World Autism Awareness Day

The month of April is Autism Awareness Month and today, April 2nd, has been declared as World Autism Awareness Day. I will be wearing blue today as I join in on the Light It Up Blue Campaign.

What is autism? According to Wikipedia.org- “Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize; how this occurs is not well understood.”

What amazed me was reading how many children were affected by Autism. According to Autism Speaks- “one in every 110 children is diagnosed with autism, making it more common than childhood cancer, juvenile diabetes and pediatric AIDS combined.” Wow, and this site says that in the United States (where I live) the “current estimates” are that ” one out of 70 boys is diagnosed with autism“. That number seems so high to me and this website says that the number of children being diagnosed is growing each year!

So once I learned a little about what Autism was and how many of our children it’s affecting I wanted to know the warning signs of Autism. I found this list of “red flags” to look for. This site, and many other ones that I have looked at, suggest that if your baby shows a couple (or more) of these “signs” then you should take your child to the doctor for an evaluation.

I will do another post later this month about Autism and will hopefully have a special giveaway related to Autism then, too. As for now let’s all wear blue to raise awareness for this cause that is affecting more and more children every day.