Are there numbers for low functioning children vs adults?

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I notice in a lot of scare tactics used by some to exploit parent's anxieties and fears they try to create the sense that without immediate and intensive therapy the young child will remain as they are for life. Or just to create the impression their children will be a burden, or even parents can internalize this.

I was curious because it is obvious that everyone with autism continues to develop throughout life(developmental delay obviously) and someone's functioning level at age 2 is usually not going to be their functioning level at age 20 and beyond. Of course I am speaking generally.

I'd just like something to point to so I can counter that, or give hope to someone with hard data.

Usually with autism in children as compared to adults is what it can be mistaken for. Autism in children in the past when I wasa kid in the 1970s was thought to be a severe or profound learning disability in the post 1995 terminology. But as the child gets older then he or she progresses up the developmental disability spectrum which may happen naturally but some people would assume that this is the result of some ABA like early intervention or therapy. A scare tactic used by allistic supremacists in the late 1960s was to recommend the non allistic child be institutionalised and let the NHS take care of it. Some children who had spent a short time in the learning disability care and/or educational system were later to have either found out they had Asperger syndrome or they were allistic but that is a small minority. Most would have been rightfully there or later thought they has a milder learning disability and some allistic people had been there because they had some other disability or condition.

As an adult often a higher functioning form of developmental disability is often mistaken for having a mental health problem or being a w*ker. An erroneously placed AS child can still learn to play a role of a low fucntioning form of NT spectrum disorder (other than allism). It is being reassessed as having allistic levels of cognitive abilities that can be a problem and there can be a very fine line being high functioning an appearing very able and independent it is just that you are being your own key worker or carer. A person with a learning disability or a lower functioning form of autism tends to use a human service animal and people in residential care often do.

Often you cannot say that the person at 5 years old has a severe to profound learning disability and should be put into residential care when he or she is older to 10 to 13 years later excelling at an area of tertiary education even if the person had left an allistic school and only allowed to have done exams which would leave him or her without independent working skills, and being put a year behind as well as an ultimate humiliation. I suppose that for the youger aspie should count his or her bessings that this human rights infringement, does not happen any more. But it is important in the history of aspiphobia.