2 other characteristics of autism that strike out at me.

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2ukenkerl
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12 Jun 2009, 3:01 pm

AnAutisticMind wrote:

in my never ending research, i have come up with a couple of phenomenens relating to autism.

1-you have about a 25% higher chance of having an autistic child if you are a mechanical or computer engineer...OR IF you have (or had) a grandfather who was an engineer

PLEASE, I AM NOT SAYING THAT EVERY FOURTH CHILD BORN TO THE POPULOUS OF ENGINEERS IS AUTISTIC.

however when you look at millions of birth stats over 1000's of occupations it is clear engineers sire more spectrum disorder children children as an occupation than others....AGAIN I WANT TO MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE THE MEANING OF THIS STATISTIC, ENGINEERS ARENT CREATING US BY THE MILLIONS, LOL

are you or is your father or is your grandfather a MECHANICAL or COMPUTER engineer?
it would only seem logical because engineers can sit for hours enthwraled(sp) in what they are doing.....they seem to have better focus and drive than norm, imho

2-

............you have a 5 times higher risk if you are a male over the ages of about 42-44 and beyond of having an autistic child

i was 44 when i had my only son.....since i am aspergers, the chances were already high, but a 44 yr old asperger????? asking for real trouble brother...my son has no language yet , as i did, but he is very bright and the most sociable autistic child i ever seen :lol:

AGAIN, LETS REVIEW THE STAT....this is newer research here

men over 42 having children is a small % of babies being born i'm sure ( but older men having kids has been growing for yrs, so another explanation in the skyrocketing diagnoses)

again i am NOT SAYING men over 40 are popping out autistic kids by the millions, however you have a five times more likliehood than a 30 yr old, and that is VERY SIGNIFICANT...................MEN!!, our seeds get old too!! !, not just the ladies......take a hint younger dudes

btw, it has been known for a long time that men over 50-55 have way higher incidences of havin schizophrenic offspring

my father was over 40 when i was born ( i look at this suspiciously now), how old was your dad when you were born?

how old were you when you had an autistic child

Well I have ALWAYS known and recognized that REAL engineer types tend to have kids that have what I NOW recognize as AS traits. MOST people CLAIMING to be engineers really aren't. They view it only as a job, work 8-5, and just do things by ROTE and go off of someone else's coattails. So 25% MIGHT be near 100%, since the VAST majority of "engineers" are as I described.

My father was a programmer for IBM, and even claims to have basically created ISAM. For those that don't know, ISAM is basically the backend of decent DBMS systems. This system is running on MYSQL. And WHAT is the default backend for MYSQL???? YEP MYISAM!

Such details are often obscured, especially with IBM when my father was there, but WHO KNOWS?

Janissy
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12 Jun 2009, 3:14 pm

I didn't say so when I started the Assortative Mating thread, but my husband is an engineer. I think this observation about engineers is what started somebody on the whole Assortative Mating theory in the first place.

Way back in 1943, Kanner noticed that older mothers were more likely to have AS kids (I don't think he noted anything about the fathers, older mothers just jumped out at him more). Then he went to a really terrible place with that observation and jumped to the awful conclusion that women who dislike kids will delay childbearing just so they don't have to be around children and then not love the ones they have. That led to the horrible Refrigerator Mother hypothesis which has only recently been debunked.

So yes, I think these are both relevent bits of info. And hopefully another nail in the coffin of blaming vaccination.

AnAutisticMind
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12 Jun 2009, 6:08 pm

Janissy wrote:

hi jan, thanks for a very insightful post................and thanks for the vaccination comment, though i believe vaccines will cause an allergic reaction in every so many millionth that mimmiks autism................the vaccine theory is such nonsense and has wasted so much precious energy................HOWEVER, i know an individual who had his child vaccinated while she was still recovering from a fever and probably had it as she got the "big round' of shots.....she has not been the same since................any pediatrician who does not take a tempature of a child before vaccination SHOULD!! !..i think their might be something to that

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AnAutisticMind
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12 Jun 2009, 6:12 pm

matt wrote:

Quote:

1-you have about a 25% higher chance of having an autistic child if you are a mechanical or computer engineer...OR IF you have (or had) a grandfather who was an engineer

It may be accurate to say that a child of a randomly-chosen engineer is 25% more likely to be autistic than a randomly-chosen child of a non-engineer, but does that equate to parents' chosen occupation influencing the likelihood of any future offspring being autistic?

If a condition is inherited then the children of someone having said condition or children of carriers of some condition are more likely to have that condition.

If autism is inherited and people with autistic traits are more likely to become engineers that might explain why children of engineers are more likely in general to be autistic. But if autism is inherited wouldn't it make more sense that only the children of engineers with autism or who carry autistic genes would be more likely to have autistic children?

Quote:

2- ............you have a 5 times higher risk if you are a male over the ages of about 42-44 and beyond of having an autistic child

If autism is inherited and people with autistic traits are more likely to be older when having children that might explain why children conceived by older males are more likely in general to be autistic. But if autism is inherited wouldn't it make more sense that only the children of older males with autism or of those who carry autistic genes would be more likely to have autistic children?

To go further, if an autistic male is lower functioning would it make sense that if said male breeds then it would be more likely that he would breed at a later age?

And is there really enough information to say that as an autistic father ages that the likelihood of passing autism to his children increases?

Both of your claims might be explained by the following:

if autism is inherited, then
if level of functioning in parents has an influence on likelihood of passing autism to one's children, then
if autistic males or males related to autistic males are more likely to become engineers
if the level of an autistic male's functioning has an inverse relationship with the average date on which said male would breed

If autism is inherited, and if functioning level has an influence on whether said inheritance is expressed in one's children, and if level of functioning has an inverse relationship with age of breeding, then wouldn't that create a situation where the average age of the parents of autistic newborn children would be higher than the average age of the parents of non-autistic newborn children?

hi matt...i hear you and your post claims a lot of validity too..........HOWEVER, the key element here is that autism is (THANKFULLY) a very resessive gene that strikes with some consistency but is still all over the map, skipping this and skipping that.............but i learned a lot from your post and it is very valid.............OHHHH autism, your such a b***h

wigglyspider
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12 Jun 2009, 6:13 pm

Well, my dad worked at Microsoft.. I'm not sure if he was an engineer though. And I also think he was in his early 40s when I was born. (My little sister is normal though.) But oh snap, he recently had another kid and he was definitely over 50 by then. XD;;; I guess I'll keep an eye on my half-brother next time I see him. This is very interesting.

PS My grandfather was a doctor. (And the other died before I was born, I don't know what he was.) Just for the sake of giving you more info.

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Last edited by wigglyspider on 12 Jun 2009, 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

pandd
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12 Jun 2009, 6:15 pm

I have read Kanner’s original paper and he included observations about the parent’s attributes. He stated that it was tempting to view the condition as caused by parental treatment of offspring, but then stated explicitly that this hypothesis could not be true because of the early development of symptoms.

In other words Kanner anticipated and refuted the hypothesis of parental behaviour causing the condition, at the outset.

I would not interpret Kanner as having not been struck by characteristics of the fathers. Contrary to a parental behaviour rather than hereditary model, Kanner also included information about grandparents who had no contact with the children.

I cannot see why he would conclude the mothers were responsible, since in his paper he reported very clearly that one child improved when the father exited the home leaving the daughter in her mother’s care.

wigglyspider
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12 Jun 2009, 6:18 pm

pandd wrote:

Don't you think, though, that it would seem to have less to do with how an engineer father would treat his kid, and more to do with the traits of the father that caused him to become an engineer in the first place?

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pandd
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12 Jun 2009, 7:14 pm

wigglyspider wrote:

pandd wrote:

Your question makes no sense in the context of my comments.

My comments are that Kanner (who was being accused by an earlier poster of attributing Autism to the behaviour of mothers) actually rejected the idea that Autism could be attributed to parental behaviour at all.

AnAutisticMind
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12 Jun 2009, 7:19 pm

pandd wrote:

thats why i like aspergers work better

pandd
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12 Jun 2009, 8:01 pm

AnAutisticMind wrote:

pandd wrote:

thats why i like aspergers work better

Why do you think Kanner was wrong to rule out parental behaviour being a likely cause? What makes you think Autism is caused by the behaviour of parents?

Dragonfly_Dreams
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12 Jun 2009, 8:24 pm

I am dx'd AS, OCD, panic and anxiety disorder
My maternal grandfather was an engineer. I am 100% sure he is AS.
My maternal grandmother was most likely AS.
My mother did all things slightly out of the gender norm. (carpentry, mechanic, tree arborist, etc...) She was very ASpish. Drugs and other mis-diagnosis's prevailed. (Bipolar) She died of an overdose when she was only 36.
My 23 year old male cousin I am 100% sure is AS. He lives with us right now. Things in my house are very amusing with three aspies. LOL
My husband is dx'd ADHD
My oldest dd has been tested and found to have many aspie traits. She has compensated for the most part.
My 5 yo is 100% AS and in the middle of official diagnosis.
My other two seem NT so far...whatever that means LOL

I believe my father was only in his 30's when he had me. He was ex military. He was weird.

AnAutisticMind
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12 Jun 2009, 8:24 pm

pandd wrote:

AnAutisticMind wrote:

pandd wrote:

hi pann, i never said that...............it seems that mothers were always to blame because of bad parenting in a lot of cases, and hence an autistic child..........surely mothers made parental mistakes with autistic kids especially under the pressure and lack of knowledge and resources, but to blame them???

thats why i like aspergers work better

Why do you think Kanner was wrong to rule out parental behaviour being a likely cause? What makes you think Autism is caused by the behaviour of parents?

arielhawksquill
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12 Jun 2009, 8:30 pm

My father's job title at General Dynamics was "software engineer". He was 39 when I was born.

pandd
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12 Jun 2009, 8:52 pm

AnAutisticMind wrote:

In response to an assertion that Kanner argued against parental behaviour as a possible cause, you claimed because of this (because Kanner rejected parental behaviour as a cause) you preferred some other researcher.

Did you even read the comments about Kanner that you were responding to, because it appears you are criticizing Kanner for holding the same view that you do?

Biene
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13 Jun 2009, 10:33 am

[quote]2- ............you have a 5 times higher risk if you are a male over the ages of about 42-44 and beyond of having an autistic child

My Dad was 60 when he had me and my mother 40...I seem to by fine :O)
although I do have autistic traits like sensitive to smells, sounds, notice small things normal people would not, obsessive and perfectionistic with things that I like doing, like gardening or cutting hair...very observant to moods in other people or what is being said...etc.

My son has undiagnosed "As"...he is one of those kids who do well in school and cause no trouble, so they found no need to diagnose him, I guess...
A teacher of my son told me he could have it and that is when I first learned about Asperger's.
And learning I did, really obsessively :O)

What I was wondering though is if the "direct " offspring of these older man do not present the AS/ Autism, if the offspring would pass the genetic flaw (?) on to their chidren?

I always was doing really well in the social department, although a lot of it was copied behaviour, I do very well being left alone....

My husband is a real geek and clumsy like hell....I am just the opposite

My mother definitely could have been autistic and my father was very outgoing and sporty...

In my husbands family they are all "geeky "...

It drives me crazy to figure out were my son got it from!! !! !

My son did have bad reactions to vaccination...(febrile seizures)

I also read about autism/schizophrenia being linked to older fathers...I used to have a friend
who's father was exactly the same age as mine when he had her and her mother too (60 father, 40 mother), my friend was extremely social (a little hyper maybe) no signs of autism or scizo....

ProfessorX
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13 Jun 2009, 11:00 am

Well, in regards to acquiring austitc traits? I'd go as far to say, my great-grandfather on my mom's side of the family had Asperger Syndrome and yes, he tended to be not only an electrician but, also was very well with carpentry and was both fluent in the Armenian and Russian language.Mind you though, I don't base my inheritance of Asperger syndrome on one's occupational skills or such but, rather some traits do filter down however, in my case I have none of those skills whatsoever.Anyways, I'm always been fascinated by what people with Aspergers can do though including myself..

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