Sandra Devlin cradles her newborn daughter, Delilah, with the same devotion she lavished on her four older children. "De-li-lah," she coos in a singsong voice, holding the 4-month-old baby close to her face. As she did with her other kids, she hopes to elicit a smile, a laugh or a gurgle of recognition.
It's a time-honored mother's gesture -- but one that now comes with a twist: This time, Devlin is also checking for autism.
Every generation of parents has a worry unique to its era. In the '40s, the specter of polio made mothers frantic about any trip to the neighborhood swimming pool. The '80s brought the sense that every child risked abduction, his photo ending up on the side of a milk carton.
For today's parents, that fear is autism.
"In my office, that's the big elephant in the room. They'll ask about something else, but what they're really asking is, 'He doesn't have autism, does he?' It is the question for this generation," said Ari Brown, a Texas pediatrician and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
With autism spectrum disorders now diagnosed in 1 out of 150 children nationally and 1 in 94 in New Jersey, rare is the parent who isn't aware of autism. And with that awareness can come a new wariness of vaccines, which a vocal minority of autism activists blame for the jump in cases. Pediatricians report seeing more parents question, delay or even shun altogether the traditional round of childhood immunizations.
Such worries never crossed the mind of Devlin, of Denville, with her first two children, now 19 and 13. Autism arrived on her radar screen for the next two kids, now 9 and 3. With Delilah, born 11 weeks prematurely, that concern is front and center.
"I never did that with my older kids," she says of her new habit of checking for eye contact from Delilah. "But now I'm looking specifically for autism."
Pediatricians say this worry has its benefits: Parents are more aware of crucial child-development milestones and as a result, they are quicker to pick up on lags. That may mean some cases of autism -- maddeningly difficult to catch in the youngest toddlers -- are diagnosed earlier.
"If you have a child who doesn't talk, I think in other generations they would've said, 'Oh, he's a late bloomer.' It wasn't a big deal," said Mary Jean Wick, another Denville mother of five. "Now it's definitely a fear for this age of parent."
However, it can make some parents see autism behind every bush.
"Thirteen years ago, parents wouldn't be able to answer the question, 'How does your child play?'" Brown said of her early years in practice. "Now you hear, 'Oh my God, my child lines up his trains. Does he have autism?' There are these extreme parents who think every little thing is autism. I have to say to them, 'Sometimes kids can be quirky.'"
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