Mostly lurker here :-)

This topic brought something up for me that I think is a good reminder now and then.

There have been a long list of reasons to continue to breastfeed a child with autism, all of which where wonderful and I don't feel I can add anything more of substance to it.

However I did want to mention something as the idea of looking for research was brought up.  I frequent an attachment parenting list where the vast majority of children are breastfed for several years.  One of the moms on the list had a friend who was doing her graduate study in autism and was looking for non-autistic children as the control group. (TBH I don't remember what the specific scope of the study was)  She asked that anyone on the list w/ non-autistic children fitting a certain criteria please get in touch with this woman.  I don't know how many ended up as participants.

What I do remember is thinking - wow, what a way to get a rather skewed sample.  The researcher already has the autistic group presumably from her university, a local school or an on-line call for autistic children (probably being parenting predominantly in a macro-culture US fashion).  Now a large chunk of her non-autistic group may well come from a breastfeeding, attachment parenting group.

As I said I don't know how the study was constructed, so the researcher may well have controlled for such variables.  However, if she didn't..... And most likely all those reading the research would know is that the participants where self-selected (possibly mentioning an on-line parenting forum, but not necessarily)

Just some random thoughts...

jessica mattingly M.Ed., CCE

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