Aug 8, 2019, New Zealand Herald: Health check: NZ children with autism wait half their life for diagnosis, and wait again for help https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12254889 Girls with autism spectrum disorder are diagnosed later than boys because they are better at masking it. According to one source, the average diagnosis age is 14 compared to 8 for boys. Parents are able to detect if their child has autism at about 2 or 3 years old. It might be that they don't coo or babble away when they're an infant, or that they can't string a couple of words together at age 2. Despite this ability to pick up signs of autism spectrum disorder early, children are often not diagnosed until after they've begun school in New Zealand. For girls, the wait is likely to be even longer.
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Loss of Brain Trust features over 9,000 news stories published worldwide since January, 2017
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
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What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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