The regression and breastfeeding

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By "the regression" I mean the regression reported by some parents of a normally developing child into an autistic one. They lose speech, become anti-social, etc. This is one thing that has bugged me the most ever since I started researching autism, and I now have a theory. (And tell me if this is old news, because I always seem to miss the notice.;;; But I've been on WP for a few months now and haven't seen a mention of this.)

Do you think perhaps this regression happens because parents ween their kids too early? The regression seems to happen before or at the 2-year mark, in the reports I've seen. Does anyone know: is this around the time women stop breastfeeding, on average, in the US and/or UK? (Most of you seem to be from those areas.)

The other info that supports this theory:
The worldwide average age for weening kids off breast milk is apparently between ages 4 and 5, but most of the modern world has shortened the breastfeeding period significantly.
Many professionals are coming to believe that intestinal problems like "leaky gut syndrome", which allows proteins found in cows milk to leak from the intestines into the blood stream, are related to autism. (In case you hadn't heard, which I guess most of you probably have.)
The supposed reports of a rise in autism in the US.

Could it be that kids with intestinal problems are being switched to cow-milk products and other foods too soon, and it is disrupting their development, causing more cases of autism than would otherwise develop?

Tear me apart plz.

Certainly it's an interesting hypothesis. So much is happening in a child's life at the age of 2, so there are so many things that you could correlate with the "regression." If it were true, you would see decreased "late onset autism" in countries that weaned later. Is there was way to get statistics on this?

It's about as accurate as the Thimerosal theory unless you can demonstrate anything other than correlation.

I've been reading about child development since a little while before my daughter was born two years ago, so I'm a complete amateur but the one thing that has struck me is how little methodical study has been done of infant speech development and social development.

For example, there are many interventions for speech delay but practically none of them have been subjected to a case/control study to see if they work.

Research into normal speech development is almost always based on parental reporting, and does not control for parental expectations. For example, most child development books state that first words are produced at 12 months old, so many parents will deny that their child or anyone else's could possibly have said an actual word much before then.

What this makes me think is that in babies that are reported to have regressed (which I understand is uncommon even among classically autistic babies) it is purely anecdotal evidence and very hard to get any idea what really happened.

The average age for weaning from breastmilk in the UK and US is about 6 weeks to 3 months. Almost all UK and US babies are exposed to cow milk proteins from early on with many mothers offering some formula as well as their own milk. Weaning at 2 years is considered very late in these countries. The World Health Organisation recommends introducing meat and fish (for iron) from 6 months, and continuing to provide breast milk as a main drink up to one year, and as part of a varied diet throughout the second year.

I think it would be a very upsetting thing for a mother to read, a suggestion that weaning her baby at what is considered to be very late age anyway, might have contributed in any way to her child's regression.

My son has autism. He breast fed until he was nearly 2 1/2.

He was "lining things up" shortly after age 1.

He was fully reading (hyperlexic) at age 2.

He has always, for lack of a better word, been antisocial.

So for us, our story does not fit your theory...

Quite the opposite, I have wondered if (among other things) maybe there was a toxic level of something environmental in my breastmilk, since I breastfed much longer than anyone else I know & I'm the one who ended up with the autistic kid...

Your theory is interesting, but it doesn't fit us.

My son has atypical autism and was breastfed until 2 1/2 years old. He didn't really regress though, he was always autistic. I just didn't think much of it, I just though he was anxious and neurotic like me instead of laid-back like his father. As it turns out I was right, he is like me, except I have autism too.

I don't think the breastfeeding theory holds water, for many reasons. Personally I believe autism is more or less genetic, although I suppose psychological factors might make it worse.

Breastfeeding has only recently become popular again in the US. In 1971, it is estimated that only 21% of moms breastfed at all.

http://www.internationalbreastfeedingjournal.com/content/1/1/10

My mother had told me that when I was born, it was widely believed that formula was better and healthier for the baby. She thought I was making a questionable choice by breastfeeding my kids. So no, I don't think early weaning has anything to do with it.