Aspies For Freedom

Of course, he is still autistic, but would likely be diagnosed HFA now, if he was willing to admit that. He learned to cope, he came out of his shell enough to function. That doesn't make him an NT. I have heard of that technique, which isn't like ABA (if I remember correctly), and it worked for him. But it didn't 'cure' him. I'm sure he is still 'different', but has learned to pretend to be normal.

As far as I know son-rise is a similar idea to ABA, but most people complain about the heavy way it is marketed, and pushed onto parents.
If it fails to work, its the parents failing, not the therapy.

And yet they don't have anything to say about how heavely marketed ABA is.

There was a front page news story in my local paper a couple of weeks back, reporting an autistic boy who'd spoken after his parents used a participative kind of therapy, I'm guessing now that it was this sunrise technique.  I was quite surprised at how prominent the story was, really a massive splash, the main story on the front page.

I don't know enough about the technique to condemn it as others might, nor would I liken it to what I've heard of ABA.  If it's a matter of NTs learning to communicate and get through to auties on auties' terms then I'm not sure I can see any harm in that.

Of course, I was concerned about the sensationalist 'autism boy cured' type flavour of the story in my local paper, might lead some parents to seek out other, more harmful, 'cures', or to raise expectations, when, like someone else, the chap who visited Scotland hasn't been 'cured' he's just learned to pass for NT.

       Son-rise or the Options program is not similar to ABA very much. It is a lot more accepting of the person and requires a lot more time and involvement from the parents.

      I have met Ron Kaufman and he is not cured. He is still very high strung and just copes with it a lot better.

                               Jerry Newport

Aspies are "high strung"????

I am gald I am not high strung.

What gets me though is that they advertise with "curing" children of autism... how can they at the same time claim to be "accepting"?

His parents claim he is cured though, which is what bugs some of us.

HI

Noetic

welcome back and excellent points

Thanks - Son Rise may appear tolerant and friendly at first, but at least aggressive ABA proponents are more honest about their approach (some of the less aggressive ABA concepts even are as non-invasive as using PECS for example, which many autistics themselves approve of, whereas Son Rise involves forcing the child to stay in a locked room with another person for many hours a day, often using different people, such as students and babysitters, for the enforced play therapy). How Son Rise can go on about basing their approach on tolerance, when in fact the aim is to normalise the child, is beyond me.

I agree and have seen a lot of negative comments from parents who have been through it.

"I am extremely bothered by the "hard sell" tactics that Options seem to be using (I'm not sure it can be a coincidence that Barry Kaufman used to work in advertising). A while back, they sent a leaflet to every member of the UK's National Autistic Society proclaiming the "highly effective" nature and "proven results" of the Son-Rise program. They've also been e-mailing sites connected to autism asking them to link to the Options site - I imagine they must be e-mailing pretty indiscriminately as they've e-mailed me three times (despite the fact that each time I've replied explaining politely why I don't link to sites for particular treatment programs as this is not relevant to my site and asking them not to e-mail me again). I've been in contact with one parent who's had the Options people "cold-calling" her, phoning her out of the blue (she's never contacted them and has no idea how they got her phone number) and trying to "sell" her on the program. She said it was as if they were selling double-glazing, and was left very upset and angry about it. I also think it's unethical for Options to keep on making dramatic claims about the "highly effective" nature and "proven results" of the Son-Rise program (they are now calling themselves "The Autism Treatment Center", by the way), while consistently refusing to produce any evidence to back up these claims. If they do any sort of follow-up on kids who go through the program, it should be incredibly easy and practically cost-free to collect the data and show how kids are progressing, but they won't do this.

The impressions I've of how they operate as an organization has bothered me, and I was interested to see that they are listed at http://www.freedomofmind .com/resourcecenter/groups/o/option/oi_statements.htm because of alleged cult-type behaviour, including exploitation of families and bullying of employees - I don't know how reliable this information is, but it wouldn't altogether surprise me if it was true. The "Options philosophy" was invented by a man named Bruce DiMarsico, and there are several groups of his other ex-students selling the "Options method" - the Options Institute is very hostile to any mention of them (I can't help feeling that this suggests that the method has failed to bring about harmony and tolerance between them ...).

Despite Options' claims of "acceptance", they in fact seem to have a wholly negative view of autism. Their promotional material frequently refers to "loving a child back to life", which effectively implies that autistic children are "dead", or "rebirthing" them. In his introduction to "Son-Rise: A Miracle Continues", Raun Kaufman writes of the possibility of his remaining autistic "Sometimes it dawns on me how close I came to spending my life encapsulated inside my own head..." He describes himself as "lost behind a thick, hazy cloud," and later as having emerged "from the shell of my autism." The "acceptance" turns out to be based on the idea that you can choose to feel positive about anything (even cancer or the Holocaust, presumably), not the idea that actually autism might not be that horrible. They present a totally inaccurate picture of autism as a "shell", not part of the real child. This upsets me a lot, because what parents are being led to think is just "autistic behaviour" is actually their child, and it’s ultimately incompatible with their accepting the child they have."
http://rsaffran.tripod.com/sonrise.html

Thanks Amy that was one of the texts I read a while back but couldn't find again!

No one seems to be questioning the idea that some doctor can make a diagnosis and issue accurate predictions about the future of a young child. I presume this man was diagnosed when he was a young child.

I'm so sick to *** death of watching media stories about young men diagnosed with stuff like AD/HD as kids, and when they go on to have any measure of success as teens or adults it is supposed to be some kind of miracle. There seems to be an widely-held assumption that one must be perfectly normal and capable in all areas to expect to have any kind of success in life. Anyone who has read the biographies of great people knows that's a load of %^&*!