Aspies For Freedom

Here is a quote from an article found at the web site of the Dore Program

Here's the link (broken)
http://www. dorecenters.com/global/actonbeacon.shtml

Home page
http://www. dorecenters.com/

What does the AFF think of this Dore crowd? It looks like a bunch of quack to me. (I need an emoticon that looks like a duck quacking). It appears to be big business, and the organisation has links to the controversial US ADHD lobby group CHADD.

I first found out about this organization, that seems to be based in the US, after they ran an rather slick infomercial in our local government primary school's newsletter (which seems most unethical to me).

I have had spam emails from these people in the past.
That sort of things gives a bad impression regardless.

I don't know what CHADD are up to currently, but years ago they were pro-drug therapies, and attracted controversy when it was revealed that they accepted a substantial donation from the drug company that made the top-selling ADHD drug.

It is just something old wrapped up in a new package and put a price tag on it.

They suggest"
"So by doing exercises that stimulate the cerebellum, like eye movement, balancing exercises, and movement exercises, you can actually improve your ability to focus, and to read, write and spell."

Why do people all expect that every four or five year old should have a long attention span?  Some just do not.  They are too young.    Some children just can not learn to ride a bicycle until they are 8 yrs old, some younger.  

Studying music does alot to improve focus and well as learning to dance, or play some types of sports:  gymnastics, skating etc.  Usually these are activities that children enjoy thus are motivated to learn.  This is not something new and why pay for it unless you are getting quality music lessons or such?

These type learning centres sometimes make the 'excercises" seem really mysterious and boring such as copying Chinese calligraphy (for non-native  Chinese speakers) when doing a jigsaw puzzle or drawing could have the same effect.

I agree with you, M. I was pushed when my daughter was 4 to put her in this expensive OT therapy b/c all the other autistic kids go there. This "therapy" looked like a lot of other activities for kids her age except that is was autistic specific. They did arts and crafts, gym equipment,etc. I enrolled her in an inclusive ballet instead. Six months later when she was tested for motor skills she scored perfectly. There wasn't even a need for special OT classes.
She does have a problem with a long set of sequential tasks but gymanstics is really helping with that. She also has problems with instructions that are not 1:1, but the sports program she started after school helps her practice group instructions. All kids have to learn these things. It just takes some longer than others. Why not just give them a chance instead of trying to make a dime off them?

I agree with you too. Those activities that they suggest sound dreadfully boring and you could achieve the same effect through any number of other activities, whih are probably much cheaper as well as more fun.

When I was a kid apparently I was very uncoordinated; I walked funny and was pretty terrible at sports, which I only ever played if I was forced to anyway. But then I went into dance for a while and that seemed to improve things a lot, because now nobody would think that I have coordination problems. And I know for a fact that dance is far more appealing to me than any new age mumbo jumbo 'activity'.

I found my early art instruction very poor.  I do not know if that is typical for this country or not.  I really did not receive any formal art instruction at all but I do like to draw.  When I went to high school there was a choice of taking art, music, sewing, or drama (just one choice).  I choose music as I thought I would not have the opportunity to learn an instrument other than the piano, recorder and guitar which I taught myself.  I did love art and sewing but there was no choice.  

I took some art courses later and  I learned much from Betty Edwards "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain".   I found this book really helped me.  Several of my art instructors commented that I often got lost of the details of the subject and I had alot of trouble with composition and scale.  Sounds like Asperger's to me.

Marie wrote

I still find these things comparatively difficult, and I believe these kinds of difficulties have been categorized as being the effects of central auditory processing problems, while I think it's just another aspect of autism. I doubt that these kinds of difficulties can be fixed, as I think it's just a consequence of the way the brain is wired up.

If your child appears to learn how to do these tasks, it could be that she is really self-teaching some cognitive strategy to do these tasks in a way that is different from the normal way that kids do them, but might be inefficient. Apparently dyslexics often perform adequately with literacy tasks at school up to a certain level, but this is due to them using idiosyncratic and inefficient strategies, and once the educational demands exceed a certain level, the stategies that they use limit any increase in performance, and the child's literacy problems become obvious and intractible. Then the only way forward is to go right back to the basics of learning phomemes, and that must be humiliating for an older child.

We have a child in our extended family who has been given a barrage of psychological tests, and it turns up that the kid comes out very advanced in some areas but poor in one specific cognitive task and poor in one aspect of motor functioning. So what have the child's parents done in response? They haven't came up with any plan to do things themselves to nurture the child's intelletual gifts, the only actions that they have done themselves is focused on the child's identified weaknesses. They don't seem overly concerned with the emotional frustration that the child might be feeling from being a bright kid in a dumb environment, but they seem to be very concerned at the prospect of having a child who is behind in any skill  :shock: .

I think that while not all difficulties can be fixed, they can be worked around. Also, an ineffective strategy is better than no strategy. But yeah, parents should focus on strengths as well.

I find this subject very interesting.  I do not believe that I was taught the basics in school well in anything except mathematics.  We were taught to read by recognition, not phonetically.  We did learn the phenomes such as "b" is for "ball" but not the next step which is sounding out the whole word.  

I have some auditory processing problems such as "I wouldn't be your beast of burden" from the Rolling Stones' song sounds like "I wouldn't leave your pizza burning" to me.  Certain sounds sometimes are difficult for me to distinguish between even though there is nothing wrong with my hearing.  So while I am spending trying to make sense of what I have heard by substituting different word combinations, people are getting impatient and cross with me that I have not responded immediately.  

I do have problems with a long series of sequential tasks, especially if they are given verbally.  It helps if they are broken down into subsets and given a name.  I think yoga does this with various names of the postures.

  I know with reading music that it takes too long for my brain to process each note in a bar individually.  When I practice, I remember some patterns and repeat them.  Some people are better with their ear training (playing by ear) than me.  It is hard work to learn a different method of playing or memorizing music when I am dependant on sight reading.  When I ask some people for some memorizing techniques they have trouble expressing what they do verbally to me.  I think it is because they are using a part of the brain for those tasks that are not verbal and they have not named what they are doing.

Tonight the 7.30 Report on ABC TV (Australian TV station) ran a story about the Dore Program in Australia. Local government money and donations were used by a NSW council to set up a Dore clinic inside a govt. primary school, despite the notable lack of scientific evidence that the program works.

In the vision of this story promotional material for the Dore Program was visible in which Asperger syndrome was listed as one of the many conditions for which it is promoted as a treatment. These people are a problem.

Here is a link to the transcript of this story:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1703314.htm

Alison wrote

I spent half of my childhood bouncing around on a thing that was almost the same as those big bouncy balls (but it had handles and a zany-looking face painted on it), and that didn't knock any sense into my brain!

My bouncy thing was orange in colour, and it was THE BEST fun. I hadn't seen these things in the 30 years since I was a kid till a few years ago some company started making exactly the same things probably to appeal to parents who remembered these toys from their own childhoods. I don't know what they are called, and I haven't seen one for years. It was like having your own trampoline wherever you wanted to go to, which is my idea of heaven, quite frankly.

The city where I live has a Dore program centre, and it has been recently written about in the press. The local child development experts have criticised the Dore program, but I think that won't mean much to the many flakey parents who are fond of alternative type "therapies".

I loved those balls growing up. I just remember them being red, with a single handle.