The dif­fer­ence lies with par­ents. There I’ve said it! Many peo­ple will say “that’s not an excuse” when speak­ing of the affect of their upbring­ing on the behav­iour of adults (with or with­out chil­dren) now in their 20’s and 30’s, but it is still true. 

Par­ents lay the foun­da­tion, good or bad, when they choose how to raise their chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly the choic­es they make in the first two years. The die is cast that ear­ly and unless a par­ent dis­cov­ers their mis­takes and works hard to rec­ti­fy their child-rear­ing meth­ods the prob­lems and delays are set…for life!

Until we come to terms with the fact that it’s par­ents who lay the foun­da­tion with their chil­dren’s devel­op­ment we will nev­er come to terms with the caus­es of autism, oth­er devel­op­men­tal delays and a myr­i­ad of social issues we see in our lives. 

Sim­ply deny­ing parental respon­si­bil­i­ty is ridicu­lous. Try read­ing a few mem­oirs or Torey Hay­den’s or Dave Pelz­er’s books and you might at least start under­stand­ing what I mean.

There will always be some cas­es where chil­dren have prob­lems unre­lat­ed to how their par­ents care for them but a very high per­cent­age of issues that par­ents expect every­one else and the med­ical and ancil­lary pro­fes­sions to take care of are caused by their own igno­rance or even neglect of their chil­dren in the first year or two of life. Some­times in such basic ways as keep­ing a baby clean!

I hear about it or see it every sin­gle day.