And another article! I'm on a roll today.
Dec. 3rd, 2004 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
Really, this commentary writes itself...
STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- The most recent statistics show as many as one in 200 children have a condition that falls under the category of autism. There are many drugs for the behavioral symptoms that come with these disorders, but new research shows you may not need them. Now a drug-free treatment may change lives.
Not touching this, I'll leave this for more educated people.
When you see 5-year-old Sarah Beard today, you'd never guess that a year ago, her life was filled with tantrums and rituals -- methodically lining up toys and spinning in circles. She'd scream at her own birthday parties if anyone sang happy birthday.
And did anybody think to ask why she enjoyed lining stuff up and spinning? I used to do that. I still do some of it. It's fun. Best game in the world was to see how many ways I could organize my MLPs (this was before Alexis took them and went to Oklahoma). Did she stop doing this because it's not fun anymore, or because it was always met with disapproval?
And when she screamed, oh, it's so tragic, she screamed at her own birthday party, she couldn't even enjoy it! But it seems to me that she probably got upset because the music was too loud, or too harsh, or too discordant. Shouldn't her family have known if she reacts badly to certain sounds, and had the foresight and respect to not do things to her that serve no purpose and she wouldn't enjoy?
Today, that old Sarah is hard to find. "Myself is something who is the personality, and I am a special person of 'anality," she tells Ivanhoe.
Oh, look, cute quote!
Sarah was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome -- an autism spectrum disorder -- at two. Mom Colleen says that early diagnosis changed her little girl. "The amount of progress she has made -- she's a different girl today than she was 14 months ago," Colleen says.
Yes, I'm sure she is. ANY three year old would be different from the way they were at two!
Autism expert and psychologist Catherine Lord, Ph.D., says early diagnosis leads to life-changing interventions.
"It's been truly wonderful to see how many things people with autism can do and things that we would not have probably dreamed about 20 or 30 years ago," Dr. Lord, of University of Michigan Autism and Communication Disorder Center in Ann Arbor, tells Ivanhoe.
Except that 20 or 30 years ago, this girl would not have been diagnosed as autistic at all, or asperger's. So this is not proof that their therapy works. Apples and oranges, people, apples and oranges and chalk and cheese.
Therapy focuses on completion of tasks and social interaction. Experts believed half of autistic kids would never speak. With early intervention, Dr. Lord found only 14 percent won't.
Again, they're now dealing with a very different group of people. It used to be that you couldn't get a diagnosis if you could speak, didn't it? Now that's not true, so of course the numbers have changed!
She says, "It's not what you have done in a day -- but what you know -- it leads into something that is really going to change children's lives."
A laudable goal, I'm sure.
Sarah remembers how she used to behave. "It feels like I screamed a lot." But this little girl doesn't dwell on it. "I'm not afraid anymore," she says. And this year, she even let her family sing her happy birthday.
Well, I'm sure she'd know if she screamed a lot, or if she used to be scared. I'm curious about her family singing, though - does this mean that the problems that caused her to scream before are actually gone, or that she's simply hiding her reaction better? If it's the latter, I see this as a step back - she no longer feels safe telling people when they're upsetting her.
Doctors used to believe autism could not be accurately diagnosed until the child was 4 or 5 years old. Dr. Lord's research shows children can reliably be diagnosed as young as 2, which, according to her, is the key to successful treatment.
Since autistic behaviors vary, the intervention is targeted to each specific child to help them overcome their own obstacles.
Note the focus on behaviours. There's no interest in helping the actual problems - for example, sensitive hearing that makes certain frequencies or levels of sound painful, or a need for movement that can be satisfied through spinning. Instead, it's all about what other people get to see. That she lets people sing to her, I know that's intended to be a feel-good moment, but it just seems sad to me.
STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- The most recent statistics show as many as one in 200 children have a condition that falls under the category of autism. There are many drugs for the behavioral symptoms that come with these disorders, but new research shows you may not need them. Now a drug-free treatment may change lives.
Not touching this, I'll leave this for more educated people.
When you see 5-year-old Sarah Beard today, you'd never guess that a year ago, her life was filled with tantrums and rituals -- methodically lining up toys and spinning in circles. She'd scream at her own birthday parties if anyone sang happy birthday.
And did anybody think to ask why she enjoyed lining stuff up and spinning? I used to do that. I still do some of it. It's fun. Best game in the world was to see how many ways I could organize my MLPs (this was before Alexis took them and went to Oklahoma). Did she stop doing this because it's not fun anymore, or because it was always met with disapproval?
And when she screamed, oh, it's so tragic, she screamed at her own birthday party, she couldn't even enjoy it! But it seems to me that she probably got upset because the music was too loud, or too harsh, or too discordant. Shouldn't her family have known if she reacts badly to certain sounds, and had the foresight and respect to not do things to her that serve no purpose and she wouldn't enjoy?
Today, that old Sarah is hard to find. "Myself is something who is the personality, and I am a special person of 'anality," she tells Ivanhoe.
Oh, look, cute quote!
Sarah was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome -- an autism spectrum disorder -- at two. Mom Colleen says that early diagnosis changed her little girl. "The amount of progress she has made -- she's a different girl today than she was 14 months ago," Colleen says.
Yes, I'm sure she is. ANY three year old would be different from the way they were at two!
Autism expert and psychologist Catherine Lord, Ph.D., says early diagnosis leads to life-changing interventions.
"It's been truly wonderful to see how many things people with autism can do and things that we would not have probably dreamed about 20 or 30 years ago," Dr. Lord, of University of Michigan Autism and Communication Disorder Center in Ann Arbor, tells Ivanhoe.
Except that 20 or 30 years ago, this girl would not have been diagnosed as autistic at all, or asperger's. So this is not proof that their therapy works. Apples and oranges, people, apples and oranges and chalk and cheese.
Therapy focuses on completion of tasks and social interaction. Experts believed half of autistic kids would never speak. With early intervention, Dr. Lord found only 14 percent won't.
Again, they're now dealing with a very different group of people. It used to be that you couldn't get a diagnosis if you could speak, didn't it? Now that's not true, so of course the numbers have changed!
She says, "It's not what you have done in a day -- but what you know -- it leads into something that is really going to change children's lives."
A laudable goal, I'm sure.
Sarah remembers how she used to behave. "It feels like I screamed a lot." But this little girl doesn't dwell on it. "I'm not afraid anymore," she says. And this year, she even let her family sing her happy birthday.
Well, I'm sure she'd know if she screamed a lot, or if she used to be scared. I'm curious about her family singing, though - does this mean that the problems that caused her to scream before are actually gone, or that she's simply hiding her reaction better? If it's the latter, I see this as a step back - she no longer feels safe telling people when they're upsetting her.
Doctors used to believe autism could not be accurately diagnosed until the child was 4 or 5 years old. Dr. Lord's research shows children can reliably be diagnosed as young as 2, which, according to her, is the key to successful treatment.
Since autistic behaviors vary, the intervention is targeted to each specific child to help them overcome their own obstacles.
Note the focus on behaviours. There's no interest in helping the actual problems - for example, sensitive hearing that makes certain frequencies or levels of sound painful, or a need for movement that can be satisfied through spinning. Instead, it's all about what other people get to see. That she lets people sing to her, I know that's intended to be a feel-good moment, but it just seems sad to me.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-03 03:15 pm (UTC)I've got weird wiring in this sense -- I'm almost ambidextrous (I use both hands interchangably, just mildly right-dominant) but I'm strongly left-side dominant otherwise, all the way to relying substantially more on my left eye to look at things.
You could try doing everything left-handed for a while and imagine ever really being competent that way, to get an idea of what extra effort her brain is probably having to deal with... :)
no subject
Date: 2004-12-03 03:20 pm (UTC)I'm also going to pointedly ask my mother if she did the same thing with me, since I know for a fact that I'm left-eye dominant and can't catch anything at all. Of course, you could chalk that up to my overall clutziness. :)