Conor Doherty, October 15, 2011, Out for a stroll with Dad
and showing no obvious signs of stress in his life
In my last blog post I commented on Dr. Gabor Maté's theory that parental stress causes autism disorders including Autistic Disorder. Dr. Maté is reported to have admitted that he had no proof of his theory but asked what else could be behind rising rates of autism disorder diagnoses. The first picture of my son Conor above was taken today. Conor was diagnosed at age 2 with Autistic Disorder. Below are some pictures of Conor as an infant, followed by a number taken at different points in Conor's life. Stress induced autism? I don't think so and I don't think Conor would agree with Dr. Maté's wild speculation either.
7 comments:
Harold, you can't fool us with those photo ops of your son! You're from Toronto...you had to have been stressed. ;)
LOL, Claire we WERE living in Burlington and I worked in downtown T.O. (Eaton Centre)when both of our sons were born. We moved back home to Freddy Beach (Fredericton)shortly after Conor's 1st birthday, before his autism diagnosis at age 2.
I can't imagine how things would have turned out if I had still been working out of TO with roughly 4.5 hours of commuting time each day, time I would not have had for either of my sons.
We moved out of TO 18mths before our eldest was born.
The only "stress" in our lives comes from crashing into the system every time we turn around. That didn't create the autism... that is b/c of the autism.
Big difference.
I now have a 12yr old... how the... did that happen already? :)
Good Lord, them are some bright baby blues!!!
You know Harold I dont usually visit your blog because I often find we come at things from very different perspectives, but came across your blog link on another blog and thought I'd pop in to see what you were on about today. Imagine my surprise and delight at seeing the gorgeous pics of your family. Particularly your beautiful son. Reallly lovely. You must be incredibly proud of him.
AWESOME pictures! :)
How do people come up with these crazy theories? Really ...
All the best! :) Heather
You have a very adorable son! Did he wear braces or does he have naturally perfect teeth?
In my experience, it's been the other way around; I wasn't stressed out until I'd been living with my children's autism for awhile. Parental stress doesn't cause autism - autism causes parental stress.
Yeesh!
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