Autism, Mental Retardation, and How it Affects Our Life

Sometimes mental retardation (M.R.) isn't diagnosed until the age of 5. We wont know if our son has M.R. for a while — he is now 4, but more than likely he will be diagnosed autistic.

There are many theories about autism, one being that vaccines cause autism, but I am not so certain of that as I think genetics play a part in autism, though when my son does get the flu vaccine he tends to get a cold afterwards. Could that be the month or could that actually be the vaccine?

My son is still non-verbal, and there is a percentage of kids with autism that don't ever talk. That percentage is high — I think it is about 70 percent. Because he cannot talk he tends to use his hands now and climb on things. This is his way of trying to reach out to us.

He can say gaga and sometimes will say mama, but at this point he should be talking, making sentences, and going into a mainstream class for kindergarden These are things we deal with on a daily basis.

He tends to love putting things like shoes and papers in the fish tank, which we stop him from doing before he attempts to do so. He thinks things are funny when they are not and has run into things that he shouldn't have. He is a cute little boy and my heart.

Both my children have special qualities in them that I love. But with an autistic child as well as a child with attention deficit disorder comes challenges, and working on top of that is not an easy task.