ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

Update on Autism rates in US

About 1 in 68 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) according to estimates from CDC's

Al most all of the above comments have points. Also it has a lot to do with parenting style. These parents born in 80s grew up watching too much TV and playing Nintendo and Video games are now raising their offspring ! In Gujarati language there is a sayings : if there is a water in the wel; then you can fatch it! But if there is no water at all then what can you do with a pot? Simmilerly - these children are not getting right directions at home and school teachers have their own issues..God bless all of us....

I guess I should have said -previous- posters since I have no idea what anyone after me may post. ;)

I agree with the above posters and would also like to add that children now have very distracted parents who are rarely fully present in the daily lives of their children because of their attachment to their cell phones.

I agree with what is already posted, but need to add that our children are also being exposed to so many more toxins than ever before in so many forms. This can also have a negative behavioral effect on them. I worked in early childhood education 1987-2003 and saw how behaviors changed so dramatically over those years. When I first started working with children, maybe one child in an entire program had allergies. One or two may have had other diagnoses. By the end of my career, every classroom had several children with allergies, many of those severe enough to warrant an epi-pen. Children in every classroom were diagnosed with behavioral disorders. Why is this? What is happening to our food system, our environment, the amount of medications, etc. we give young children? I also encourage teachers to become knowledgeable about illnesses such as PANDAS - behaviors can have a physical root - especially with all that these little bodies are bombarded with continuously.
On top of all that, expectations are inappropriate. Children are expected to sit and listen for long periods of time. All work and little play. Their lives are super structured. It's so sad.
I now homeschool my children and am studying to become a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. I still have dreams of opening a play based, child-led, home-like early childhood program, but don't know if I can do it now.

I would venture a guess, based on the latest brain research that's out there, that the spike in challenging behavior has less to do with a lack of "discipline" and more to do with the lack of unstructured play opportunities and increase in inappropriate expectations.
Young children used to spend a lot more time engaged in make believe play. Brain scans done during that kind of play show that the area of the brain responsible for developing empathy is active during this sort of play. It is not active during any other type of activity that young children do.
Children engaged in sustained, in-depth make believe play also develop self-regulation skills through such play. They want to sustain the play, because they enjoy it and so they learn to compromise, delay gratificaiton, and take another's perspective.
Research on rough and tumble play tells us that children who engage in it are much less likely to be aggressive. Again, they enjoy the play and so want to sustain it; meaning they learn to self regulate so that the play partner wants to remain engaged in the play.
When we put inappropriate demands and expectations on our young children, significantly reduce their play time and physical activity, and then cram them into a room with same age peers, we are setting them up for failure. This is especially true for our boys, whose brains are slower to mature in the first place. The increase in challenging behavior is a reaction to being set up to fail. Putting unrealistic expectations on children leads them to feel incompetent and like failures. All of these conditons are creating a "perfect storm" for challenging behavior.

Yes, yes, yes, Lori and Deborah. If you've ever witnessed the morning routine in a household where both parents (or the parent) work/s; if you've seen a young child react to mommy leaving her with strangers; if you've seen the wrenching results of divorce; or of single-parent coping; if you are privy to the rush, rush, rush, hurry, hurry, hurry speed of modern "parenting"; if you are at all sensitive to what the child's world is actually like in these common situations, you will agree that it's not the CHILD who needs counseling and straightening out; it is the PARENTS, their VALUES; the SOCIETY. Then, when the inevitable label gets stuck on the child, we drug 'em, imprison them. Later, when we age, we may finally realize that we sacrificed our most valuable, precious miracle jewels for trinkets of false metal, trash, worthless THINGS!!!!That we bought into the agenda:everyone so busy that no one can PAY ATTENTION.

I agree with Deborah, this point has been made in several of the comments to recent articles from Exchange Everyday. Children were not made to be in a room filled with similarly aged children all day, every day. The stresses placed upon them are so great and the ratio of adults to children in no way is acceptable to actually being able to provide a child with the attention that he/she needs---they will act out, be aggressive, have tantrums--why is this shocking? We expect too much from them. Young children should be home and we should be finding more ways to make this possible instead of figuring out ways to put more children in 'preschool daycare'.

Instead of calling the inappropriate behavior a disorder, let's call it lack of proper parenting. Children need to learn how to behave in a socially acceptable way from birth. If not given the proper discipline (teaching) from the beginning, how are they to learn that behavior? A packed full room of young children in a childcare setting is not the best way for children to learn to speak and use their bodies to talk to others. A loving home with people who care most for them is the best place for young children to learn how to 'behave'.