A "Theory" about increasing autism rates

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Sometimes, I think it's due to information and sensory overload in a very unnatural modern over-stimulating environment when we're growing up leading to system overload at critical stages when brain development is occurring at a very rapid state.

I am in the camp where I was severely punished and often physically for my behaviors and social incongruence. I was often punished for kids bullying me, and severely punished for meltdowns. My brother came out against them when he was bipolar and I lied with the promise of college and graduate school. In the end I do not talk to my parents anymore as they disowned me, truth be told I have been much healthier since they have been out of my life.

In terms of the increase in the number of cases, it is increased recognition of what it is and diagnostic evaluation. It is not that the actual incidence of autism is increasing, it is just the educational, psychological and medical field are now more able to recognize it, even in its more subtle forms.

couldn't possibly be the fact that the world population is increasing...

I meant foreign languages. The less common the better (Esperanto, Latin, Old English, Middle Egyptian, etc.)

I am good at some parts but not others. My echoing of French was so flawless as a kid that my teacher (who was from Paris) called my parents and demanded to know where I'd been exposed to French. I hadn't. It turned out that most people can't hear sounds in languages they haven't been exposed to before a certain age, let alone repeat them accurately. I was the same when singing in Spanish despite not knowing how to speak it.

Anyway my skills in other languages tend to just... stall, at a certain point. I can see the patterns and interconnections well enough, but my vocabulary stalls past that one point much like my English vocabulary stalled as a kid. Except I don't get over that hump in foreign languages the way I do in English. French is my best but even that, I can only understand either basic level stuff, or if reading slowly and using a dictionary I can translate a bit if I'm lucky.

English is another matter, but still an odd one. On vocabulary alone, my expressive far outstrips my receptive. Which is apparently (according to the DSM anyway) common in autistic kids who learn to speak. And yet when I talk to adults I can only find a tiny number whose language development looked like mine.

Basically I was using purely sensory-based patterns to repeat phrases and sentences, recombine them in appropriate sounding ways in response to other people's words, etc., before I knew what language was for or that it had meaning. The meaning slowly seeped in over time.

I still can only understand words a minority of the time. And even when I do understand them I'm using tricks to look like I understand more than I do. I spend most of my time language-free. But I worked hard both to bring my writing ability up to a good level, and also to hitch writing to my thoughts and experiences. Starting with expressive ahead of receptive gave me only the ability to repeat what I thought a person might say in a circumstance. If it reflected my thoughts I was lucky. So I had to wrest control of my writing away from the mechanism that produced plausible responses. This wasn't instantaneous, it's still going on, just much less. Get me tired and you'll see my language jump onto the old tracks.

[I don't even have the space to get into speech vs writing.]

Writing is still hard and my abilities can hide massive issues. Like I can only write about certain topics (my life and internal workings being one of the primary ones) and I cannot choose my topics. It is either triggered by some event or else it won't happen. (Sometimes I can push through but that causes violent meltdowns even when it's possible so I mostly avoid it for my own safety and the eardrums of those around me.) Also it can take me time to find the right words. And like many of my abilities language is a cliff I climb and the moment my fingers tire I am dropped further below language than most people even know about, including those who can talk or write but not as well as me

But all that said, in English on the right topics at the right times, my expressive language is quite good. Just don't mistake it for understanding, quite often I can't even read my own writing!