What Causes Autism?

On this earth… some children are born carrying different keys.

Keys that do not open the doors we are used to… but instead open others—strange, unique, and perhaps only understood by them.

A child is born, but he does not pick up on signals the way his peers do.

He does not understand why people exchange glances… or why they smile at certain moments.

He may fear a sound that seems ordinary to us… or be fascinated by a light that shines only for him in a way no one else perceives.

He loves to repeat something once… then again… and perhaps twenty times—because repetition creates a sense of safety that the outside world has not offered him.

And because science loves names, over the years it has given many:

Asperger’s… developmental disorder… behavioral… language… or simply “he’s just a little different.”

But the name is not what matters—the story runs much deeper.

What is happening?

In research labs, where genetic codes are read in their smallest details, scientists discovered that some genes drift from the script…

Genes responsible for building the brain… for wiring the delicate connections between cells… for processing sounds… interpreting movement… balancing the body… even making sense of touch.

The brain works—but it works differently.

Background sounds can feel like unbearable noise… and repetitive movements become a safe refuge amidst the chaos of the senses.

No one knows exactly why.

Maybe part of it is written into the genes from the very first cell… or maybe the environment influenced those genes as a tiny brain was forming in the womb.

Pollution, vitamin deficiencies, infections—or perhaps just a biological coincidence. Science does not yet hold the answer to the cause of autism.

But science does know one thing—enough to tear apart thousands of pages of old injustices:

It was never the mother’s fault.

Nor the father’s.

Not the screens.

Not parenting.

Not a lack of affection.

It is no one’s fault. No one’s shame.

It is simply a brain that reads the world in another language.

And from where I stand as an occupational therapist, I do not ask “Why is he like this?”

Instead, I say: “How can I make him feel more comfortable in a world that insists on having only one form?”

I help him express himself… calm the storm of senses when they overwhelm him… or nourish them when he needs.

I help arrange the world, so it becomes fairer, gentler, quieter, and easier to understand.

Because they do not need a cure as much as they need a world that understands them.