Aspies For Freedom

http://www.healthcentral .com/PrintFormat/PrintFullText2.cfm?id=8010018


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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe    . com/newsalert/.

If you would like more information, please contact:

    University of Michigan
    Autism and Communications Disorder Center
    (734) 936-8600
    umacc@umich.edu
    http://www.umaccweb .com

Why can't they do intervention to NTs instead? They have more problems such as gossipping, poor vocabularies (Ever wonder why they say "shut up" so much?), and (my least favorite one of all) gum-chewing. According to the article, 1 in 200 children have autism. HELLO! 199 in 200 have NT! It's a way larger population!

I am guessing that when Sarah is twelve, she'll become addicted to gum, wear uncomfortable clothes, and flood the school bathroom with nasty gossip about anybody even the least bit weird!

<sarcasm>All the world needs is another "Michelle likes gum" or "Michelle really likes watermelon gum" on a bathroom stall! That would be great! Yeah! Kids making fun of the Michelle, or another weird kid! Yeah!</sarcasm>

:!: Mich aka Michelle :?:

If the kid hates hearing "Happy Birthday" why do they inflict it upon the child, especially on her own birthday!

Who lacks empathy, the autistic kid or the parents of the autistic kid who make her endure experiences that she obviously finds uncomfortable? I get the impression that the parents have more emotional attachment to the birthday party than they have to the birthday girl.

I'm just too logically-minded to figure out why normal people insist on doing normal things at all costs.

It's a neurotypical thing. The same can explain why they chew gum like they do. It's just all too normal these days.

:!: Mich :?:

It's similar to when they do other things that they know will set their kids off but they still feel compelled to do them. I'm not talking about setting some limits and having the child object but doing stuff like making them put on uncomfortable clothes when there are comfortable alternative clothes the child could wear.

Talking about inflicting society's expectations on small children......

I had a row woth my mother-in-law when I cut my daughter's hair short. When my three older kids were little, we went on a camping holiday and all of them promptly went down with chicken-pox ( btw, this was before there was a vaccination for it).

The two boys, aged three and five, were coping well, but my poor daughter, who was only two, was suffering dreadfully with an itchy scalp, exacerbated by her long hair. So I gave her a crew-cut too.

My mother-in-law hit the ROOF when we got back and complained that the discomfort would only have lasted days, but her hair would take months to grow back. SO WHAT?!!!!

Also, at the play-park, I was criticised for 'mollycoddling' my second son, who was afraid of everything, by not insisting that he use any equipment he didn't want to and AT THE SAME TIME told off for allowing my daughter to climb anything she wanted to and play any game she pleased - because 'it isn't lady-like'.

Well, EXCUSE ME 'society', but I don't care to play the game of 'gender-appropriate', thank you very much. If my sons want long hair, and my daughter shaves her head I DON'T CARE as long as it is what THEY want. My daughter, as soon as she became mobile as a baby, wore the same clothes as her brothers - it is impossible to crawl in a dress, her knees would catch on the skirt and make her trip. That was another big no-no among the other mums. I suppose I just 'didn't get it' to such an extent that I was never going to see things from the point of view of the majority, so I didn't try.

Well, the majority is usually dead boring too. It's too bad more parents weren't so sensible about bringing up their children.

look at us older ones, we did just fine. we had more bumps along the way but thats NORMAL.

I'm not so against this, from what I have read on that article alone, it seems more like a teaching aid for the child, to learn how better how to hold her own in a world that unfortunately is, infested with NTs and their expectations, what matters, I think in non-aversive programmes like this, is the rapport between psychologist and child, and that the child wants what is on offer, after hearing all sides of the argument.

I vividly remember being five, and staring school. I no longer had my comforting corner to sit in, or my cuddly toys to line up. I was surrounded by noise and strangers asking and expecting weird things of me.

I comforted myself by doing 'bunny hops' in the deserted corridors of school during lesson time, until I was caught and told off.

Over the years I suppose I must have picked up enough knowledge of what was required of me to start to appear 'normal', but at the expense of being withdrawn. I really hope that young Sarah Beard isn't simply learning to hide herself.

Thank goodness for rocking-chairs and rocking horses! And as for dolls..... Why should I want to play with plastic corpses just because I'm female?

Lining up toy cars and animals is much more fascinating. Just because 'they' can only see the rituals and not the huge internal imagination behind the behaviour! Bah! 'They' see the finger movements - 'they' cannot hear the symphony in my head. 'They' see the rocking - 'they' cannot see the horse-riding trek across the plains which is playing in my head. 'They' see a girl at the bus-stop with her duffle-coat on with the hood up on a bright summers day, with her hands held oddly in front of her. 'They' don't feel the pain of the brightness of an Alien star on a planet of monsters which are being held at bay by a large shield......

I used to line up the dolls.  I just "played" with them the way my mother showed me to look normal.  She showed me to hold them, rock them, hold the spoon or bottle to their mouth.  It was just a ritual to me.  It would have been ridiculous to me that to think they were like a real baby.  I only did the ritual when my mother asked me to show her "how do you play with your doll?"  

I was watching some video on youtube of an ABA therapy session with some kid.  It just looked like exactly how my family plays with our kids.  So how does someone charge $40/hr for that and then say the child make "sooooo" much progress?  Some people are really stupid.

The dreaded birthday song!!  Everyone singing AT you! grrrr. Let us not pretend that it isn't a form of public humiliation.  When you are an adult you are supposed to blush and tolerate it good naturedly as you endure the birthday-o-gram clown or "stripper" or the restaurant's loud silly birthday ceremony.  It is clearly for the purpose of others having fun at the expense of the person unfortunate enough to have had a birthday.  When I went to restaurants with a friend, he used to threaten to tell the staff it was my birthday , even if it wasn't.  I decided the best way to deal with it was to keep my birth date a very private secret, especially at work.

what is so wrong with lining things up? i dont get that! Anytime I did that I just made a dialog in my head with very advanced imaginary game in my own head. When it looked like I was sitting there like a bump on the log I was just playing the game in my head rather than outloud.

Even now when it looks like im totally frozen or "out of it", or in "dead time" Im in my own imaginary world thats very lucid, I think the imaginary world I have is more rich in detials and is more advanced than an NT's imagination.

Well, it's not as if anything good can come from stopping us stimming or denying our interests.  I say we improve in spite of the treatment programs we end up in.  

While there are some things that can help us, we are not going to hear about them from someone ignorant enough to try and make us normal.