Aspergerer – The search for the causes of Autism

I understand that people wonder and want to know.

After being a ‘rockstar’ toddler on the playground, my son – who used to get along with ANYONE – suddenly got into trouble through social awkwardness. He was ‘not fitting in’. He struggled to make any friends and it got complicated, to say the least. Of course I wondered if my parenting was to blame, my own difference as a foreigner. I am not exactly a people person, abuse ‘survivor’ and all.. So I do have a bit of baggage – was I passing it on ?

We moved on to prep when he was 5 and things got worse. I now wondered if the the fact that he had no real siblings closer to his age ( teenage step brother and sister were living with their mum) could have made my son too egocentric to function well with his peers. And maybe my own, sketchy set of rules at home had badly prepared him for the discipline in school?

When we encountered aggression and even more difficulties to mingle, I finally wondered if there was a possibility that he had purely and simply inherited the A..hole gene that could be present from the side of his birthfather’s (aka ‘the Mistake’)..
Yeah, even I know A..holes are complex beings and oh, they often have reasons (blahblah) but being not exposed to that type of behaviour, I had hoped, should have protected my child from becoming like that himself.. but, you know.. you STILL wonder! And genes work in mysterious ways..
But I have long completely discarded this possibility.

When I started looking more into behaviours of children on the spectrum, I felt, even before his official diagnosis, that things were making more sense. I was almost glad.

At this point, it is easy to get VERY distracted by reading/researching all these things on the internet that are – as science stands per today – NOT proven and completely irrelevant for dealing with the problems in your child’s daily life.

I have easily read 100 different theories about what *I* could have done to caus the autism of my child. Some I might actually have done with or without knowing. Environmental factors, food, drink, the vaccines.. well, you know the range is pretty wide.
Some of the causes are so obviously stupid and based on quacks and self-declared specialists, still, if you look, there will be a portion of people on the internet that follow this or that theory.

So instead of dealing with the NOW and the FUTURE of THEIR child, they get lost in the cause of XY and contribute to the cacophony of disinformation.
This is what makes it so difficult for anybody today to understand what we actually know about Autism FOR SURE, how we can help children and grownups with ASD and what research would actually be most beneficial in the fight not AGAINST Autism but for those of us who have a life WITH Autism.

Oh, I still wonder from time to time. I am back to thinking genetics play a big role (my father and my brother both qualify for what people usually call ‘autistic traits’ ) but I also have the advanced age birthfather, the temporary lack of oxygen at birth… So I still don’t know.

What I do know now, though, is that I don’t have to know.
Even without knowing exactly where his autism comes from, there is still an incredible volume of information out there and so many methods how to make our life with Autism work and allow my child to be happy. Finetuning what and how much should be done at home, at school and elsewhere, now and in the future, looks like a big enough task.

The causes of autism.. ? I’ll leave it to science to figure that out.

Pancake Time Machine – Part 2 France

On a journey through my personal pancake history, yesterday I wrote about my mum’s fabulous, sweet “Eierkuchen”, that lay in our tummies like lead. Moving on, here is Part 2 :

Young and chic  with Crêpes in France

My first experiences with French Crêpes  were during the 80s: I was off to my first school exchanges to France, and we also saw the appearance of Crêpes in Germany, in the form of snack shop Takeaways – very different to the traditional ‘Crêperies’, which are actual restaurants in the country of Origin, especially in Brittany.  Either way, I loved them with chocolate sauce and almonds or simple, with sugar and cinnamon.
But it wasn’t until the 90s, now migrated to France, that I learnt the three essential rules of Crêpe making :

1. – Get yourself a proper ‘poêle à crêpes ‘– a special Crêpes pan – treat it right and stick to it!
Every French household has to have their special pan, used only for Crêpes, ideally made from cast iron, but a quality teflon coated pan will do.  Most French cook on gas stoves and nothing is more annoying than a pan that is uneven after a few runs. Minimum diameter 26 cm, get a wooden or plastic long flat spatula too, it’s the best way to turn or move those thin pancakes on your plate. It is generally considered a deathly sin to wash the pan with dishwasher liquid or the like – only wipe thoroughly with an oiled sheet of kitchen tissue – or bring on the rage and contempt of the French housewife! And you don’t want that, you want her Crêpes.
So how does she make them ?
This brings us to rule number two – there is no rule. Ah, que Non!

2. – There is no such thing as the one French Crêpes recipe. While obviously you should aim for the super-thin, golden lightness, every family has their own ‘best recipe’ for Crêpes. So over a decade I have tried out everything from very liquid to cream-based recipes, had crispy edges or ate Crêpes that were barely cooked, I have experimented with spices and tasty double-cooked sugar beet sugar (vergeoise), and also made savoury buckwheat crepes (galettes).  Just don’t forget : add some yummy booze !

3. – If you don’t make a minimum of 20 Crêpes, forget about it.
It’s not that the individual Crêpe takes long to make but most recipes are made out to supply for a big and hungry family, and if you want just a crepe or two as a snack for yourself, you might as well buy one at a stand in the street or wait to be invited somewhere. Crêpe making is serious business, so you’re expected to make loads of them or don’t even bother to try.
And : never ever buy ready-made Crêpes in plastic from supermarkets, they taste like rubber sheets with sugar. Yuck!

Here is one of the many basic recipes for French Crêpes :
half a litre of milk,
5 eggs,
500 g flour,
2 tbsp oil,
a pinch of salt
2 tbsp sugar (or not),
popular optional ingredients – to taste :
orange/lemon zest , Cognac (!), Armagnac or Rum, vanilla sugar, cinnamon.. Oh! It seems incredibly important to let your dough rest a while.
Laissez reposer la pâte !
Note : Crêpes don’t need to be baked from both sides, but if you manage to tumble them, you earn lots of extra points from the natives!

Jean-Pierre Foucault, the presenter of the French “Who wants to be a millionaire” looks sheepish over a question on how many eggs to how much flour should be in a Crêpe dough. There is no answer, really.

Link :
wiki on French Crêpes

Y esterday : Eierkuchen – mum’s pancakes in Germany.
Tomorrow : K.I.S.S. for Pancakes – Part 3, Australia.

Don’t drown your food – easy with the condiments!

My son often asks for tomato sauce when it’s really not a dish that is meant to be flooded in ‘red sauce’.
And of course he just LOVES French Fries and hotdog sausages.

I think it depends a lot of our eating habits, how to find a balance between ‘yummy’ and ‘tasty and healthy’ food

but I just saw this at Childhood Memory Keeper and yeah, I just thought that’s a good reminder for all of us.