I want to write to tell the world how unique and special autistics are. I know it is difficult for a parent to see this in a disconnected child, but to understand the underlying issues of each individual is to empower the process of change and growth such that the autism does not become who they are, but rather a processing problem to overcome and cope with. I understand the dilemma of my counterparts. To “be” is autistic. To not be is “the world”. One loses oneself in the processing problems and the battle becomes about who I am – whether I am. Some give up their sense of self to become an automated puppet crated by Lovaas-like therapy. Others reject change as defining, or more accurately, undefining self. It is what they are taught by the way people treat them that ends up defining the battle. I am autistic. Does it mean who I am, something I have,, like a disease or just a processing problem. I have contemplated this for years. How much more difficult it must be for an Aspergers whose processing issues are not in the physical senses but as interests and thought processes. Making a determination whether it is who I am is so much harder for them and I am not sure the answer is the same. Only the treatment is the same, not therapy, but humane. If people understood at outset that I could not see and hear at the same time, I seriously doubt they would have spent years commanding me to pick a color. Good evaluation is a precursor of effective treatment. Knowing how to help is contingent on knowing the actual processing problems faced by each individual. We need to listen to those within the autistic community to learn the problems and how they manifest. Caregivers and teachers need to start evaluating with the mind and eye of an autist not a normal person. To see and hear the actions of others like myself is a big change. This website is a big change.
I seriously need to find out what that's so wrong with the Lovaas technique.
*does more research*
... as in modern Lovaas technique, not that barbaric outdated one that is so often mentioned by the autism rights movement.
Lovaas consists of a series of drill programs which are run over and over again. Here is an example: If you wanted to teach a child the concept of matching, you might hand him with an object and tell him to "put with same". In front of him would sit several objects including a duplicate of the one you just handed him. The correct response would be to put the two like objects together.
Sounds simple enough right?.... Now imagine doing the same activity wth a child who you've blindfolded. That was the affect for hrick.
Hrick writes:
To try and fail repeatedly ; to succeed and not know why, this is the affect of behavior therapy on the multi- single modal child. Very anxious I became of everything all the time – a bad outcome at best.
Relative to the idea of loss of "personhood", hrick wrote this directed at NT's:
To lose our identity happens in many ways; we fight our own sensory systems, we give up our right to feel in order to respond. We feel the loss of ourselves both ways. The rules become our prison, not just our rules, but your rules too. Policing us, you destroy our individuality. Policing us you train helplessness. Our protests go ignored or punished. To respond becomes a yes only exercise that (where) 'doing" denies self. "Doing" (i.e. whatever was being asked of him by teacher in drill) pitted me against the world. I had close calls of subordinating myself, but the anger at the injustice always brought me back to fight. Polite teachers were really dictators in disguise. To teach a typical child like this, you would consider it torture. Repeating over and over for me, some things, sometimes, years at a time.
Saying each game played (Seeing each program executed) is different when seen through my eyes. Not about learning was it for me. Kick chair, it makes a sound. Touch what? I see a blur of movement. We move now to touch my nose. Where is it? I feel the touch, but don’t know where I am being touched. I can see to find your nose. “ No”, you say. On and on it goes. I start to have nightmares of being touched, where I don’t know. Policing me to do and fail again and again. My anxiety is screaming. Each doing asks me to say no to being. Each exercise deadened me more and more. Zoo mentality is what I call it. Zoo mentality involves soldiering us into compliant puppets. You see a person where one no longer exists. Help is not help but indoctrination in Lovaas.
I really appriciate views from people who have experienced ABA, I want to learn.
The reason I am skeptic to dismissing the Lovaas technique as a functional therapy is that I see many apparently positive experiences from parents who have had this therapy on their child (the funny thing is that parents who are disappointed with the treatments are usually because it didn't really "cure" their child).
And...
The way I see the Lovaas technique is criticized by the community around the Autism Rights Movement is mainly idealistic and simply says it is "wrong" because it is like training a dog. Also the community often refers to the way the Lovaas techniqe was twenty years ago and does not tell the big differences of today's Lovaas technique. An article by Autism Diva does infact do nothing but demonize Ole Ivar Lovaas as a person. I am not sure why ABA is often compared to quackery, but the "positive results" is rather doubtful as there's a huge deal of autistic kids who improve socially in the age between 4 and 7 regardless if they have had any kinds of "treatment", which many quacks seem to exploit. I don't like to be blinded by propoganda though.
Is Lovaas "therapy" what used to be called "operant conditioning"? Operant condition certainly wasn't especially good.
There's a wikipedia article for the Lovaas technique, it is often called Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI).
I just don't know if it is really necessary for most of us to have it. Why not just let children be children instead of forcing them to do all this stuff? It would also save the parents lots of money not to have to pay for these invasive therapies.
I do not think hrick is saying Lovaas style therapy is bad as to all children. He is simply saying that the child needs to have a sufficiently developed sensory base to benefit from it.
His was not. We knew this and we didn't. What we knew we did not consider relative to its ramifications within the therapy. what we didn't know we simply didn't know.
As a parent you try your best to help your child with what information you have.
i do see his point about the learned helplessness and the giving up of self. I don't really have an answer to it.
mom of hrick
As the Lovaas technique is often the only option many parents meet. I think AFF shouldn't be against it, but rather question aspects of it and intentionally see it improve in favor of the patient, not only the parents/guardians.
Still I feel that my knowledge about it is limited. It is often refered to as quackery, but if it is quackery it certainly has a rather different story than other autism quackeries. Years of research, hundreds of years of history, and a network that tries to improve the therapy every single day.
Mind control. coersion, brainwashing, deprograming all use simular elements of applied behavior modification therapies. Repetition relentlessly controling or with holding pleasure until the subject give the response the controler wants. Hey but it really seems to help some people?
Shock therapy seemed to really help my friends mother with depression because it wipe out her memories but then she went home and saw all over again that her husband was having an affair with her sister and he was power hungry social climber and the depression came back. The next time she went in for shock therapy to forget she didn't come back and stayed at the ayslum. They were nicer to her there. Still, i don't want shock therapy.
So called therapies that don't recognizes my gifts as attributes but label them symtoms of my so called disease are not for me. Stand up to oppression. Taking away my indivuality and making me appear normal doesn't make my brain transmit differently. I'm still what I always was now I'm just performing the task to their specfications. ABA wasn't for us Me or My Kid. And I thought the staff at the local ABA institute sort of like Nurse Ratchets. They kept telling us it was for our own good, with a nice sickning sneer on their face.
Is Lovaas "therapy" what used to be called "operant conditioning"? Operant condition certainly wasn't especially good.
"Operant conditioning" was good at getting what outsiders would perceive as "results" but the pertinent question is always one of ethics.
And I am very unsure if the "results" generalised to other situations. One of the pertinent traits in AS is having issues with generalising what we've learnt from one context to another.
As a teenager, I read a very sad story about a young uni student who spent a summer helping out at this institution. Her "charge" was a little girl called Cammie who was severely autistic and was in restraints all the time to stop her from injuring herself. The student said it was cruel to do this and had worked on getting the child to trust her enough to be held.
But then the mentor she had gave her a big blast about behaving "unethically" and ruining this child's therapy. It seemed that the children and adults in this place were used as test subjects for various operant conditioning "therapies".
In Cammie's case, she was kept in darkness and only allowed to see out if she managed to repeat certain words that the therapist said. I think the story was set in the late 60's or early 70's and I was very appalled at how this child and the student were treated.
I definitely appriciate that the Lovaas technique begins to be a little more discussed.
There definitely seem to be alot of wrong things about the Lovaas technique which there should be issues of, as long as they aren't outdated.
I want to hear alot of nasty stuff about how the Lovaas technique works in practice!
Amy said in the chatroom earlier that locking up children in a room was an central aspect of the treatment. I wish I knew more of this. The way I have seen it presented through articles probably biased by ABA supporters is that the treatment involves.
• The therapists demonstrate the patient the wanted action.
• The child is supposed to the action, if it doesn't do the action or an incorrect action the therapist will prompt more.
• The child gets some kind of reward when accomplishing the action.
The reason why parents have expressed that their child loved the therapy had probably something to do with the reward bit. I think the use of punishment in the treatment was abondoned in 1983 or at least around that time. Before that the therapist would slap or yell if the child didn't do the action or the action performed was unwanted.
Yes, it is definitely similar to reprogramming, but if actually help the child do important and necessary actions in life I think it is worth it, things like brushing teeth, eating properly and dress.
I don't know how the Lovaas technique could help someone learn to speak which a parent has expressed it did. I think that has probably alot to do with that the treatment is performed on children often around the year of six, when high-functioning autistic people learn to speak almost regardless if they have got any treatment or therapy.