It would entirely depend on the kind of intervention, and the individual child, plus on whether the intervention actually addresses "the right thing" (i.e. it's not something to "train away" a stim that is harmless and a coping mechanism that the child needs).
I was allowed to stim/stare into space/not make eye contact because I wasn't diagnosed AS and people just accepted me the way I was. It seemed that by getting the diagnosis and support, he was being punished for just being himself.
I'm not sure that would be the case - I mean if your environment is tolerant enough to accept you for who you are, don't you think there is at least a chance they would have treated you similarly *with* a diagnosis?
Very good points Callista, yes teaching and explaining household rules is a very good point indeed. Teach them everything they need to know to look after themselves and as much as possible about coping in the outside world, but without making them too wary to try. That's what my parents did at least
That's what my parents did too, but obviously without realising I had AS. I think that's what all parents do isn't it, whether their kid is NT or AS? All kids need to be taught the basics about how the world works and what is/isn't acceptable.
It's what they're supposed to do but a lot of the time kids are just expected to understand these things from watching them. There are many stories of autistics and Aspies writing in their autobiographies about how their employers had to explain deodorant to them or how they didn't know how to use a bus as a teenager (i.e. didn't know you had to go to the other side of the road to catch the same bus on the way back) etc. and most of those things could have been prevented if the parents had taken the time to explain and teach about these things properly.
I am an Aspie mom with a child that was as a toddler low-functioning and more moderate-severely autistic, he is now 6 and is high functioning. We did early intervention to tie services between OT and ST. We didn't do ABA or anything 'Autism' specific. I wouldn't discourage a parent from getting help for their child to be able to do stuff like help their fine motor skills or speech.
Thinking back, I remember having a few problems with understanding what was acceptable personal hygiene when I was in my early teens. I remember my mum noticing and explaining that I should shower every morning and wash my hair every other day and then she took me to the shops and bought me a deodorant. After that my personal hygiene was impeccable.
That's kind of odd, I mean it is normal to need reminding of these things in your teens but it seems a bit strange that they would've waited to start explaining until you were in your teens.
I suspect that most NT kids communicate more with each other and with their parents, and pick things up from their environment more easily?
I think my problem is that I just hear mostly about the bad types of adversion ABA therapies. When people say "early intervention" and "play therapy", I just do not have a picture in my mind of what it could be or a list of activities they do and how it could help. I don't really have enough information about it.
So what would your views be if you define early intervention as any sort of added support that is provided to help with social skills, sensory issues, speech and motor issues etc?
My views on the autism hysteria that is current among some mothers of young children: the average woman is an emotional and somewhat irrational being, and there's not much that can be done about that, we can only hope that some new fad will come along and young mums will forget autism and fear some other dread condition.
My views on early intervention for speech delay: we have someone in our family who did not speak till they were almost school age, and this person was given speech therapy to enable them to start school at the normal age. The mother was not concerned! This may be because the child had apparently learned to read on their own and was clearly intelligent. Does this put the current hysteria about toddlers' speech development in perspective? I think parents need to be worried about the child's level of general intelligence, but not obsessing over autistic traits or isolated developmental delays. How did this late speaker turn out as an adult? The person is inarticulate and has a monotonous tone of voice, but you need to understand that most of their close blood relatives also are inarticulate and some also have odd voices. I doubt that early intervention really does much to alter one's genetic programming. Is this late speaker highly functioning? The person works (but is dissatisfied with how they are treated at work), is happily married, has some gorgeous kids, is almost certainly an undiagnosed aspie, and is generally happy with life I think. I had a baby myself recently, and I was surprised at how closely babies' development is monitored these days. I have been told that babies can be referred to speech therapy as young as 8 months old! That is ridiculous.
My views on early intervention in general: the crowd of academics who are still pushing the idea that the brain only develops from birth to age 3 are charlatans, but they are very powerful in our society. The 0-3 early intervention advocates never had good scientific evidence supporting their views. The research they cite does not rule out the influence of genetics. The ideology behind early intervention is a charter for parents who wish to neglect older children (because these kids are too old to be helped in any substantial way according to the EI crowd) and it is a charter for school systems who wish to neglect the special needs of gifted children (because according to the EI crowd these kids must be priviledged, not needy). The EI advocates bully parents into worrying and seeking possibly useless services for very young children, while it's insistence that the child's environment is crucial to a child's development unfairly blames the parents of kids who do not turn out to be "perfect normal" children. We have kids who apparently have high IQs and are doing really well in school. I, as their mother, take a little credit for this but not much, as genes are more important than environment.
My views on personal hygiene: as the mother of the house it is my responsibility to tell people in no uncertain terms if they stink. I will refuse to drive kids to school if they smell shocking. No one in our family has much enthusiasm for preening and grooming, but to counteract this we are all very willing to let others know just how bad they smell. Aspies do not "beat around the bush".
I like the idea of intervention where the child gets help in learning assistance in specific areas of the brain. I think every child could benifit from that. On the other hand, I am against intervention that involve dangerous drugs, force, shock therapy, yelling, or any kind of abuse. I think most drugs, at least, should be avoided if possible. If you don't need them, don't use them I say.
I don't know why I didn't respond earlier to this thread, but here's the simple way of answering the original post:
Speech therapy and other therapies which help specific comorbids are fine. "Intervention" normally refers to chelation/ABA/sonrise etc and is a term used mainly by curebie quacks. It is aimed at the autism itself and thus almost certainly doomed to failure.
My ex was a very smelly person: he often had B.O. and his breath often smelt dreadful. I kept telling him but it did no good, and some people thought I was terribly rude. But if you let a person go on stinking, they won't have many friends and other people will remember them for being "that smelly person" and this will overshadow any positive traits they have.
I agree (what is BO?), unless someone is hyposensitive to such smells, it can be a major spoiler for any sort of cohabitation or co-working experience.
I don't think kids are always told that when they become adolescents, they need to use a deodorant and/or wash carefully because they get hormones that cause body odour.
Agreed also, many parents don't seem to think this necessary 
As an Aspergic parent of an autistic child I will tell you something very important that may be overlooked in some quarters. We live in a society that is populated by 98%+ non-autistics. A lot of what you child will have to deal with in life will come from non-autistics, who by their nature interpret life and society in general differently to "us". So anything that you can do to help assimiliate your child into that society is worth a shot. I do not condone the radical changing of innate identity. But then I guess you know as well as I the grief of a child not coping with life and society or you would not have posted. Early intervention is OK. Cure mentality bad. Treating autism as a disease or what have you- bad. Accepting the need for strategies to help your child - great!
I don't have a sense of smell. This cuses me to be fastidious about my own personal hygiene. But in others...well so long as they seemed to go through the ituals I probably wouldn't notice or care.
BO is body odor
Ah, so simple, so sensible, yet it evaded me 
Personally I think PECS itself would not have been necessary for me but single picture cards as cues help me enormously. We also were taught to read in the same "word strip" way that they do with kids moving from PECS to reading.