Michelle Turner of
Movement Lesson and Navigating Disabilities.com is the expert when it comes to shot regression. After her son Graham received a vaccine at the age of 13mos. he immediately went from a child developmentally on track, to years of delays in speech, sight and muscle tone. Here are the key signs of what she says parents must look for:
1. Non-responsive - A healthy child starts to look if you say 'Where's Daddy? Where's the ball?" Suddenly you find yourself repeating it or saying it louder. Needing to touch or prompt your child to get their attention.
2. Staring - Babies and toddlers work the room. You don't loose a child into a good TV show until they're a few years older. If they seem like they're zoning out or loosing track of what they are doing or obsessing over one item for a length of time.
3. Sensory & Touch - Babies and toddlers like to explore there environment. If they once enjoyed food & getting messy now the suddenly have fear of smells, messes, touch and/or sounds.
4. Fear - Does your child suddenly have fears? Does the child suddenly cling to a parent or have separation anxiety? Lost a sense of calm or peace that they previously had?
5. Slouching - babies and toddlers with a healthy nervous system don't slouch. Your child might suddenly seem heavy to pick up or carry around. They're not 'laid back' or easy going. Young children should be curious about the world around them.
I conducted an email interview with Michelle. Here are the questions and answers:
1. If a parent thinks that vaccines have had a negative affect on their child, what should be their next step? There is a big argument from parents that vaccines cause Autism. What parents and professionals don’t understand is that you don’t get the shot and have Autism the next day. The first stage is the trauma to the system. The second stage is the developmental delays that start to occur. Then the child is old enough and delayed enough to qualify for an Autism diagnosis.
The first thing that a parent must realize, sometimes over the advise of their pediatrician, friends or family, is that the child can’t recover from that trauma on their own. The initial reaction is to think that the child is sick and will recover. Within a few weeks, calls need to be made to early intervention, or get a referral to a physical therapist, occupational therapist or Anat Baniel Method practitioner, along with follow-up with specialists. Taking the steps to find what works for their child, another key factor, to help the child develop.
This is the main reason Autism is a spectrum. To change the trajectory of a child’s life in mid development makes that child unique or their own flavor of Autism. There will never be one way to get a child to mainstream. This will be hard on a federal level and in school systems who will have the brunt of working with this epidemic.
2. What do you think needs to be done to prevent this from happening to so many children? I can’t say that we shouldn’t vaccinate. I would like to ask if we can take a step back. Can we give only one vaccine at a time? Can a few vaccines be moved to a time where the child is older and their system is stronger to handle the dose? HIB and MMR are the two vaccines that seem to be in question by so many. Can we go back to single dose MMR for five years?
3. Do you think that there is a way to recover from development delays that are believed to be caused by vaccines? If so, what? Yes I do. I believe that early intervention is just that. I had a child that has PDD/NOS. I was already in the system when my second son had a vaccine reaction. There were therapists in my home that told me that I had a problem. My son’s preschool teacher saw me holding my son and told me to go to a doctor that day. Even with all of that, it was five months from the vaccine to getting evaluated by early intervention and getting actual services. My son didn’t get an ‘Autism’ diagnose until he was almost three. That was a year and a half later. If I had waited until the diagnosis until starting services, I would have missed two years of his life. This is what is happening to too many children.
My son started preschool at the Foundation for the Blind. He started services at 18 months and at 28 months started with Anat Baniel Method (I am now a practitioner). Graham is in mainstream first grade. He goes to resource room for reading and writing comprehension. Graham has a full Autism diagnosis. I know that he would have been self-contained with hardly a future had I waited until the diagnosis to get started. 0-5 years of age is crucial to the development of any child. With my work, I can do a well baby check up and see concerns at weeks old. Are current thoughts are “We’ll just wait and see.” “He’ll grow out of it.” “She’ll catch-up.” A few lessons in infants stages and redirect having to do years of lessons by waiting a few short years.
4. The CDC denies that vaccines play a role in autism. What is your response to this? I’m sending you pictures of Graham before and after his HIB vaccines at 13 months. The CDC doesn’t know about Graham and thousands of other children. I lost my son on that day. He got HIB (haemophilus influenzae) and that wasn’t diagnosed until he was 4. He now has no immune system because he had a massive infection for 3 years. No doctor has reported him to the CDC.
Also, as I’ve mentioned above, it’s the trauma to the system that changes the child’s life to develop differently and blossom into Autism. As scientists, they are looking for vaccine=autism. I see it as vaccine=development=autism.
The CDC also has a conflict. It is their position to make vaccines safe. It’s also their position to get everyone vaccinated. How do you have the same agency doing both jobs? Where is the check point?
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Comments (6)
It is true that there is a time lag between getting a vaccination and seeing that the child is changing, has symptoms of autism. This is because it has been proved scientifically that the connections seen between vaccinations and autism were entirely fraudulent. There has never been any proof despite decades of scientic testing that vaccination and autism were related.
However, by persisting in believing things that require faith rather than fact, the true cause(s) and possible cure(s) are held back as funds are diverted away from research and into backing up urban myths that have massive, unprovable anectodal 'evidence' and the aforesaid fraudulent base.
Bit like walking under a ladder, or seeing a black cat, or stepping on a crack in the pavement and later that day getting run over. Then, meeting in hospital a lot people who got run over and some of them say they saw a black cat (walked under a ladder etc) that morning, so it must be the cause. On the island of Bali, you would be taken seriously in America you would exasperate people by blaming supersitition and myth and people would try and tell you it had been proved a million times that a black cat crossing your path doesn't cause road accidents.
I think its more possible that these kids probably would've gotten Autism anyway, but it just simply took that long to present itself. Nobody knows what causes it or where it really even "comes" from, so to speak. So, its entirely possible that kids who start out "normal" even if not given a vaccine could end up getting Autism, anyway. I also think for many (but not all) it could be genetic. I just seem to notice that a lot of people who get Autism also have other relatives who have Autism. But, I don't think its the sort of thing that would always be genetic. :p
I agree with you.
And for @SavonDuJour@xanga - I agree, if there is a delayed reaction, then it might NOT be the vaccines. However, if a child reacts within MINUTES or even seconds of receiving a vaccine, I definitely think that the vaccine caused a reaction. My daughter had her 12 month vaccines and minutes later, she was feverish and lethargic. A few hours later, she vomited. She was sick for a good couple of weeks and never regained her verbal skills.... do you think there's any reason to think that vaccines had nothing to do with it? I don't think they are a CAUSE of autism, per se, but they certainly can be a trigger. For example, my son is relatively unvaccinated. He has some vaccines at around 6 months, but this is around the time that my daughter was showing serious delays, so we held off on the rest. He shows a couple of signs of autism - like lining things up, and an unhealthy fascination and fixation on certain objects. But he is very, very social (like his sister) and I fully believe that she would be like he is if I had done things differently (delayed or omitted vaccines, breastfed her for a year instead of switching to formula, etc.). Maybe I'm wrong, but it's something to consider. I think she would have not been THIS severe if it hadn't been for the vaccines.
I don't deny your experience at all and wonder if you have ever contacted people doing serious research into vaccination-autism?
However, I am sceptical of the medical diagnosis of autism because none of these vaccination-autism connections have ever been proved in scientific research. And some of the researchers (leaving out the scam artist who profited greatly and mislead everyone, Wakefield) have had great motivation to try and prove there is a link but have failed to do so in 20 years or so of research.
However, I am also somewhat sceptical of the diagnosis of autism. It seems to exist in the US far more than any other country, same as ADD/ADHD. At one time ADD/ADHD was diagnosed 40 times more than in comparable countries like Canada and the UK (I don't know about now, I haven't kept up with that research). To a great extent, I believe, this was driven by doctors and big pharma who both stood to benefit for every prescription of ritalin et al that was written unlike the UK or Canada where doctors are not paid per visit and any doctor writing more than the average no. of prescriptions for a particular drug (yes the drug companies do give kickbacks to doctors) would be investigated.
On the island I live on, both ADD/ADHD and autism are diagnosed very rarely among the West Indian and UK population but much more frequently among the Americans who mostly send their kids to the same school (West Indians and the British and other ex-pats also send their kids there but they also send their kids to local and church schools).
I think finding out why there is such a difference in diagnosis and diagnostic rates is as important as anything else as if there are benefits to any of the people involved in diagnosis and medication we may not be seeing a true picture of what autism is or how prevalent it is and to start from a point of view of disinformation isn't going to help anybody.
There has been found to be no link between vaccines and autism. Even the authors original study that prompted this scare said that they were major problems with their study design. So what evidence is there now? Anecdotal evidence. But anyone who knows anything about science knows that anecdotal evidence is useless without hard scientific studies to back it up. There's just too many factors that go into it.
Still, I've seen a lot of studies that say it doesn't cause autism, but I'm curious if there are any studies that proved or disproved whether autism can be triggered by vaccines. I mean, I guess it's no real harm if the autism would have been triggered later in life anyway (in fact, I would say it's better, because you get to deal with it at an earlier age, when it's easier to handle correctly). Still, I'm curious. Anyone know of any studies like this?
This is really interesting, even more when we talk about regressions, because when we ask to a child something and he can to answer correctly is because he's totally healthy, actually I asked to my children where his father leaves his generic viagra, and he answered so good, now I'm calm because I know he doesn't suffer the illness.