Laura
This is in response to the posting from Healthlink regarding your nephew's autism. I worked with autistic children for three years and am graduating college in psychology. It is quite evident from research that shaking an infant can directly result in several physical defects in an otherwise normal child. Shaking an infant, even lightly causes trauma to the spinal column, the neck and the brain. Infants need to have constant support to the neck and shaking them causes irrepreable damage. The brain floats in liquid and when shaken is banged against the skull causing ruptures and other severe problems. Essentially you should know that if your nephew was developing normally prior to being shaken it is extremely likely that the two are correlated. If you would like to do further reasearch there is a mulititude of information available on what is now referred to as "shaken baby syndrome" you should check it out.