One of the common questions I think every parent has when their child is diagnosed, is, “is there a cure for Autism?” I know my wife and I searched and searched when we our oldest son was first diagnosed. At the time, there was little public information about autism, and the Internet was still a relatively new thing which made researching information about it that much more difficult.
Since then we’ve even heard some people say that their child was “cured”, although, in some cases, it may be “recovered” is a better word and the news agencies choose “cure”. Unfortunately, this can give people a false hope, especially when unethical news agencies try to increase clicks by over promising something that even the person they’re talking about has denied.
In many ways, we are still learning about autism, it’s causes, and experiences. So to be able to find a cure would be nearly impossible with so much about autism not known.
We know it is at least partially based in genetics, it would be difficult to impossible without a gene therapy to “cure” it, but would that even be possible? Would what we see as symptoms still exist if we changed one’s genetic makeup because of learned behaviors which would be ingrained within our brain? These are things we simply do not know at this time.
Is Cure Even the Right Word?
I think cure is the wrong word to use. When I think of cure, I think of maybe breaking my arm while riding a bike. During the initial time right after the injury, I cannot use my arm as it is in a cast. I will have to learn to modify how I do things while my arm is in that cast. However, in a matter of a few weeks, if everything goes OK, my arm will be completely healed. I will be able to remove my cast, and resume all the activities I had partaken in before.
I think of cure in the case of catching the flu, or a similar bug. The doctor might prescribe some medicine, and if I take and rest appropriately in not too long, I will be cured and that invasive bacteria or virus will no longer be in my system.
If Not a Cure, Then What?
Instead of thinking of a cure, at least for now, I think it is more productive to think of learning skills and methods to allow a person on the spectrum to adapt. There are various tools we can use to improve our life and help us fit into society.
Let’s take that bike accident from before. However, instead of having a broken arm, let’s say it had to be amputated. (This happened to a friend of ours several years ago.) His arm never “grew back”. However, he was able to get a prosthetic which allowed him to perform most of the actions he could before he had his accident. He learned to control his new arm, to manipulate it, and work within a regular setting. He continued to work a job in construction, date, and perform in other social settings.
A person on the spectrum might likewise attend speech classes to learn to communicate better. Learn to recognize when they are getting frustrated and find self-soothing techniques to help calm themselves so they don’t respond inappropriately. They may work with a physical therapist and/or occupational therapist to work on needed skills from tying one’s shoe, to eating with utensils, to correcting an improper gait. They may even practice social activities with family members or a coach to improve their social skills.
These skills, coping techniques, and processes do not “cure” them, but they make living much easier.
But What About People Getting Better?
In part of the “cure” talk, there are lots of people who I see and hear them talk about all they had to do was put their child in this therapy, or cut out gluten, or some other magic cure. However, none of these have been able to be effectively reproduced by others, which leads us to several possible conclusions.
First, there is a lot we still don’t understand about autism. In some cases, similar symptoms may actually be from a different problem. Recently we were talking to a friend who was misdiagnosed with a medical disorder when she was a teenager. Partly because the symptoms she had, were shared (or overlap if you prefer) between two other diagnosis. So instead of being “A” (which was incorrect), it was actually “B” and “C” which when combined looks like “A” because of the overlap.
The challenges of properly diagnosing someone with autism can be found in this paper from the NIH, which also covers issues with what if a person isn’t diagnosed, but should have been.
Second, there has been a rush by a lot of parents to get their child diagnosed. It seems like some people think it’s “cool” to have a child on the autism spectrum, and they push for it, or claim that must be what their child has, but they never officially get properly diagnosed. As their child gets older, and learns that a given behavior isn’t correct, or grows out of not liking anything beside dino-nuggets (or some similar quirk), they think their child is “cured”.
Sometimes kids are just kids, and it isn’t anything more than them learning from others around them. Sometimes they will act out, and get frustrated. An article I read a while back was talking about how so many kids show symptoms of ADHD, however, most of them only needed to be given recess, not medication. Once they “got the wiggles out” by being allowed to run around, their ADHD was “cured”.
Finally, cases of misdiagnosis seem to be rising. A quick search on Google will result in over 300,000 results, including some within scholarly papers which means doctors and universities are studying this problem.
Autism has become so overdiagnosed that within five to 10 years there could be almost no difference between groups of people who have been diagnosed with the condition and those who haven’t, a Montreal researcher warns following the publication of a new study.
https://globalnews.ca/news/5798140/autism-misdiagnosis/
We’ve given two potential reasons, but we need to add a third. Due to COVID, children have been isolated during an important part of their developmental cycle. Everything from lockdowns to on-line school going on while a child needs to learn how to interact with those around them… they missed out on that. So things like looking at someone when they talk to you, or taking turns and sharing, which can be indicators of someone potentially on the spectrum, might yield false positives because they were never given an opportunity to integrate with others.
Of course, this is not saying that there wasn’t a need to be safe during the worst of COVID, but that we need to be mindful of the long term effects of it in the development of children especially. My mother is a retired pre-school teacher, and so much of what they teach the kids at that age is through hands on play. Little things like sharing, taking turns, talking to one another, are all lost. Likewise as a society, as adults have become more and more tied to digital devices, we spend less time with our children, training them to interact with others.
Conclusion
So can someone be “Cured”, no. But they can perform better with the use of training and tools. When our oldest was diagnosed, we were told we needed to prepare ourselves for the day when he would need to be institutionalized. That was a traumatic statement for a parent to hear as I looked at my 4 year old.
However, through nothing short of the grace of God, some great teachers, and helpful therapists, we are not looking at that. We do have guardianship over him to protect and help him legally. And he had zero desire to live on his own, so he’ll probably always live with mom and dad, but that’s OK. Why – because he also holds down a part time job, and he can cook basic meals for himself, and is doing better with his daily chores such as doing the laundry and cleaning. That’s better than some neurotypical people we see.
We see a time, in the hopefully not so distant future, where he lives with us, because he wants to, not because he can’t live on his own. No he won’t be cured – but will have learned to cope and get along just fine.
