I found this perspective on ASD particularly eye-opening (as someone deeply interested in how evolution shapes human traits). It's so important that we embrace cognitive diversity! While still ensuring that individuals like Hugo receive the support they need to thrive.
Thanks for writing, easy read and applicable. I have ongoing ambivalence about ASD as a state of physiology vs pathology but appreciate that in the end what matters are treatment not labels.
The evolutionarily-informed suggestions for treatment are completely identical to the non-evolutionarily informed practice, at least in the UK. It also works poorly.
It's cheaper for autistic kids to be in mainstream so it's nearly always how autistic kids are placed, until the situation deteriorates so badly increasing levels of support are given. Meanwhile the child is typically traumatized from his or her experience which means each successive intervention fails, because the child is starting worse off than s/he was before, i.e. with many additional behavioral triggers.
As a result in the UK a significant proportion of autistic kids are not attending school at all after repeated failed placements. Though I agree it would be great if autistic kids could be "socialised" in mainstream schools, I don't think that's currently what's occurring. If the child is already experiencing alienation from his peers, it's unlikely it will get better on its own. Dad will come around as he starts to see how bad things get.
"Severity" is not ime predictive of this. I have seen some autistic kids with some degree of ID who nevertheless are fine in mainstream because their disability prevents them from realising the difference between themselves and others, whereas more "high functioning" kids sometimes feel the difference acutely and can't cope.
That the majority of the alleles are were probably adaptive does not preclude the idea that autism is itself maladaptive. These alleles are likely adaptive only when combined with other alleles; but in these individual cases synergistic effects cause disability. There's some evidence assortative mating is causing the increase in disabled autistic children which is more consistent with that idea rather than that autism itself is adaptive.
I found this perspective on ASD particularly eye-opening (as someone deeply interested in how evolution shapes human traits). It's so important that we embrace cognitive diversity! While still ensuring that individuals like Hugo receive the support they need to thrive.
Thanks for writing, easy read and applicable. I have ongoing ambivalence about ASD as a state of physiology vs pathology but appreciate that in the end what matters are treatment not labels.
The evolutionarily-informed suggestions for treatment are completely identical to the non-evolutionarily informed practice, at least in the UK. It also works poorly.
It's cheaper for autistic kids to be in mainstream so it's nearly always how autistic kids are placed, until the situation deteriorates so badly increasing levels of support are given. Meanwhile the child is typically traumatized from his or her experience which means each successive intervention fails, because the child is starting worse off than s/he was before, i.e. with many additional behavioral triggers.
As a result in the UK a significant proportion of autistic kids are not attending school at all after repeated failed placements. Though I agree it would be great if autistic kids could be "socialised" in mainstream schools, I don't think that's currently what's occurring. If the child is already experiencing alienation from his peers, it's unlikely it will get better on its own. Dad will come around as he starts to see how bad things get.
"Severity" is not ime predictive of this. I have seen some autistic kids with some degree of ID who nevertheless are fine in mainstream because their disability prevents them from realising the difference between themselves and others, whereas more "high functioning" kids sometimes feel the difference acutely and can't cope.
That the majority of the alleles are were probably adaptive does not preclude the idea that autism is itself maladaptive. These alleles are likely adaptive only when combined with other alleles; but in these individual cases synergistic effects cause disability. There's some evidence assortative mating is causing the increase in disabled autistic children which is more consistent with that idea rather than that autism itself is adaptive.
"lower grey matter white matter" - typo. Should probably be just " lower grey matter"