Regression

Post Reply New Topic

Please tell me if this doesn't make sense .
Many people say that someone didn't have autism until they regressed (if they did). There is something I've noticed, in all of the stories about regression I've heard so far, it was a child who was advanced for their age (before regression), there was already something different about the child. I know you're more likely to hear stories about children who regressed after being so advanced, but it makes me think that a jab, or something-else, didn't suddenly 'give' them autism out of nowhere, like some people like to think.
I know about the theory that says a jab or something can "set off autism in someone who was already dispositioned", but I think it's suspicious that they were all advanced for their age.
Your thoughts?

Last edited by JellyCat on 06 Oct 2012, 9:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Every time I have heard of this, it happened when the child was about two years old and then they lost their normal skills and started to regress, then they were diagnosed with autism. Some kids are normal until they reach a certain toddler age and then they regress. I don't know why that happens. It has happened in kids who were one also or an infant and parents usually blame it on vaccines.

I have regressed at certain points in my life.

How old were you when these regressions happened?

the ones I remember when I was 10 and when I was 16.

My daughter has had two regressions - the first very large one when she first started public school (she was 4 and had no recent vaccines) then the following year a few less severe regressions. She has not been diagnosed with autism/aspergers but rather ADHD.
It is difficult to see and I considered her advanced for her age at the time.

There are a number of reasons children have regressions and sometimes trying to put your finger on the fault can lead you to think something (like a vaccine) prompted it.

Note: my daughter came back to her previous level with time and patience and while I didn't and still don't understand, I am greatful for that.

I think autism kids are born with it but it doesn't manifest until a certain point in development because the symptoms don't match.

I don't understand that kind of regression in early childhood, following two or moar years of typical development. It's strange. I did read the abstract of a study in which they found that kids with regression ackshuly did bester on tests of social cognition than kids with "early-onset" autism, which I think refers to autism without a recognizable period of typical development.

Maybe that can happen and that is what others are saying is happen now for me. after the 100% lost of my voice due to a seizure last Feb
A lot of people that I have known for a long time are saying this. A lot of the skills I had and worked my butt off to get them are going away. I am not the same as I use to be and that I am going back to the way I use to be.. Some of my Family is saying this too. And I had a DR call me LF. and that did make me mad.
The funny part is that "I" am not seeing this happen and I see me in the same way I was before I lost my voice. Just that I can not talk.
I am 39 btw.

In a sense, autism is like cancer or MS. Heredity plays a role but there are environmental factors to consider as well. The common thread being that one is born with it and it lies dormant until that 'autism' or 'diabetes' circuit gets tripped. OTOH you have the higher functioning ends of the spectrum where we didn't lose development, it just came later to us, along with exhibiting 'worrysome' traits that were trained, shamed, bullied and beaten 'out' of us by NTs with 'good intentions'. some of us with no choice to go about our lives wearing a mask that never quite fits, which ends up taking its toll. When the mask becomes too heavy it falls off and we get asked how we can have the audacity to want to live out our lives without the exhaustion, the lucky ones find out about ASDs. Then the rest of the battle consists of trying to educate others that "once autistic=forever autistic"

But as I say, there's always the chance the NT may have a stroke or get a TBI, and gain a real understanding of empathy

Perhaps whatever brain development that normally goes on at 18 months either goes wrong or connects parts of the brain that were not previously connected and thus overload the brain.

Interesting.
Does anyone know if it's possible to lose connections? I know it is if you have a stroke, but other than that? Can you if you hit your head? I think you can, but I'm not 100%.

Not sure if it's lost or altered connections, and I'm not 100% sure of the cause and effect connection either, but something that I'd term 'regression' happened to me after years of being hit by my father.

I guess, some people happen to have a stroke... others happen to have parents with cancerous traits.

You are not talking about regression in relation to overloads?

That's what I think about appearing symptoms:

I would say I have been regressing quite badly the last years (From that how it feels)

Until the age of 31 I felt quite normal but then stress started to increase, mostly because of the missing support at my job (that others though got).
I couldn't work that well anymore as before. Got blocked, got slower.

Now that I found out about ASD I went really apeshit because I had also many big changes at the same time.
I got more sensory overloads, it started to feel like the really bad symptoms sometimes described here.
Mood swings. Anxiety went through the roof. Sadness. Perspectiveless. And I am still in it.

Then did badly at the new job. People starting to talk about you. That kind of typical package...

All this plus stress makes you overload much more than before and you'll show symptoms that you don't know from before.
Physical symptoms as well.

Whether I will easily extrapolate back I don't know. Some things are never going to come back. I am sure about that.

These are psychological issues mainly, but with the addition that overloads happen, paranoia, all kinds of aspie traits intensify.
You could see this as setting off symptoms.
If that will vanish again, I don't know.

And probably also my brain changed during the last years....
Stress was simply too high

They were always autistic--it's just that around the age of two you get hugely increased expectations, and suddenly the child is overwhelmed... cue burnout, cue obvious autism.

Early diagnosis and early screening might help stop this from happening. If we could get to these kids before the regression happens, we could make sure they have autism-friendly environments to grow up in.

That is a thing I actually also was wondering...
What makes spectrum so bad.

It's actually not the physical stuff. It's just the psychological effects that result from it
and merely the way you are treated.
If you are treated like a disabled child you'll go bust most certainly.
And eventually you'll never return from there.

From then on you'd be "treated".

And I am pretty sure that there is more wrong ways of "treatment" than right ones.
Just considering children to be normal will help.
And helping them finding answers.

Children on the spectrum most probably do not belong anywhere where they are "treated" as being disabled.

I know only that I always thought
that if aspies would be respected more they would have much less symptoms and trouble
(including me when I still didn't know I was aspie)

Even as a child already I remember me thinking something like this already

What do you think?