[blueash]

In large part the phenomenal increase in the diagnosis of autism is the greatly widened list of criteria which allow the use of that diagnosis. In the 1970's the diagnosis was only used to describe children who were profoundly symptomatic (can't comment on OP's diagnosis). This meant the essentially completely non-verbal child who stood in the corner flapping his hands and twirling in circles. Now the label autism spectrum disorder includes the high school basketball player we all saw shooting the lights out a couple years ago, and speculation that Bill Gates lives on the spectrum because he is kinda "weird". Schools have played a large roll in this in asking pediatricians to label kids as autistic, or what gets called "educational autism" because that label gets the schools extra money whereas just saying speech and language delay, or socialization disorder, or the almost disappeared label of MRDD did not mean extra money, just extra expense. In fact there is no increase at all in the number of children with what used to be called autism, just the add on of the kids with milder dysfunction. And now with more states mandating coverage for autism disorders, the parental pressure for that diagnosis will increase to get coverage for services which will not be covered with alternative labels. All this is not to minimize the seriousness of ASD's, just to point out the financial and cultural reasons which significantly underly the report from the CDC.