I had the same narrow, obsessive foci as a kid (“The Great Brain” books; psychic phenomena; the Tudors) but, because I was bad at math and extremely observant, I was merely “odd,” or “an old soul,” and not autistic. I also craved gentle attention and physical touch. So, not autistic, but…something was up.
As an adult, I don’t overuse “I love you,” but I say it when it applies. When I get a reaction like that of the friend you mention, I don’t say it again. Not because I don’t love the person, but because it’s so difficult for them to hear in the way I intend. So instead, I say, “I deeply value our connection and treasure your presence in my life,” or, something like that. It means the same thing, but without activating their trauma.
Did you study Andrew Wiles' solution well enough that you could explain it to other, non-PhD level people?
I wished the Simon Sing book/documentary would have delved a little deeper into the math, especially what the problem and solution was after Wiles made his announcement to the world that he had solved the problem and his first version of his proof was found lacking.
“Add “autism” to the list of terms that Americans use so ridiculously that an excruciatingly precise definition is a very good idea if you want to have a conversation. Autism, Christianity, feminism, racist, Nazi — before long the list of words about which we still have a shared understanding might be shorter.”
Correct! I fear this is all part of unconscious and deliberate moves by idiots, attention seekers and plain old Marxists. Confusing things this badly serves no one well.
Otherwise, the problems you outline are certainly part of the conundrum that confronts us. Speaking as a parent who helped raise a young boy, if you are not giving your child your full attention, and protecting them from all of this, WTF are you doing?
(“Come,” said the pencil to the boy, “and draw with me.”)
“Add ‘autism’ to the list of terms that Americans use so ridiculously that an excruciatingly precise definition is a very good idea if you want to have a conversation. Autism, Christianity, feminism, racist, Nazi — before long the list of words about which we still have a shared understanding might be shorter.”
Correct! I fear this is all part of unconscious and deliberate moves by idiots, attention seekers and plain old Marxists. Confusing things this badly serves no one well.
Otherwise, the problems you outline are certainly part of the conundrum that confronts us. Speaking as a parent who helped raise a young boy, if you are not giving your child your full attention, and protecting them from all of this, WTF are you doing?
(“Come,” said the pencil to the boy, “and draw with me.”)
The big issue here is shifting criteria. The activists removed the disability criteria. Completely. This is not how medicos think. It is not, and never should be, a "tick box" thing -- that is akin to the medical student reading DSM for the first time and self diagnosing themselves with a dozen disorders -- the first question is "is there a problem"
(The second question is whonia it who has the problem).
Getting rid of the need that there be severe difficulties is only enabling to education administrative people who can then stop thinking. It disables and deplatforms people. Particularly those who are intelligent, mathematical, and are deemed odd.
There are fairly reliable tools, but their validity ia based on the criteria, which are not that valid. Thus, the epidemic is partially artifactual
Twisting words into meaningless drivel is an old trick. If everybody's autistic, nobody's autistic, as it were. I wrote an IMDB review of House of Cards--no, not the crazy political horror/soap opera, but an old movie starring Kathleen Turner and Tommy Lee Jones. It featured a young girl who is a 6 year old polyglot and artistic savant. The girl is traumatized by the accidental death of her father and her mother's insistence on denying any grief in order to move on. The girl exhibits several behaviors associated with severe autism, but the movie goes out of its way to have several characters say it's not autism. Nevertheless some parents of severely autistic children insisted that it confused people by falsely showing autism is due to a single trauma and therefore curable.
I just wish the voices of those who cry, "That's not real autism," and, "That's not real Fascism," were as listened to as those who cry, "But that wasn't real Communism!" Sigh.
A relative of mine worked with the RFK Jr kind of severe autist children. She confided in me that euthanasia would be a mercy to the children, parents and carers. She was very angry at what she saw as cruelty masquerading as compassion in keeping these children alive and suffering in constant extreme distress.
I'm sure phones don't help, for all the reasons you said, but the exponential trend in autism rates starts to become visible in the mid-90s, with no marked increase in slope in the 2010s, when smartphones become ubiquitous. That suggests to me it's not a major causal driver.
I'm still not seeing any data that's calculated the same way for the same years, but I'm going to take a look at the rate of change from the point of smartphone market penetration onward and see if there's a correlation. Could be interesting.
Agreed. Precise definitions are required when talking generally about it and in the data. A great deal of the numbers might be discounted into a “quirky” personality bucket ( not much input/help required); response to childhood trauma ( more assistance with talk therapy maybe) across the spectrum to severe non functioning non verbal cases. When did those numbers start to go up? There are many factors to look at. Age of mother at birth. Alcohol and pharmaceutical consumption in very early pregnancy. Environmental factors like food additives and agro chemical use. Comparisons with data from other countries. Do they show rises in similar time frame or is it a phenomenon of the USA. All this could already be in train except for the corruption in the NIH (Fauci etc). We should never forget the harm he has done both by commission and omission.
I've been going on about this basically since I got on Substack! I've written multiple essays arguing this point -- essentially, that there was an element of truth to the "refrigerator mother" theory. There's actually quite a lot of scientific evidence backing it. "Autism" is an umbrella term for a cluster of symptoms that can arise from many causes -- it's not a "condition" in the same way, for example, Down Syndrome is. Where I slightly disagree with you here is that because "autism" is so ill-defined and broad, traumatized and neglected children who present as having autistic symptoms can legitimately call themselves "autistic". Early childhood neglect was likely a significant causal factor in Kanner and Asperger's original case studies. And early childhood neglect would interact with other causal factors -- for example, neglectful parents are probably also more likely to feed their kids processed convenience foods, and so nutrient deficiencies and gut dysbiosis (another significant contributor to autism) would also be present. And nutrient deficiencies and chronic stress impair healing and detoxification, and so would increase vulnerability to vaccine injuries and other adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals. All of this would also interact with genetic factors, such as MTHFR mutations.
I went into as many causes of autism as I could think of in this essay, with well over 100 citations from articles and books etc. I discuss the early childhood emotional neglect ("refrigerator mother") theory in detail and provide some evidence for it.
I wouldn't say you're wrong at all, Holly. I would say that it looks highly unlikely there is any one "cause", and as you say behaviours do not equal "truth" in the diagnostic framework, nor do they give insight into the internal experience driving the behaviour.
I've just come from meeting with one of the most experienced autism therapists in the country, so this is timely. Her view is that the divergence into autism tends to happen very early, as in in-utero or in the earliest weeks of life. But also, it's well-known that a lot of good parental mirroring and responsive attachment needs to happen right from the beginning of life, and if not this will result in relational deficits which may mirror autism.
The normalisation of phone use for new mothers is really shocking to me, I remember signing up for an online prenatal course that recommended putting baskets of water and snacks wherever you plan to sit while breastfeeding, "and an extra phone charger of course!"
No, you can't spend every minute eyeballing your baby during feeding, but you probably shouldn't be doing something the whole time that's so addictively engaging it's going to impact your ability to be responsive and present. I'd recommend anybody who doubts the impact of phone use on babies to look up and watch the "Still Face Experiment", but honestly, it's so upsetting nobody should see it ever.
You will find this interesting. Among other things, it includes graphs, numbers, and citations: As the criteria for a diagnosis become less rigorous, the number of diagnoses increases.
Cell phone use by new mothers could certainly be ONE of the causes of the increase in autism observed since 2000. I haven't looked: are there definitive causes listed in the literature for autism pre-2000? or even further back, say pre-1980?
If the diagnostic tools are as nebulous as you say, and I have no reason to doubt you, then trying to nail any of the potential causes is going to be difficult, if not impossible.
As far as mother-baby interaction goes, there likely have always been inattentive, neglectful mothers, going back as long as there have been mothers. Not many, but some, considering that the mothering urge is strong in most women. So that's probably a quite small number of cases, perhaps aligning with the historical data from earlier decades.
Two things I find interesting: first, in the comments, no one so far has touched on the issue of vaccination as a cause. Second, not going back as far, but there seems to be a parallel between the rapid increase of autism cases, and the recent rapid increase in gender dysphoria cases.
Something is going on in our society that has not been addressed, or if so, hidden from the general public. As a Christian, I would suspect THAT something is, at its deepest level, of satanic origin. If so, it can only be identified and solved by prayer.
Vaccines are probably causal in many autism diagnoses, but vaccine injury would be more likely when a child is chronically stressed (e.g. from neglect) and/or deficient in certain nutrients (in particular Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and glutathione). It all interacts. Children who were neglected 200+ years ago wouldn't have been bombarded with the same amount of bad food and toxins. Chronic stress impairs detoxification, so neglected children would be more vulnerable.
Regarding the relationship between autism and gender dysphoria, you may find the six episodes in this Gender, Autism and Neurodivergence playlist (spanning 2021 to 2024) an interesting listen.
It would be nice if you could link to the CDC data you mention in footnote 1, ideally turning hte text "data from the CDC" into the link.
Goddamn it. I thought I had fixed that. I will when I get home.
🤣
No worries.
I had the same narrow, obsessive foci as a kid (“The Great Brain” books; psychic phenomena; the Tudors) but, because I was bad at math and extremely observant, I was merely “odd,” or “an old soul,” and not autistic. I also craved gentle attention and physical touch. So, not autistic, but…something was up.
As an adult, I don’t overuse “I love you,” but I say it when it applies. When I get a reaction like that of the friend you mention, I don’t say it again. Not because I don’t love the person, but because it’s so difficult for them to hear in the way I intend. So instead, I say, “I deeply value our connection and treasure your presence in my life,” or, something like that. It means the same thing, but without activating their trauma.
> A summer on Fermat’s Last Theorem.
Did you study Andrew Wiles' solution well enough that you could explain it to other, non-PhD level people?
I wished the Simon Sing book/documentary would have delved a little deeper into the math, especially what the problem and solution was after Wiles made his announcement to the world that he had solved the problem and his first version of his proof was found lacking.
“Add “autism” to the list of terms that Americans use so ridiculously that an excruciatingly precise definition is a very good idea if you want to have a conversation. Autism, Christianity, feminism, racist, Nazi — before long the list of words about which we still have a shared understanding might be shorter.”
Correct! I fear this is all part of unconscious and deliberate moves by idiots, attention seekers and plain old Marxists. Confusing things this badly serves no one well.
Otherwise, the problems you outline are certainly part of the conundrum that confronts us. Speaking as a parent who helped raise a young boy, if you are not giving your child your full attention, and protecting them from all of this, WTF are you doing?
(“Come,” said the pencil to the boy, “and draw with me.”)
“Add ‘autism’ to the list of terms that Americans use so ridiculously that an excruciatingly precise definition is a very good idea if you want to have a conversation. Autism, Christianity, feminism, racist, Nazi — before long the list of words about which we still have a shared understanding might be shorter.”
Correct! I fear this is all part of unconscious and deliberate moves by idiots, attention seekers and plain old Marxists. Confusing things this badly serves no one well.
Otherwise, the problems you outline are certainly part of the conundrum that confronts us. Speaking as a parent who helped raise a young boy, if you are not giving your child your full attention, and protecting them from all of this, WTF are you doing?
(“Come,” said the pencil to the boy, “and draw with me.”)
The big issue here is shifting criteria. The activists removed the disability criteria. Completely. This is not how medicos think. It is not, and never should be, a "tick box" thing -- that is akin to the medical student reading DSM for the first time and self diagnosing themselves with a dozen disorders -- the first question is "is there a problem"
(The second question is whonia it who has the problem).
Getting rid of the need that there be severe difficulties is only enabling to education administrative people who can then stop thinking. It disables and deplatforms people. Particularly those who are intelligent, mathematical, and are deemed odd.
There are fairly reliable tools, but their validity ia based on the criteria, which are not that valid. Thus, the epidemic is partially artifactual
Twisting words into meaningless drivel is an old trick. If everybody's autistic, nobody's autistic, as it were. I wrote an IMDB review of House of Cards--no, not the crazy political horror/soap opera, but an old movie starring Kathleen Turner and Tommy Lee Jones. It featured a young girl who is a 6 year old polyglot and artistic savant. The girl is traumatized by the accidental death of her father and her mother's insistence on denying any grief in order to move on. The girl exhibits several behaviors associated with severe autism, but the movie goes out of its way to have several characters say it's not autism. Nevertheless some parents of severely autistic children insisted that it confused people by falsely showing autism is due to a single trauma and therefore curable.
I just wish the voices of those who cry, "That's not real autism," and, "That's not real Fascism," were as listened to as those who cry, "But that wasn't real Communism!" Sigh.
https://open.substack.com/pub/cremieux/p/whats-the-deal-with-autism-rates?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=15fe7l
"But the catch-all bucket we’re now calling “autism” includes far more than that."
There's also the factor of social media fueled self diagnoses. If you haven't read Freddie DeBoer on this, he's quite good.
"Why Can't We Be Honest About the Rise of Mental Disorders as Consumer Products?
this is an undeniable and widespread phenomenon with obvious negative consequences for society that mainstream media simply will not cover
Freddie deBoer
Apr 15, 2025"
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/why-cant-we-be-honest-about-the-rise
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/whats-the-problem-with-disability
This NYT piece also makes a similar argument to yours:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/opinion/autism-rfk-parent-child.html
A relative of mine worked with the RFK Jr kind of severe autist children. She confided in me that euthanasia would be a mercy to the children, parents and carers. She was very angry at what she saw as cruelty masquerading as compassion in keeping these children alive and suffering in constant extreme distress.
Does your relative live in Canada? It sounds like agitprop from Schwab et al. and the WEF.
No it’s real life experience based on caring for these severely autistic kids daily for years.
What’s your real life experience of severe autism?
I don't any personal experience, though I have a rough idea of how bad it can be. But I certainly wouldn't endorse euthanasia like Belgium has done.
I'm sure phones don't help, for all the reasons you said, but the exponential trend in autism rates starts to become visible in the mid-90s, with no marked increase in slope in the 2010s, when smartphones become ubiquitous. That suggests to me it's not a major causal driver.
What data are you referring to? I only found 2000 forward at the CDC but I may have just missed it.
Some advocacy group websites have this chart going back to the 70s which they described as CDC data:
https://tacanow.org/press-release/new-cdc-data-show-autism-rates-soar-1-in-31-u-s-children-diagnosed/
PS. I suspect the plots are of this dataset compiled from the literature by the CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/autism/data-research/data-table.html
I'm still not seeing any data that's calculated the same way for the same years, but I'm going to take a look at the rate of change from the point of smartphone market penetration onward and see if there's a correlation. Could be interesting.
Agreed. Precise definitions are required when talking generally about it and in the data. A great deal of the numbers might be discounted into a “quirky” personality bucket ( not much input/help required); response to childhood trauma ( more assistance with talk therapy maybe) across the spectrum to severe non functioning non verbal cases. When did those numbers start to go up? There are many factors to look at. Age of mother at birth. Alcohol and pharmaceutical consumption in very early pregnancy. Environmental factors like food additives and agro chemical use. Comparisons with data from other countries. Do they show rises in similar time frame or is it a phenomenon of the USA. All this could already be in train except for the corruption in the NIH (Fauci etc). We should never forget the harm he has done both by commission and omission.
I've been going on about this basically since I got on Substack! I've written multiple essays arguing this point -- essentially, that there was an element of truth to the "refrigerator mother" theory. There's actually quite a lot of scientific evidence backing it. "Autism" is an umbrella term for a cluster of symptoms that can arise from many causes -- it's not a "condition" in the same way, for example, Down Syndrome is. Where I slightly disagree with you here is that because "autism" is so ill-defined and broad, traumatized and neglected children who present as having autistic symptoms can legitimately call themselves "autistic". Early childhood neglect was likely a significant causal factor in Kanner and Asperger's original case studies. And early childhood neglect would interact with other causal factors -- for example, neglectful parents are probably also more likely to feed their kids processed convenience foods, and so nutrient deficiencies and gut dysbiosis (another significant contributor to autism) would also be present. And nutrient deficiencies and chronic stress impair healing and detoxification, and so would increase vulnerability to vaccine injuries and other adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals. All of this would also interact with genetic factors, such as MTHFR mutations.
I went into as many causes of autism as I could think of in this essay, with well over 100 citations from articles and books etc. I discuss the early childhood emotional neglect ("refrigerator mother") theory in detail and provide some evidence for it.
Edit (DANG forgot the link):
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/what-causes-autism
I'm an idiot, I forgot the link:
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/what-causes-autism
I wouldn't say you're wrong at all, Holly. I would say that it looks highly unlikely there is any one "cause", and as you say behaviours do not equal "truth" in the diagnostic framework, nor do they give insight into the internal experience driving the behaviour.
I've just come from meeting with one of the most experienced autism therapists in the country, so this is timely. Her view is that the divergence into autism tends to happen very early, as in in-utero or in the earliest weeks of life. But also, it's well-known that a lot of good parental mirroring and responsive attachment needs to happen right from the beginning of life, and if not this will result in relational deficits which may mirror autism.
The normalisation of phone use for new mothers is really shocking to me, I remember signing up for an online prenatal course that recommended putting baskets of water and snacks wherever you plan to sit while breastfeeding, "and an extra phone charger of course!"
No, you can't spend every minute eyeballing your baby during feeding, but you probably shouldn't be doing something the whole time that's so addictively engaging it's going to impact your ability to be responsive and present. I'd recommend anybody who doubts the impact of phone use on babies to look up and watch the "Still Face Experiment", but honestly, it's so upsetting nobody should see it ever.
You will find this interesting. Among other things, it includes graphs, numbers, and citations: As the criteria for a diagnosis become less rigorous, the number of diagnoses increases.
https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/whats-the-deal-with-autism-rates
Cell phone use by new mothers could certainly be ONE of the causes of the increase in autism observed since 2000. I haven't looked: are there definitive causes listed in the literature for autism pre-2000? or even further back, say pre-1980?
If the diagnostic tools are as nebulous as you say, and I have no reason to doubt you, then trying to nail any of the potential causes is going to be difficult, if not impossible.
As far as mother-baby interaction goes, there likely have always been inattentive, neglectful mothers, going back as long as there have been mothers. Not many, but some, considering that the mothering urge is strong in most women. So that's probably a quite small number of cases, perhaps aligning with the historical data from earlier decades.
Two things I find interesting: first, in the comments, no one so far has touched on the issue of vaccination as a cause. Second, not going back as far, but there seems to be a parallel between the rapid increase of autism cases, and the recent rapid increase in gender dysphoria cases.
Something is going on in our society that has not been addressed, or if so, hidden from the general public. As a Christian, I would suspect THAT something is, at its deepest level, of satanic origin. If so, it can only be identified and solved by prayer.
Regarding gender dysphoria and autism --
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/the-drama-of-the-gifted-children
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/down-the-folic-acid-rabbit-hole
Vaccines are probably causal in many autism diagnoses, but vaccine injury would be more likely when a child is chronically stressed (e.g. from neglect) and/or deficient in certain nutrients (in particular Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and glutathione). It all interacts. Children who were neglected 200+ years ago wouldn't have been bombarded with the same amount of bad food and toxins. Chronic stress impairs detoxification, so neglected children would be more vulnerable.
Regarding the relationship between autism and gender dysphoria, you may find the six episodes in this Gender, Autism and Neurodivergence playlist (spanning 2021 to 2024) an interesting listen.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngVCeAoK6vt2z7urbxXxhvieGgXOoPfm