If autism is just genetics, nursing homes should be packed with it... they aren’t. Grandparents didn’t grow up surrounded by nonverbal kids, 1-in-31 classrooms, or “everyone’s a little on the spectrum now.” Diagnosis criteria didn’t invent an entire generation. Something changed... and we know what that something is. This is the question they never want answered.

HE GOT A LETTER WITH RULES FOR TRICK-OR-TREATERS?? Fair standards, or the most joyless neighbor on the block? He reads a Halloween notice he says came through his neighborhood: no candy for older teens, every kid has to say "trick or treat" out loud, and parents should teach manners before they knock. His reply is that he's lived there ten years and anybody who knocks gets candy. I actually agree with part of it. Kids should say trick or treat and thank you. That's on us parents. But he catches the problem right away: not every kid can talk. Some are nonverbal, some are shy, some are three and just holding out a pillowcase. As for teens, a 15-year-old in a costume asking for a Snickers beats a 15-year-old out doing something worse. It's one night a year, and the porch light is optional. If you don't want to hand out candy, turn it off. You don't get to write rules for everybody else's kids. One day my boys will be the awkward teenagers at somebody's door, and I hope the guy answering is this one. Buy the full-size bars and let it go.

A DC man blamed his 6-year-old autistic son for beating 2-month-old Khamyah Honesty to de*th. Guess who really did it? ⠀ Demetrius Beatty is 40. Metropolitan Police charged him with first-degree felony m*rder and first-degree cruelty to children after the de*th was ruled a hom*cide. ⠀ Officers got the call at 9:45 p.m. Aug. 16 at the 800 block of New Jersey Avenue in Southeast. They found him holding the unresponsive baby. Her face was bruised. Her eyes were bleeding. ⠀ The mother had gone to the grocery store around 8 p.m. and left him with five children. He placed 911 from a neighbor’s phone because he said his cell had no reception inside. ⠀ “I guess my autistic son got to the 2-month-year-old daughter and was fighting her and he damaged her pretty good.” He also said, “Her face is swollen, her nose is bleeding. I need help quick.” ⠀ He gave the wrong apartment and the wrong age for the boy. WTOP’s affidavit summary calls the child 7. Other charging papers call him 6 and nonverbal. ⠀ He later changed the story. Hallway phone call. Another child “tossed” the baby. Playing ball. He could not spell Khamyah’s name and first called her Maya. ⠀ A forensic analyst said the fractures and head trauma were too severe for a small child to inflict. Prosecutors say Beatty was bitter that the mother got pregnant with the twins by another man during their relationship. ⠀ He had told her, “If you leave them b*tches here, them b*tches are going to be de*d.” She later told police, “Mighty funny that you made that comment and I come back from the grocery store and my daughter de*d.” ⠀ Sixteen days earlier Khamyah had fallen about 75 feet down an escalator at Congress Heights Metro after slipping from a car seat. Medical staff disputed the mother’s account of that drop. ⠀ A relative of the twins’ father had already called DC Child and Family Services more than once in the prior two months. Beatty allegedly locked the twins in a closet because they were crying and smelled bad. ⠀ The other children went to a hospital. One had abrasions on both sides of his head. Another had a healing burn on her back and severe diaper rash. ⠀ Investigators described a filthy apartment with pills and marijuana left out. CFSA took the four surviving children. Beatty was charged in mid-September, nearly a month after Aug. 16. ⠀ #WashingtonDC# #DC#