I work in child care, and one of the little ones had her 18 month shots last week. Ever since then she has been inconsolable and non-stop screaming (the pain scream), hitting the other kids, hitting us teachers, just absolutely miserable. She can be sassy, but never mean. There was none of her usual sweet silliness last week.
Her mother messaged yesterday that she was staying home with a cough. An hour later, she frantically called my boss saying that little one was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. They couldn’t get her heart rate under control, so she was helicoptered to the local Children’s Hospital. Her heart stopped on the way and they brought her back. No news on when she will be out of the hospital.
I looked up what the 18 month shots are. Hep A Hep B DTaP Polio And an optional Flu shot, which the child was given.
Every child I work with, after their shots, is HORRIBLE. It’s because they cannot communicate how their bodies feel. The worst is the infants. Stop the planet, I want to get off. 😢
My parents say that “better diagnosis” is bullshit, they remember there being maybe ONE kid in their classes throughout all of grade school that was “weird”, heck I was in grade school in the 90s and there were maybe 2 I could name off the top of my head that could have been ASD/Aspbergers. One family had a special son with profound delays, but he was born with a syndrome. Great young man, he sadly died young.
The criteria for diagnosing autism changes quite a bit from DSM to DSM. Mental healthcare is an evolving thing. Many children who would have previously been diagnosed as mentally retarded in earlier DSMs now fall under the autism spectrum.
The disorder itself hasn't changed, simply the terms we use have changed.
One reason why we're seeing more autistic kids in classes now is because of changes in our educational system. Mainstreaming kids with autism by placing them in "normal" classes is the approach now rather than segregating them by placing them in special education classes or special schools.