Big Headed Kids & Autism

Seems as if the larger the head of an autistic child, the more trouble they have generalizing, but do well with detail-focused processing:

"Macrocephaly in the context of autism may therefore be a biological marker of abnormal neural connectivity, and of a local processing bias."

Macrocephaly is an abnormally large head. Big headed kids also tend to be taller and to be male. They also have less adaptive behaviors. I was curious though as to what "big-headed" might mean in context of babies at different ages. From the CDC:

--At birth, the 95th percentile for head circumference is a tad more than 15 inches.
--At 6 months, the 95th percentile is right at 18 inches.
--A one year old child that has a head bigger than 95% of other kids will have a 19 inch head.
--A two year old will have a head slightly under 20 inches and a three year old will have a head about 20 and half inches.

I know if I had a baby child I might be getting out the tape measure right about now.

No Weird Fridays

We in the office are serious about our No Weird Fridays. No time suck psychodramas allowed. So of course, about 12 seconds after we were hooting about the time one of our substitutes was convinced she was receiving radio signals from her earrings and our fire alarm sensors were actually video cameras tracking her every movement (yeah, I sent her home, like, for good), into the office walks two guys--both wearing jeans, one in an Atlanta Falcons t shirt the other in an untucked golf shirt.

They announce to the three of us in the office that they are from the Department of Homeland Security. We howled. We couldn't help it. Right in the middle of our No Weird Friday declarations and our reminisces about prior paranoid schizophrenic weirdness, weird squared walks in.

No really, they insisted we are Homeland Security They both whipped out badge holders. Sure 'nuff. Golf Shirt guy says we have tracked an illegal alien to within 100 meters of this location.

"You mean, right now?" I ask.

Yes. He says they believe a woman, who we recognize as a parent, is harboring an illegal and we believe he is here.

"In school?" I ask, I think quite reasonably. And really, it is serious--the guy they are after is wanted for rape and assault in Florida. I'm thinking about locking down the school now. Or maybe evacuating it. This would certainly count as Friday weirdness.

"So how do you know he's here? Are you tracking him somehow?"

Golf Shirt guy says, "Homeland doesn't track cell phones, but we have traced his cell phone to within a 100 meters of this location." Aaaaaah. I see. How did I end up in Enemy of the State, II? But razor sharp school brains prevailed--we figured out who the kids were of the parent that was illegally harboring a fugitive and then figured out that one of the kids had the CELL PHONE.

The Homeland Security guys seemed almost peeved that their dangerous fugitive wasn't cowering in the Media Center behind the Captain Underpants display or hiding behind the tether ball pole out back.

I took Golf Shirt guy's card and promised I would call him if a guy we didn't know showed up to pick the kids up. They left and we in the office just looked at each other. It wasn't even 9:30 yet on our No Weird Friday.

School Lighting Mostly Sucks

That's one half of the fluorescent lights in my office. There is another bank right over my head that I won't turn on because I'm convinced that it irradiates my brain and makes me surly and migrainish. So, my office is pretty dim most of the time. I'm not alone:

"Results showed that classrooms that are lit with 100 Hz fluorescent lighting can cause headaches and impair visual performance."

Turn the fluorescent lights off. Use natural light or lamps. The glare of fluorescent lights makes kids crazy. And staff. Truth.