View full sizeA family holds hands during a special liturgy for children with autism and their family members held at Caldwell College last year.Three-year-old Brooklyn Thompson just froze. She didn’t know what to do.
A doctor handed her a candle and some Play-Doh and told her to play. But instead, a blank look crossed the girl’s face and she averted her eyes from her and her mother. She did nothing.
Brooklyn’s mom, Shonda Greene, urged the girl to make a birthday cake, as an average kid would. The doctor hushed her — it was part of the test.
Mom always knew something about her little girl was different — she wouldn’t make eye contact, wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t respond to her name. She wouldn’t even play with her toys — she would just line them up on the ground.
But a pediatrician near Greene’s Bridgeton home in rural Cumberland County had always reassured her the little girl was fine. "Autism" was never mentioned.
"I didn’t know what was wrong," Greene said. "I didn’t know what to get her tested for."
Brooklyn is one of many autistic children who experts now say are being overlooked in "underserved" communities in New Jersey.
Six communities in the state’s cities showed higher rates of autism when Children’s Specialized Hospital experts brought screening methods directly into day care centers and preschools, according to a study to be presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Toronto this week.
The 3 percent rate the doctors found in the communities was higher than the 2 percent the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited for New Jersey in a separate study released last month.
Experts say the new figure shows there could be many children in the general population who are being overlooked because parents and professionals don’t know to watch for developmental milestones.
"We found that unless we go out into underserved communities, we are going to be missing many children who have autism," said Yvette Janvier, a developmental/behavioral pediatrician and medical director of the Children’s Specialized Hospital in Toms River. "They might know something’s wrong — but they can’t put their finger on it."
Roughly 1,000 children from Newark, Plainfield, Elizabeth, Trenton, New Brunswick and Bridgeton were screened in the study, which was funded by the New Jersey Governor’s Council for Medical Research and Treatment of Autism. More than 30 — or 3 percent — were placed on the autism spectrum in the study, which used teachers as well as parents to identify possibly autistic children, then homed in with further screening techniques — like the "play" test Brooklyn took.
Most were late diagnoses — the average age of the children screened was just over 4 years, while the current American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines recommend evaluations at 18 and 24 months. The older ages of the kids at diagnosis in this small slice of New Jersey’s urban areas showed a problematic lack of awareness and detection, the study authors said.
Autism has shown a marked increase nationwide over the last decade. Experts say they don’t see the numbers leveling off — let alone going down — any time soon.
"It’s a relatively sharp increase, and we believe only a part of that increase is due to better detection," said Michael Rosanoff, the associate director of public health research for Autism Speaks. "We do believe the CDC’s methodology is still underestimating autism in the United States."
In the meantime, Greene says her daughter is improving — and even makes eye contact occasionally now. Watching her daughter fail to make the birthday cake was a turning point for the better, the mom said.
"It was a blessing in disguise because I finally knew what was going on with my child," Greene said.
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