Regression

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I accidentally intruded into someone else's thread with this, so I have moved it to my own thread. Apologies.

Someone I know said that he has a friend who's son was mildly autistic until the age of 7, at which point he had a "huge regression" and now he is "much more autistic." He claims that over 1/3 of autistic kids have "large regressions" later in childhood (like at 7 or older).

Is this true? I mean, I have known plenty of kids who have had temporary regressions, but he is saying the kid regressed and didn't regain anything back. Honestly, have I been living under a rock?

I have never heard or read any such statistic. I can understand how it might SEEM that kids are regressing at around 7 because their normally developing peers are becoming more mature with their social skills by this time and the difference between an autistic child who is struggling with social communication and his or her NT peers becomes much more apparent. It is also about this time that expectations rise in regards to how much a child should be able to do independently without any prompts from an adult. I mean I often find myself wondering if my 6 3/4 yo DS will ever manage to dress and bathe himself on a regular basis without me prompting him every step of the way. By this same age, his NT brother was doing all of this and more quite independently. So, IMHO what looks like regression may in fact be very SLOW development.

Unless he can back up his statements with sources, I would assume that this is false. Huge regressions at the late age of seven can occur in childhood disintegrative disorder, which is rare.

An older study showed that when untreated, about 1/3 of autistic kids had a decline in tested IQ scores (of about 20 points or so) but it's unclear if that was regression or stagnation. Since IQ scores are a combination of age and abilities (100/age*mental age), failure to advance as quickly as expected will cause IQ scores to decline, even if the kid has actually gained ability.

True regression is extremely rare in autistic kids past the age of 3. When it does happen, it's usually in adolescence, because a small subset of autistic kids have onset of seizures and/or motor problems in adolescence. Some medical syndromes that cause autistic traits can be associated with childhood regression, such as tuberous sclerosis (which causes tumor-like growth in the brain). These are present in only a very small proportion of autistic kids.