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louis sharemygrief
3:54 pm - 08/22/2012

Jacqueline Laurita: My Son Has Autism


Jacqueline Laurita had tried for years to have another baby, so when she finally welcomed son Nicholas three years ago, the proud mom celebrated his every achievement.

But then, at around 18 months old, Nicholas began regressing with his speech and motor skills, then refusing to answer to his name or notice people enter a room.

"We had no idea what was going on," the Real Housewives of New Jersey star, who hid her son's medical issues from the reality cameras as she continued taping season 4 last year, tells PEOPLE exclusively.

After an agonizing wait to see multiple doctors, the Lauritas got a diagnosis: Nicholas is autistic.

"I worry about him being independent when he's older," admits Jacqueline, who is also mom to Ashlee Beelzebub, 21, and C.J., 10. "I spend all my time researching what we can do for him."

Adds her husband Chris: "You never want to think that your child isn't perfectly healthy. We didn't want to believe it was true."



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age_of_green 22nd-Aug-2012 08:12 pm (UTC)
Adorable child. But not all autistic people are low functioning. A good deal of them live very independent lives. It's not a death sentence.

Edited at 2012-08-22 08:13 pm (UTC)
ekrelly 22nd-Aug-2012 08:20 pm (UTC)
this. my brother and one of my good friends both have autism and the differences are insane.
megalixer 22nd-Aug-2012 08:22 pm (UTC)
this - autism is a spectrum, there isn't any one form of it.

My sister has high-functioning autism (think the technical diagnosis is PDD but it's on the spectrum) and while she certainly has her quirks, she goes to a normal school and hasn't needed additional help in the classroom since elementary school.
sassi214 22nd-Aug-2012 09:14 pm (UTC)
normal school (neuro)typical school



megalixer 22nd-Aug-2012 09:16 pm (UTC)
point taken
imnotasquirrel 22nd-Aug-2012 08:30 pm (UTC)
Tangential, but I remember there was so much controversy over the idea of subsuming Aspergers into the general autism spectrum. While there was some constructive debate, I thought a lot of it came across as people with Aspergers going, "Ewwww, don't put me in with the lower-functioning autistic people!"
age_of_green 22nd-Aug-2012 08:44 pm (UTC)
But there is proof of that-my sis and are living proof, with HFA and Asperger's respectively. But yeah, I ran into some of those Asperger types on Tumblr-I avoid them, they're more about a cause than actually helping people.
imnotasquirrel 22nd-Aug-2012 10:46 pm (UTC)
Yeah, but I guess that's part of the question, whether or not those separate classifications should still exist. Not sure that I agree with changing it - Asperger's is already on the spectrum, shouldn't that be enough? It seems distinct enough to me that it'd be helpful to have separate names but under the same overarching category (ASD is the "genus" and Asperger's is the "species"?), but I suppose there's some controversy over what's being used to distinguish one from the other.

And then IIRC there was talk about how some schools only provide help if you're classified as being autistic, but that's a different thing altogether.
diamantfabriken 22nd-Aug-2012 10:29 pm (UTC)
Well there is a huge difference between autism and Asperger's... Asperger's doesn't even classify as high-functioning autism - there's autism, and there's Asperger's. If I tell someone I have Asperger's and they think "autism" they get the wrong idea completely.
imnotasquirrel 22nd-Aug-2012 10:38 pm (UTC)
Like I said, there was some constructive debate on it, but in any case, I don't think it's been conclusively established one way or the other, and there's controversy over the different designations. Either way, I thought it was disgusting the way some people were acting about the possibility.

Edited at 2012-08-22 10:40 pm (UTC)
bollyhood 22nd-Aug-2012 08:47 pm (UTC)
MTE.
nothingcleva89 22nd-Aug-2012 10:13 pm (UTC)
True. My brother is low-functioning, but I know plenty of autistics who go on to lead very fruitful lives with the right instruction and care.
stylista_11 22nd-Aug-2012 10:16 pm (UTC)
AGREED.

My neighbor is autistic, and he just graduated high school, has a corporate job, drives to work everyday, goes to the gym etc.
pennyxlane 23rd-Aug-2012 04:38 am (UTC)
my brother has asperger's and you'd really never know
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