n. A usually short interval of rest or relief. from Latin respectus, refuge, looking back.

Darling Wifey went to London today. We do this, Darling Wifey & I. We have “sanity” breaks when we go and do stimulating, grown-up things for a while. Unfortunately, this means that the other one of us is left with Little Madam, Little Nutter and Tiny Flirt - but without it we would go mad and start eating the shrubbery.

Darling Wifey began the day by hopping into a taxi at 5:30 am, and yawning on a train to Kings Cross (where she took the obligatory photo of “Platform 9 and three quarters.”)

Then, whilst she was spending money in Oxford Street, I had a meeting with our new Social Worker (I am getting seriously old - I thought the social worker was a babe and far too young for such a serious job!) She took sympathy on us, and agreed that at my age it must be very tiring to care for such a severely disabled little boy.

Confusion: should I have been offended and thrown her out of the house, or played the sympathy card and tried my luck? In the end I just gave her more tea.

Whilst she was here, Little Nutter’s day care centre phoned to let us know that they had withdrawn his offer of a place as they cannot support his disability. This leaves us without any day care whatsoever for him. I don’t know whether to sue their greedy, inconsiderate ******* arses off, or just get drunk. I did, however, tell them that it was unacceptable of them to wait six months after we arranged his place until six days before he was due to start before they told us.

They are, without doubt, in breach of contract. We have a case against them because they knew the extent of his disability when they offered him a place six months ago - but suing them will not help us now.

And Darling Wifey is two hours late getting home because an armed madman is on the loose in the local railway station.

We saw:

12 Temper Tantrums
11 Hours of Thomas
10 Yards of Train Track
9 Pints of Fruit Juice
8 Dirty Nappies
7 Spinning Wheels
6 Repeats of Monsters
5 Unfastened Seatbelts
4 Warm Baths
3 Dirty Nappies
2 Spoken Words
And an Hourly Pack of Salt and Vinegar Crisps.

What do you think?

Today I ordered a Mini Cooper for Darling Wifey. It will arrive on our wedding anniversary in May. (Can you believe that? A five month waiting list for a new car! So when I tried to haggle, the salesman told me to bog off and buy a Renault.)

Anyway, I pointed out that the car will need *ahem* ‘Christening,’ but apparently there are a few objections to this sort of thing in a Mini, especially when you are in your thirties and live in the middle of a city.

In Italy “jeeping” is now illegal, - which is, quite frankly, amazing. I was prepared to accommodate objections based upon the lack of space inside the car, or the very large (eye-wateringly so) gearstick (not quite reason enough for buying an automatic, but nearly…) or even the significant possibility of being caught in flagrante delicto by some of the kids I teach, or worse, one of the other teachers. (Ironically, it wouldn’t be a problem if one of the local priests catches us, because first, we are married and I could tell him that we are working on baby number 4, and second, the priest would have more reason to be embarrassed about snooping around secluded lay-bys and peering into bouncing cars.)

But, it seems that this car will be Darling Wifey’s pride and joy, and she has told me that she will not tolerate footprints on the dashboard upside-down.

Friday night in the people-carrier as usual, then.

Remember the Volvo?

Well, it’s up for replacement. And since I walk to work now, Darling Wifey gets the free choice of motor.

I keep telling her that we can afford for her to have

But she thinks that something else would be more sensible?

She needs persuading!

Two minutes from home, ten minutes from the city centre, and it’s my daily walk to work…

The New England Journal of Medicine vol 347, No. 19, November 7 2002 pp 1477-1482

This is a study of every single child born in Denmark between January 1991 and December 1998 - 537,303 children in total.

It is a statistical analysis of all children, if and when they received the MMR, and crosstabulated against any incidence of autism or autistic spectrum disorder.

It found that the incidence of autism is fractionally higher among those children who did not receive the MMR than among those who did receive the MMR. It also found that there was no “clustering” of the onset of autism or ASD that can be associated in any way with the MMR.

Assumptions:
1, this is a statistical analysis based upon the assumption that if the MMR caused autism then there would be both an increased proportion of recipients of the MMR with autism, and a cluster of incidences of autism following administration of the vaccines. These would both be in proportion to the severity of the causal link. Neither is evident at all;
2, it rejects the assumption that the presence of MMR strain viruses (viri?) in the spinal fluid of children with autism - when it is not found in those children without autism as reported here - is a “smoking gun” - but appears to assume that the causal link could be the other way (i.e. that autism also causes the virus to enter the spinal fluid,)
3, it makes no reference to Autistic-enterocolitis and makes no attempt to discover any correlation with this condition and anything else. This, if you ask me, is like investing the cause of death of a gunshot victim whilst refusing to look at the bullet hole.

My conclusions:
1. Assumption number one (above) is perfectly reasonable and rational. If smokers suffered fewer heart attacks, then the “assumption” that tobacco is bad for your heart would soon be dispelled. In a population of half a million children, those who received the MMR were fractionally less likely to develop autism.
2. Similar studies should be conducted immediately in every country that has introduced the MMR.
3. This tells us nothing about any link between autistic enterocolitis and the MMR. Why is the MMR strain virus found in the spinal fluid of children with ASD? Why does no-one want to conduct research into this?
4. This does nothing to dispel the histeria or bad behaviour of both the medical profession and the anti-MMR lobby.

All we wanted was a bookcase, but no.

First, that bit of Yorkshire is a megalopolis of gargantuan proportions. Mega City One is just a village green compared with the mess surrounded by the M1, M62, M621 and Leeds-Bradford Airport. And even Judge Dredd would chuck his badge in disgust at the behaviour of the good people of West Yorkshire when they are out shopping.

Then (and this is important advice) we should never underestimate the influence of a clearly marked footpath on a three-year-old with autism. Any deviation, hesitation or improvisation on our progress through Ikea was not to be tolerated. The path was to be adhered to with religious, nay fanatical devotion and attention to detail. Who gives a &$@# that we were there to buy furniture? The demarcation of the path is clear and beyond reproach - we must obey. Resistance is futile.

Now, over the last year I have become something of a connoisseur of knee-jerk reactions to autism-inspired behaviour. There is the sympathetic-but-patronising smile that casts pity on my inadequacies as a parent; the scathing put-down that forthrightly tells me what I am doing wrong; and (best of all) the knowing sneer of ‘you shouldn’t bring them out in public‘ from the sickos who really do have a problem. But in Leeds, we saw something new.

They didn’t actually say, “Out of my way, scum,” but then they didn’t sneer either.

Normally, the sight of an obviously disabled infant provokes a reaction of some kind among other shoppers, and I have found that my response to that reaction has been automatic - but never before have I appreciated the fact that people are reacting. Even the wrong reaction shows some kind of sensitivity. What we encountered in Leeds today was just numbness.

If no-one is reacting to shocking behaviour any more, what is left?

Don’t move house. It seriously messes you up.

It took me three days to find my undies, which made Mass in a cold church a very unpleasant experience, I can tell you.

The case presented by many people who object to the MMR is that it is an environmental trigger that causes regressive autism.

Whilst I am not in a position to provide a definitive answer to this case, I have to say that we know for certain that this is not what happened to Little Nutter. There were concerns with his social interaction that we thought were caused by hearing problems when he was as young as nine months. Little Nutter?s symptoms were exhibited long before he received the MMR. (See here.)

However, Little Nutter did exhibit some regression. He was well known to be a placid yet flirtatious infant - and he no longer flirts.

This regression, according to the theories of Piaget and others, is impossible without some kind of catastrophic intervention. Child development is, according to Piaget, cumulative. Therefore Little Nutter could only have lost skills he had already developed if something happened to him to take away those skills.

That is the basis of the case presented by Wakefield et al in their case against the MMR.

But then I have spent my adult life rejecting Piaget. (More to the point, I have always rejected cumulative theories of human development - of which my first encounter was Lawrence Kohlberg?s theory of moral development.)

Everybody ?knows? that Piaget?s theory suggests that children develop the understanding of the permanence of objects when they are about nine months old - but actually, this theory makes the wrong assumption: it is not that infants under nine months think that a hidden object has ceased to exist; it is that they have not yet learned (or had to learn) the need to search. Similarly, Piaget ?assumed? that infants? cognitive development was expressed through their motor skills; we now know that cognitive development is far in advance of physical dexterity, which masks the greater sophistication of the infant?s brain.

But most importantly, Piaget included absolutely no assessment of developmental processes in creativity and social interaction. This is important because, remarkably, less than half of all adults achieve the highest level of development identified by Piaget - yet they are not limited in creativity and social interaction. These people are fully able and fully developed; yet, according to Piaget, they are immature, not yet adult. And, as every person who has encountered someone with ASD knows, it is in creativity and social interaction that the disability of autism has its most devastating effects. They can be intellectually superior to the half of all adults that Piaget?s theory dismisses as immature, but they have a disability.

What does this mean?

Firstly, it means that we need to examine more closely what happens when a child is developing. Is regression the loss of skills, or a transfer of behavioural patterns from a simple level to a more complex level (i.e. from a level that a child with autism can achieve to a level the child cannot?)
And secondly, we need a greater understanding of the relationship between creativity & social interaction and human development.

Finally, about the MMR. If our government had any moral conviction in their position, then they would, without hesitation, remove all obstacles to a full investigation into this vaccine and its effects. If they are right, then they should spare no efforts in proving it. If they are wrong, then the population needs protecting. Their current policy demonstrates only that they are lying cowards.