“How I Know Vaccines Didn’t Cause My Child’s Autism”
I’m somewhat late in posting a link to a new blog called The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. Recently Shannon Des Roches Rosa, the editor of this blog and book project contacted us with this to say:
The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism (TPGA) is the book and website we wish had been available when our children with autism were first diagnosed.
Autism misinformation clouds and is perpetuated by the Internet. We want to make accurate information about autism causation and therapies visible, accessible, and centralized.
Think of us as a little bit of Snopes for the autism community — trusted, accurate, and friendly. Our essays will cover informed approaches to autism and autism treatments, as well as the personal experiences of people with autism and their families.
I’m adding them to the blog roll (the badly in need of updating blog roll, yeah, that one). While I was perusing the site, one personal post by Devon Koren Asdell caught my eye. She writes that she is positive vaccines did not cause her own child’s autism:
For some reason (I’m assuming due to the controversial and heated nature of the discussion), many people, upon learning that Aisling is autistic, ask me if I believe her early childhood vaccinations caused the condition. My answer to this is always, emphatically, “no.” Aisling did receive all of her vaccinations on time, and would occasionally become slightly feverish and irritable after those first few sets, but I personally never saw any evidence that Aisling regressed in development, nothing that seemed out of the ordinary compared to the little checklist of probable side-effects that the health department sent home with us.
Not wanting to offend anyone who might believe otherwise, Asdell offers this disclaimer:
I’m not about to try to “prove” or “disprove” that childhood vaccinations cause autism in children. What I am absolutely certain of, however, is that childhood vaccinations did not cause autism in my own child.
The accounts of her memories of her baby being “different” are poignant:
Once I knew what the symptoms were, I was able to backtrack through Aisling’s life and see evidence of the disorder everywhere. I could remember how difficult it was to get her to breastfeed when she was a small baby, because she seemed to dislike being snuggled up to me. I remembered how I’d heard all these stories about how breastfeeding brought you closer to your child, because they’d make eye-contact with you, interact with you, “bond” with you during those early moments. I remembered feeling like I must have been doing something wrong, or that she simply wasn’t interested in me, because she would actively avoid eye contact with me when I was breastfeeding her, and would only eat when she was very, very hungry or when she wanted to go to sleep. I remember feeling as if I was just a “food machine” a lot of the time — Aisling really only seemed interested in interacting with me when she wanted something and couldn’t get it.
While Asdell is very, very careful not to step on the toes of anyone reading her personal account, she does offer this at the end of her post:
Autism didn’t “happen” to her; autism is very much a part of who she is, who she’s always been. I feel she’s imperfectly perfect just as she is, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.
This is a sentiment I’ve come across a few times, that considering a child “different” rather than “damaged” is actually much better for the parent and empowering for the child. While Asdell herself would not come out and say this, viewing these kids as damaged probably has severe negative impacts on parents’ emotional states, in addition to lowering vaccination rates.
