Too Much Stimulation and Too Many Toys

I wonder, in the voluminous theories out there, if anyone has ever questioned whether autism rates could be up because we are just overstimulating our babies? I'm sure I didn't have a third of the toys as a child that my twins have had since birth. I'm not saying that having an object around that was deliberately designed to be fascinating could cause autism. But I can't help but wonder about kids on the edge. Kids that maybe could go either way. Was there a moment when T could have become NT but something tipped him the other direction? Was it that first day I put him in a bouncy seat so I could nurse his twin brother? What if I hadn't had a C-section and been horribly anemic? What if I could have carried both babies at once? What if I had carried him more, worked harder to get him to gaze back with me, worked harder to get him regulated, used less distraction to try to manage the difficulties in taking care of two newborns? What if he had been an only child? What if we lived outside in a tent, with no toys, no electric lights, no laptops, no trains, no traffic .... I know you're not supposed to ask yourself these questions, but it's so hard not to. Especially if you really want to know what it is. And I do. I really do. Well ... I know none of those things CAUSED autism, but they couldn't have helped, you know. What if the difference between today and yesteryears is that kids who were at risk had a better second chance?


what if there's nothing new causing autism, but there's less of the things that in previous years would have masked it or healed it?