Micah has severe non-verbal autism which means he requires dedicated attention in a school setting. However, the majority of specialist schools in the country are unable to take in new students due to resource issues.

Even though he'd been on a wait list since 2022, Micah was one of the 40-odd students at Rosehill specialist school in Papakura who were told last month that they would not have a spot in 2024. Read more

"I am Gabriel, God's messenger," 22-year old Gabriel Cobb told OSV News.

Cobb, pictured with his parents just before going into the UN New York conference hall added: "My faith is the most important part of my life. I like to attend Mass daily and proclaim loudly."

He was set to address a UN gathering of advocates for those with Down syndrome and autism. They were discussing the challenges families face when they are raising children with different developmental expectations and milestones.

"Gabriel is not a professional speaker, but somehow God thinks he has a message to share," his mother Lori Cobb told OSV News.

The family stopped by nearby St Agnes Church on the way to the UN building, she added.

"After all, I am Gabriel, God's messenger," Gabriel reiterated.

At the UN meeting, experts on Down syndrome and autism made some of the first speeches.

One spoke about "international agreements" which "reaffirmed that persons with disabilities are equal in dignity and rights.

"Governments should strive to provide social protection measures to families which are primarily responsible for the development, educational and well-being of children with autism and Down syndrome, and very often remain their main sources of social protection," she said.

Cobb's speech highlighted the role his family played in his life.

"I have two loving parents who have always kept the ball high," he told the UN.

As the Catholic triathlete spoke, a screen of photos played over his right shoulder. He explained each photo: doing chores with his father; playing piano and reading books with his mother. The books include William Shakespeare and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein."

Other photos showed him swimming, biking and running.

Then he told the UN he is a triathlon athlete, competing in races in which he has to run, swim and bike. He's a repeat triathlete too - he's competed in ten races so far.

"I have done it, I am a triathlete," he exclaimed, to loud applause.

Cobb vowed "to continue to … compete" and he thanked the "coaches, family and friends, who have encouraged me to press boundaries".

With the vow he added a prayer: "I pray that I have given them joy and inspiration, because with their help, I have Down syndrome and I have no limitations."

Source

• OSV News

Several days prior, Andrea, who is 18, had sent a letter to Pope Francis to "correct" him because, during the time of the coronavirus, he invites those present inside the chapel for his daily livestreamed Masses to make the Sign of Peace, typically expressed with a handshake or a kiss.

According to Francis, the youth told him, "You say, ‘Peace be with you,' but you can't say that because in the pandemic we can't touch each other." Read more

Initially, it cited "high numbers of applicants". Later it changed its explanation and said the boy wasn't offered a place because he was not Catholic enough. Read more

Charlotte (Charlie) Helene Fien, who is 21, wrote her speech after watching a television documentary called 'A world without Down Syndrome'.

The documentary discussed a new test that could be used to abort all babies with Down Syndrome.

"Please do not try to kill us all off. Do not allow this test," Fien said to the UN.

"If you do allow it you are no better than the Nazis who killed 200,000 disabled people. I have a right to live and so do other people like me.

"The goal is to eradicate Down Syndrome in future. This makes me angry and very sad. I have Down syndrome. I am not suffering. I am not ill.

"None of my friends who have Down Syndrome are suffering either. We all live happy lives. We go out to the pub, have dinner parties at my friend Aimee's house, have boyfriends and have plans and goals for the future!

"We just have an extra chromosome, but we are still human beings. We are human beings!

"For those who know and love somebody with the Syndrome, the plan to eradicate Down Syndrome people is is beyond appalling and has the bitter taste of Nazi eugenics."

Today, the same thing is happening, Fien said.

"In Iceland, Denmark and China not a single baby with Down Syndrome has been born for seven years."

At present, 90 per cent of all Down Syndrome pregnancies in the UK currently end in abortion.

Fien's mother says her daughter developed normally, despite gloomy predictions from doctors when she was born.

She says Fien walked at 15 months, was toilet-trained before either of he brothers (who don't have Down Syndrome), is bilingual in French and English and can read and write in both languages. Fien's father is French and her mother is English.

Source

• LifeSite
• BrightVibes
• FoxNews
• YouTube

The Maihiihi School principal, Glenn MacPherson, snuck a gift wrapped parcel and a letter into student Cam Uden's school bag last Tuesday.

His dad, Jason Uden, discovered it and shared the letter on Twitter as a show of thanks. Read the letter

The girl's parents were furious after the priest told them twice that their daughter was "not ready" to receive the sacrament.

The priest, from Sicily, told the girl's mother that her daughter was "unable to understand the significance" of Communion.

He reportedly told the parents to wait until the girl understands more.

The mother told local media that her daughter would not change over time.

"Barring a miracle, she will never be like other children."

The parents pushed for a private ceremony, to avoid "disorder", but the priest still refused.

Italy's Education Undersecretary, Davide Faraone, subsequently took to Facebook to lambast the "ignorance" and "discrimination" of the Church.

Mr Faraone, whose own daughter is autistic, observed that Italian churches routinely shun autistic children.

"If you search 'priest denies communion to autistic child' on Google, there are pages and pages of results from all over Italy," Mr Faraone wrote.

"But religion is about heart, not mind.

"This only happens because there is so much ignorance around autism.

"We can't go on like this and need to end discrimination."

The priest later told media that he "was ready to celebrate the child".

He denied resisting her parents' requests to allow her to take her first Communion.

According to local media, the priest has been criticised in the past for hanging a photo of Sicily's former president, Salvatore "Totò" Cuffaro, at the church.

This was even though Cuffaro had reportedly been jailed for aiding the Mafia.

Sources

• The Local.IT
• RT
• Image: Irish Independent

We never planned it that way, and for personal reasons we do not intend to fight what we see as an invidious decision with far-reaching consequences, posing questions that go to the very heart of what constitutes a just and caring society.

When I saw in the New Zealand Herald of 31 January an article about Juliana Carvalho - who has been denied residency because she is in a wheelchair, despite the fact that she works here and has all her family here - I contacted her.

She put me in touch with the journalist Regan Schoultz, who published our story in the Herald on 14 February. Her article has provoked a huge reaction, not only on social media in New Zealand but also abroad.

Immigration New Zealand rejected our residency application on the grounds that my stepson Peter does not have the required health standards. We decided not to appeal as we chose to move forward for the good of our family.

Peter is autistic and is going through a difficult time. His condition got worse while our application was still pending, and he then required special care.

This type of care is nonexistent in New Zealand, so we have been obliged to take him back to Belgium - I had moved to Auckland from a Belgian university four years ago.

Since then we have had to travel a great deal to see him, creating a difficult situation for our family. By going back to Brussels, we will all be reunited, and I am very lucky to get back an excellent position at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Continue reading

• Dimitri Leemans is associate professor of mathematics at the University of Auckland and professor of mathematics (on leave) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

The pope urged governments and institutions to respond to the needs of people with autism to help break "the isolation and, in many cases also the stigma" associated with the disorders, which are characterized by varying levels of social impairment and communication difficulties.

"The commitment of everyone is necessary in order to promote encounters and solidarity, in a concrete action of support and renewed promotion of hope," the pontiff said.

After offering a prayer, Francis greeted the young children and teens with autism and their families, kissing the children and cupping their faces in his hands as he circulated the auditorium at the Vatican. Some appeared to avoid the pope's eyes, while one teen whom the pope had greeted followed the pontiff and gave him another hug from behind.

Families of children affected with autism were touched by the pope's words.

"It was an explosion of emotions," said Maria Cristina Fiordi, a mother of a child with autism. "For us, we are parents of a child affected with autism, this meeting was very important. It was as an outstretched hand through a problem that is very often not considered in the right way." Continue reading

He met every developmental milestone and delighted in every discovery.

But at around 12 months, B. seemed to regress, and by age 2, he had fully retreated into his own world.

He no longer made eye contact, no longer seemed to hear, no longer seemed to understand the random words he sometimes spoke. His easygoing manner gave way to tantrums and head-banging.

"He had been this happy, happy little guy," L. said.

"All of a sudden, he was just fading away, falling apart. I can't even describe my sadness. It was unbearable."

More than anything in the world, L. wanted her warm and exuberant boy back.

A few months later, B. received a diagnosis of autism.

His parents were devastated. Soon after, L. attended a conference in Newport, R.I., filled with autism clinicians, researchers and a few desperate parents.

At lunch, L. (who asked me to use initials to protect her son's privacy) sat across from a woman named Jackie, who recounted the disappearance of her own boy.

She said the speech therapist had waved it off, blaming ear infections and predicting that Jackie's son, Matthew, would be fine. She was wrong.

Within months, Matthew acknowledged no one, not even his parents.

The last word he had was "Mama," and by the time Jackie met L., even that was gone.

In the months and years that followed, the two women spent hours on the phone and at each other's homes on the East Coast, sharing their fears and frustrations and swapping treatment ideas, comforted to be going through each step with someone who experienced the same terror and confusion.

When I met with them in February, they told me about all the treatments they had tried in the 1990s: sensory integration, megadose vitamins, therapeutic horseback riding, a vile-tasting powder from a psychologist who claimed that supplements treated autism.

None of it helped either boy. Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Times
• Image: RNSpeak

Confronted with such a question, the vast majority of people would know that A was the correct answer.

Indeed, most people would know that water in the lungs is proof of death by drowning but that lack of it is proof of death prior to a body being immersed in water.

Now consider the following anecdote, seared on my memory for reasons that will quickly become apparent:

It was a conference at the London School of Economics in the early years of the new century on evolutionary psychology, chaired by the leading sociologist, Prof Lord Giddens, to which I had been invited along with the great and the good of the Darwinian and sociological worlds.

In the course of an extempore comment, I pointed out that, although people indisputably have free will, the free will we have is limited to choosing from menus of options ultimately drawn up by our genes.

I gave the example of suicide, making the obvious point that, although people can kill themselves by refusing food or drink, no one has ever committed suicide by holding their breath!

But at this point a well-known and very eminent professor of biology and neurobiology leapt to his feet and excitedly asked the audience "Whether Dr Badcock has ever heard of suicide by drowning?" A thunder of raucous laughter was immediately followed by hearty applause—and stunned silence on my part. The assembled intellectual elite of Darwinism and social science appeared to believe that people drown by holding their breath, and that my comment was completely laughable. In other words, they had ticked B above! But how could this be possible? How could an elite audience of intellectuals with an average IQ well above 100, chaired by a member of the House of Lords and led by an influential professor, be so confused in its thinking? Continue reading

Source

• Psychology Today
• Image: The Sydney Morning Herald

SPIEGEL: Dr. Solomon, in your book you write about Jason Kingsley, who was a child star on "Sesame Street." What's so fascinating about him?

Solomon: Jason was the first person with Down syndrome to become a public figure. His mother Emily was shocked when he was diagnosed. There were no models for how to bring up such a child. Should they institutionalize him? Should they keep him at home?

SPIEGEL: We are talking here about the 1970s …

Solomon: Yes, when early intervention was still a new idea. So she developed this scheme of constant stimulation. She had his room covered in brightly colored things. She talked to him all the time. She even gave him a bath in Jell-O, so that he could feel that texture. And he did, in fact, develop extraordinarily. He talked early, counted and was able to do a lot of things that children with Down syndrome had been thought unable to do. And so his mother went to "Sesame Street," and said, "I would like to put Jason on the program." The people at " Sesame Street," who were in many ways liberal visionaries, agreed to have him on.

SPIEGEL: Are you saying that parents can overcome such an impairment of their child if they only try hard enough?

Solomon: Yes and no. Jason did accomplish an extraordinary amount, but he also has many limitations. His mother said to me: "I made him into the highest functioning person with Down syndrome there had ever been, but I did not know that I was also setting him up for quite a lot of loneliness, because he's too high-functioning for most other people who have Down syndrome, but he's not high enough functioning to ever have an equal relationship with people who don't."

SPIEGEL: You met hundreds of families for your book: Some are dwarfs, others are schizophrenic, autistic or deaf. Still others have committed crimes or they are prodigies. Do they have something in common with Jason Kingsley?

Solomon: I think so. I wanted to find out: How do you as a parent make peace with having been given a child who is in some sense completely alien to you? With having a child who is different from everything you would have fantasized? Emily Kingsley wrote a piece called "Welcome to Holland," in which she laid out the idea that having a disabled child is as if you were planning a trip to Italy, and you ended up by mistake in Holland. It's less flashy, it's not where all your friends are going. But it has windmills, it has Rembrandts. It has many things in it that are deeply satisfying if you allow yourself to be awake to them, instead of spending the whole time wishing you were in Italy.

SPIEGEL: And the same applies to the parents of autistic children or criminal offenders?

Solomon: My fundamental idea is that there are many identities that are passed down generationally, like nationality, language, religion or the color of one's skin. But there are many times when a family is dealing with a child that's fundamentally different from anything with which the parents have had previous experience. People with Down syndrome are by and large not born to other people with Down syndrome. Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: Sheila Oettinger

As Jacob accompanied his mother, Kristine Barnett, on an international tour to promote a book she'd written, the two of them spent their spare time dropping in on the world's great institutions of research and higher learning, places like Cambridge and Stanford. The last stops on the tour were in Canada. In Toronto, he delivered a familiar line to his mother: "I want to find some physics." There was a lecture scheduled at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 90 minutes' drive from Toronto in Waterloo, Ont. The lecture was not open to the general public, but the Barnett family has formidable powers of persuasion. Soon enough, mother and son were walking through the atrium of the sunny, clean-lined research institute conceived and financed by BlackBerry founder Mike Lazaridis.

"He fell in love with this place," Kristine Barnett recalled last week at Perimeter. "It was only about maybe five minutes into walking around the building that I realized Jacob had found where he wanted to be. I knew it before he told me. But then he told me."

At the beginning of August, the Barnett family sold their Indiana home and moved to Waterloo. Several days later, Jacob began a year's study in Perimeter Scholars International, a master's-level program designed to attract the finest physics students in the world. There are 31 students in this year's program. Their brilliance is formidable, their dedication inspiring.

But even in this group, Jacob Barnett stands out. He is nearly a foot shorter than they are. They're in their early 20s. He's 15. Continue reading

Sources

• MacLean's
• Image: Alien Scientist

We now understand that the onset of symptoms of autism spectrum disorders is variable during the first two years of life. Signs are evident in some children from birth, while others may appear to be developing typically but then fail to progress.

Other children may lose some of their already-developed skills. Words the child may have previously (and correctly) used to name or request objects, for instance, may no longer be uttered. This apparent slowing or regression in development usually becomes apparent between 15 to 24 months of age, but may begin even later.

What is autism?

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a complex set of conditions that affect more than 1% of children. They are characterised by difficulties in the core areas of social communication and language, accompanied by restricted and repetitive behaviours and interests.

Although largely genetically determined, we still do not understand all of the causes of ASDs.

There are currently no available cures. So the best evidence to date points to early identification and behavioural intervention as the best way to minimise the effects of these conditions on the developing child.

If behavioural intervention can be accessed as soon as there are early warning signs - before the onset of the "full-blown" syndrome - it's possible to target the developmental precursors of ASDs. This improves the chances of the child moving toward a more typical developmental trajectory.

A baby who doesn't respond when his name is called, or shows no signs of imitating others' behaviours such as clapping and waving, and instead seems to be on their own agenda, is a candidate for early intervention. This child needs to be brought back into the social loop so that he can begin to learn from others. Continue reading

Sources

• The Conversation
• Image: soulation

The study leads were Ara Norenzayan and Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and they collaborated on this one with Kali Trzesniewski at the University of California, USA.

They were intrigued by an earlier study which found that autistic people were more likely to be atheists. They wanted to know if this was true and, if it was true, they wanted to know why.

So they ran four separate studies. The first matched a small group of autistic individuals with a group of neurotypicals, and found that the autistic individuals were less religious.

The second looked at a group of Canadian students, and found that those who reported more symptoms of autism were also less religious. Study Three broadened this out to a group of 725 American Adults recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk, while Study Four looked at a different sample of 425 Adults (they were part of a paid survey panel).

Again and again, they found that symptoms of autism correlated with lack of belief in God.

But their analyses went further. They also asked them about their empathy (using questions like "I often find it difficult to judge if someone is rude or polite" and "I am good at predicting how someone will feel.").

They found that empathy also correlated with belief. Not only that but, using a statistical technique called "bootstrapping", they found that the most plausible explanation for the correlation was that autism was related to a lack of empathy, which in turn was related to lack of belief.

In other words, lack of empathy was the 'in between' factor that mediated the relationship between autism and lack of belief. Continue reading

Sources

• Epiphenom
• Image: Reasons to Believe