Can some children simply 'grow out' of autism? One mother tells how her son's life has been transformed

When Josh Tutin was three years old, he was diagnosed with autism so severe that experts believed it unlikely he would ever relate to other people.

Yet now the Bristol boy is a thoughtful, joyful nine-year-old who attends a mainstream school.

Has he grown out of his condition? New research by a prestigious American university claims that not only is this possible, it’s also common.

A new study in the respected journal Pediatrics reports that up to one third of children diagnosed with autism at a young age no longer display symptoms when they are older.

And the behavioural transformation seen in Josh over the past six years has certainly gone beyond the wildest hopes of his parents.

As a toddler, Josh seemed irretrievably trapped inside his own troubled world.

‘We couldn’t have a cot because he would fling himself against it,’ says Josh’s mother, Renitha, 39, a chartered accountant who teaches at Bristol University.

‘He just slept lying on me. When he was awake he would scream and scream.’

If Renitha wanted something as simple as a shower, her husband, Richard, a lecturer in accounting and finance, also at Bristol University, would have to be on hand.

‘I would pass Josh to Richard and he would have to hold him while he screamed,’ she remembers.

‘There was one day when Josh had tantrum after tantrum, and I was so upset I started crying, and Josh just looked at me without any awareness.

‘I remember thinking: “He will never feel what I’m feeling. He can’t understand emotion”.’

When Josh was three, a health visitor witnessed him having a violent tantrum and referred Josh to specialists at Frenchay hospital, where he underwent twice-weekly diagnostic tests over a six-week period.

‘At the end, the specialists gave me a depressing report explaining that Josh was seriously disabled with autism,’ says Renitha.

Autism is a developmental disorder that affects more than 100,000 children. It is not known what causes it, but it affects a child’s ability to communicate and relate to others.

They are often withdrawn, mute, unable to make eye contact and prone to disturbed sleep and tantrums.

Many never take part in mainstream education and some require full-time care.

Indeed, Josh’s specialists wanted him to be sent to a special school.

‘They did not think he would cope in mainstream school,’ says Renitha.

However, she and her husband decided to reject that advice.

‘We have nothing against special schools, but we thought we would see if mainstream school could work for him first,’ she says.

Nowadays, the difference in Josh would strike outsiders as a massive change.

‘He loves maths and can play Grade 3 pieces on the piano,’ says Renitha.

‘Last year, he made me a beautiful bracelet for Mother’s Day. It made me realise how much things had changed.

‘If anyone is hurt, he will go up to them and ask why and try to give them a cuddle or cheer them up.

'If he is unsure why someone is upset, he will ask questions to try to understand.’

Josh’s transformation is far from unique, according to the Pediatrics study.

The researchers questioned 1,366 parents of children aged 17 and younger who had been previously diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

Of these, 453 parents said that their children no longer had the condition and had grown out of it since the age of seven.

The lead researcher, Dr Andrew Zimmerman, from Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, accepts the findings might partly reflect the fact that some of the children may have been misdiagnosed.

But he stresses that these are only a minority, and his results should certainly not be put down to misdiagnosis alone.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2103940/Autism-Can-children-simply-grow-One-mother-tells-sons-life-transformed.html#ixzz1nKIWnBDv