And another article! I'm on a roll today.

[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.

Comments

[staircase-wit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is sad. Seems like a subtle way of telling Sarah "I hate you." Not too subtle for her to notice, of course, but so many outsiders will think that everyone is heroic and that she has made "great strides" in becoming a person whom her parents are no longer embarased about.

[little-spyke.livejournal.com]

.... outsiders will think that everyone is heroic and that she has made "great strides" in becoming a person whom her parents are no longer embarased about.

That is the part that makes me the saddest.

I wonder how many people will read this article and fail to see that they quite probably are not treating/helping her in any way, but only modifying her behavior to be "socially acceptable."

[katschakai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, cause auties and aspies just have tantrums cause its so damn funny and they are just spoiled. Now, with new therapy we can understand that when a sound is freaky and hurtfull we just shut up and suffer so we slowly fall apart inside. Yeah...much better...[/sarcasm]

[snale.livejournal.com]

Not that it's the same thing, but this reminds me of how my Mom forced my little sister to use her right hand instead of her left (which seemed to be her naturally domininant hand). My mother didn't want her to be left handed, out of a sense that my sister needed to "fit in" and that it would be "easier for her in the long run".

[latenightparty.livejournal.com]

Jesus H. Christ, people still do that?!

[snale.livejournal.com]

Crazy, ain't it? Just goes to show how important it is for some parents that their children conform...

Hopefully people don't still do this. My sister is 18 now, so she was re-trained many many years ago.

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

Actually, it is pretty much the same thing, with the same results... Either way, you sacrifice speed/functionality to a large degree for the faux-appearance of "normal" neurological wiring.

(My mother was a possibly-autistic lefty and was "trained" to be righty/NT-looking, but developed a number of psych disorders due to the mistreatment and does everything insanely slowly with a huge effort. My father is an obviously-autistic lefty that was allowed to remain visibly different, and can outdo most right-handed NTs quite easily.)

[snale.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting. I'd never thought about it in those terms. It just horrified me that my parents would repress my sister's natural inclinations. It never occurred to me that they might actually be making things harder for her too. I'll have to ask her about that.

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

She might not realize it... My mother had no idea that she was "impaired" (though it was pretty clear to me) until she realized that every time there was something that invovled a startle reaction (like catching a ball suddenly thrown at her) she went left-handed and was much more successful at it than when she deliberately went right-handed.

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... :)

[snale.livejournal.com]

Next time I see her, I'm going to throw something at her and see what happens.
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. :)

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

Correct... this is PRECICELY the sort o kink that leads a person to my /scarcasim/ OH SO HAPPY /scarcasim/ cycle of despair self hatred and anxiety.
I hope those parents will pay for the therapy o deal with the inadiquacies and self hatred she will feel when she's older too.

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

Gah shit like that pisses me off.

Sure, teach the kid to communicate & any other stuff we might need like OT.
Teach us social rules in a way that we can understand so we can choose to socialise or not but this whole forcing a kid to appear NT thing is stupid.

Parents that do that crap should be shot.

Admittedly, Brad can pull off looking NT because he wants to(socialisation is pretty important to him, you could even see that when he was little).
He does it way better than I can.
Noone forced that on him, though.

[prezzey.livejournal.com]

"Myself is something who is the personality, and I am a special person of 'anality,"

Frankly, I could not parse this sentence. And I'm afraid that's the point. Like when Time covered autism, they just had to put photos of grimacing kids everywhere. *grimaces* As if autism came with facial contortions! The only other such collection I've seen were the Bush monkey photos. (I'm on the left so I don't support him, but c'mon people, such collections can be made of anyone. It's a nasty trick.)

Except that 20 or 30 years ago, this girl would not have been diagnosed as autistic at all, or asperger's.

Not even 10 years ago.

. It used to be that you couldn't get a diagnosis if you could speak, didn't it?

That's perfectly right. Without mental retardation, it wasn't autism. Without speech problems, it wasn't autism.

Frankly, I've seen NT children scared to death by own birthday parties. All the loudness and the adults behaving in an unusual way. This is soo not autism-specific. Aah, whatever. *shrug* They'll make anything autism-specific if they feel like (cf. the compulsive spending article).

[staircase-wit.livejournal.com]

that's some freaky shit

[staircase-wit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is sad. Seems like a subtle way of telling Sarah "I hate you." Not too subtle for her to notice, of course, but so many outsiders will think that everyone is heroic and that she has made "great strides" in becoming a person whom her parents are no longer embarased about.

[little-spyke.livejournal.com]

.... outsiders will think that everyone is heroic and that she has made "great strides" in becoming a person whom her parents are no longer embarased about.

That is the part that makes me the saddest.

I wonder how many people will read this article and fail to see that they quite probably are not treating/helping her in any way, but only modifying her behavior to be "socially acceptable."

[katschakai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, cause auties and aspies just have tantrums cause its so damn funny and they are just spoiled. Now, with new therapy we can understand that when a sound is freaky and hurtfull we just shut up and suffer so we slowly fall apart inside. Yeah...much better...[/sarcasm]

[snale.livejournal.com]

Not that it's the same thing, but this reminds me of how my Mom forced my little sister to use her right hand instead of her left (which seemed to be her naturally domininant hand). My mother didn't want her to be left handed, out of a sense that my sister needed to "fit in" and that it would be "easier for her in the long run".

[latenightparty.livejournal.com]

Jesus H. Christ, people still do that?!

[snale.livejournal.com]

Crazy, ain't it? Just goes to show how important it is for some parents that their children conform...

Hopefully people don't still do this. My sister is 18 now, so she was re-trained many many years ago.

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

Actually, it is pretty much the same thing, with the same results... Either way, you sacrifice speed/functionality to a large degree for the faux-appearance of "normal" neurological wiring.

(My mother was a possibly-autistic lefty and was "trained" to be righty/NT-looking, but developed a number of psych disorders due to the mistreatment and does everything insanely slowly with a huge effort. My father is an obviously-autistic lefty that was allowed to remain visibly different, and can outdo most right-handed NTs quite easily.)

[snale.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting. I'd never thought about it in those terms. It just horrified me that my parents would repress my sister's natural inclinations. It never occurred to me that they might actually be making things harder for her too. I'll have to ask her about that.

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

She might not realize it... My mother had no idea that she was "impaired" (though it was pretty clear to me) until she realized that every time there was something that invovled a startle reaction (like catching a ball suddenly thrown at her) she went left-handed and was much more successful at it than when she deliberately went right-handed.

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... :)

[snale.livejournal.com]

Next time I see her, I'm going to throw something at her and see what happens.
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. :)

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

Correct... this is PRECICELY the sort o kink that leads a person to my /scarcasim/ OH SO HAPPY /scarcasim/ cycle of despair self hatred and anxiety.
I hope those parents will pay for the therapy o deal with the inadiquacies and self hatred she will feel when she's older too.

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

Gah shit like that pisses me off.

Sure, teach the kid to communicate & any other stuff we might need like OT.
Teach us social rules in a way that we can understand so we can choose to socialise or not but this whole forcing a kid to appear NT thing is stupid.

Parents that do that crap should be shot.

Admittedly, Brad can pull off looking NT because he wants to(socialisation is pretty important to him, you could even see that when he was little).
He does it way better than I can.
Noone forced that on him, though.

[prezzey.livejournal.com]

"Myself is something who is the personality, and I am a special person of 'anality,"

Frankly, I could not parse this sentence. And I'm afraid that's the point. Like when Time covered autism, they just had to put photos of grimacing kids everywhere. *grimaces* As if autism came with facial contortions! The only other such collection I've seen were the Bush monkey photos. (I'm on the left so I don't support him, but c'mon people, such collections can be made of anyone. It's a nasty trick.)

Except that 20 or 30 years ago, this girl would not have been diagnosed as autistic at all, or asperger's.

Not even 10 years ago.

. It used to be that you couldn't get a diagnosis if you could speak, didn't it?

That's perfectly right. Without mental retardation, it wasn't autism. Without speech problems, it wasn't autism.

Frankly, I've seen NT children scared to death by own birthday parties. All the loudness and the adults behaving in an unusual way. This is soo not autism-specific. Aah, whatever. *shrug* They'll make anything autism-specific if they feel like (cf. the compulsive spending article).

[staircase-wit.livejournal.com]

that's some freaky shit