In today's episode, we talk about some common myths that people have about the autism diagnosis and how research has debunked them!

1. Autism only affects children. False!
2. Autism is just an issue with the brain. False! Co-morbidities (GI issues, sleeping problems, epilepsy, etc) are very common in children with ASD.
3. Autism is caused by bad parenting. FALSE!! Research has proven that there was no difference in parenting styles between parents of typically developing children and parents of children with autism/anxiety disorder.
4. Vaccinations causes autism. FALSE! We reviewed Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study that claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism. This study was retracted in 2010, but in this episode we dive deeper into this study to examine issues with this research study.
5. All autistic people are extremely gifted/talented with memory skills, numbers, music, art. False! Although this may be true for SOME of our children, this doesn't accurately reflect across all children with autism.
6. ABA treatment turns children into robots! FALSE! A good ABA treatment provider ensures that their programming has variability and generalization. ABA treatment has been research proven to be the most effective in treating autism.

Go to our facebook page @whattheautism to find each perspective research articles and supporting studies to debunk every single one of these myths!