair says:

11:14am | 19/10/11

Yes, I thought the parents were the biggest clue to Hugo’s behaviour. Their response to the slap also concreted that for me too.

I have watched the first two episodes, but I don’t think I will continue or ever read the book. The premise of the story is really interesting, but the rediculous response to what went on at the BBQ and even the character Hector’s behaviour in the first episode and also the abortion without consent of the father in episode 2 are a bit too confronting.

Not so much confronting in a prudish/straight laced kind of way, but just that it goes on without discussion and only seems to be presenting one side of the story (so far both of those characters seem to have the same narcissistic undertone). I appreciate that each episode/chapter is from that person’s POV - but it just seems to have a sickeningly PC vibe about it that I am finding frustrating.

On the spectrum front - a few months ago I was forced to fly the two hours to Brisbane beside 3yo twins who were “on the spectrum” (according to the parents). I was shocked by their behaviour and why the parents even had them on a plane in the first place (they were attending a wedding for the weekend). They did little to stop the kids screaming, the flight attendants were pathetically sucking up to them (while the rest of the plane had steam coming out of the ears), a shoe was thrown and it spiralled from there really. I couldn’t believe the way these kids behaved and the lack of any kind of response from the parents.

I won’t tell you what colour the air was when I realised that they were also on my return flight

BJ says:

07:53pm | 19/10/11

The kids may well have been on the autistic spectrum. That doesn’t excuse the parents for ignoring their kids as they annoyed others.

Catsidhe says:

11:15am | 19/10/11

I must comment on something in these comments which is disturbingly all too common. It’s a process which goes something like this:

1. Someone makes a potentially ill-considered diagnosis. (Not “this is what a meltdown looks like, as if the character were Autistic”, but “this *is* a meltdown, and I think the character *is* Autistic”)
2. A whole bunch of people with *absolutely no idea* what they’re talking about jump in, wallow proudly in their ignorance, and conclude that because *this instance* could be as well described by naughtiness as by HFA, that therefore *all* instances where people “claim” Autism are just more examples of people being lazy or malingering or undisciplined. “Your example does not convince me, therefore Autism is a scam! A ‘bloody excuse for everything.’”

Asperger’s is *not* a party with roses and kittens. It is *not* a license to be a monster at whim. We don’t like having meltdowns, we really don’t. They’re stressful, by definition. They’re where the brain ceases being able to cope with stimuli, and drops straight into a Fight-or-Flight panic. And we’re often enough unable to keep proper track of our own feelings so as to be able to know to back off and retreat before the kettle boils over. We would like, desperately, to hold a normal conversation without feeling afterwards like we’ve played three simultaneous games of chess with Gary Kasparov. We would like to know when what we’re doing is socially unacceptable *before* we get into trouble, *before* we hurt the feelings of people we love.

If you don’t know what any of that is like, either firsthand or secondhand, then you don’t get to cast aspersions on the experts. (Believe me, there is enough criticism of the experts within the Autism community as there is, and *vastly* better informed.)

You are entitled to your opinion, of course you are. But if that opinion is formed in the vacuum of utter ignorance, then it is simply noise.

amy says:

11:28am | 19/10/11

@catsidhe

yeah…Im kind of torn on the issue

on one hand it seems very easy to think they are being to layl with the diagnoses, and that even adults and other use it as an excuse to be an asshole or awkward

on the other it is annoying for peopel with an actual condition hearing a bunch of non-experts say its all a bunch of rubbish

perhaps if the latter is true then it just makes the former worse

xar says:

08:36pm | 19/10/11

well said Catsidhe, it is a tiresome commonality to have to address this sort of thing.

Catsidhe says:

11:36am | 19/10/11

Given the amount of work, stress and money it took me to get an adult diagnosis, and the even greater amount of effort it is currently taking for a friend of mine, that statement is simply not true from our perspective.

Anyone can *call* themselves Autistic, true. And some do without seeking diagnosis. But with the amount of judgement ignorance and BS that we see about it, no-one does so lightly, and there are more who are too frightened to admit it even to themselves, no matter how strongly they suspect. And even if they do seek a proper diagnosis, it’s prohibitively hard to find someone who can diagnose you, and if you’re over eighteen it’s a non-Medicare-covered bill of well over $600 for the privilege.

Carz says:

12:08pm | 19/10/11

@Catsidle You are lucky you got a diagnosis as an adult. Many specialists won’t diagnose adults with an ASD because the DSM-IV-TR criteria specifies that it is a childhood disorder. Never mind the people have suffered for years with no name to put to it, or the kids who are diagnosed only to find that as the supports they got as a child disappear the minute they hit 18. Good luck for the future. I hope your diagnosis gets you any support you need.

BJ says:

07:54pm | 19/10/11

So the slapping parent may have been the autistic one.

xar says:

08:57pm | 19/10/11

of course you didn’t know anyone with that diagnosis as a child, in all likelyhood it was a point in time before these conditions were understood and described clinicly, or before such finding were published in english - or maybe you were educated at a time when these children were not included in mainstream schooling. In fact I would have said *I* didn’t know anyone with this diagnosis as a child but it turns out I did, I only found out they had the diagnosis much later because they didn’t happen to want to tell anyone about it at the time due to the stigma.
Nobody grows out of a physical neurological difference, it is a condition you have for life - what happens is many people developed coping methods through trial and error - some with more success than others.  These days we have early intervention that is improving the odds but we also still have 80% of adults with as ASD unable to find work - not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack the social skills ect. to give a good impression in an interview or function in most work environments. I understand that behaviour problems are confronting, but to dismiss ASD ect. as simply “bad kids” is really not on (for that matter, neither is the crack at single parents). Sometimes what is actually needed is not a third party to reprimand a child, but a community to stop being so damn ignorant about disabilities like ASD.

AC Editor says:

11:28pm | 19/10/11

xar - If you do find those words, and you would like to contribute them as a column here - please email me angryozcripple@gmail.com. Less than 900 words please. Important to remember though, that this is an opinion site, so even if you have the most well researched, thorough material on earth, there will always be some commenters who zero in on the most irrelevant nitpick they can find with astounding ignorance. Just coz they can. And coz this is an open forum, and is also what can make it interesting.