Wednesday November 8, 2006
I have been in search of some autism blogs and I am finally finding some voices I have more in common with. (see the bottom area of the “parenting blogs” in the left hand module)
Ever since I started realizing that ds actually did have autism (and there was a lot of denial getting there) I have felt so alone in my opinions. I am an active member at MDC, but most of the parents there are rabidly “autism is mercury poisoning” and advice is on the dizzying array of urine/hair sample tests that go to labs that I am not sure are credible, diets that seem to contradict eachother, and huge loads of vitamins and enzymes..more than I am sure is really a good idea. Although I agree that there is a good possibility that a lot of kids labeled autistic are suffering from mercury poisoning, it just doesn’t seem to fit ds. (especially when the rant is against the MMR, which ds has not yet received)
Then I go to pure neurodiversity, which seems to have the overriding opinion that ANY intervention is disrespectful to the autistic person.
I feel stuck in the middle. I see great improvements with ST and OT, but most of what has changed is that we are learning to help him interact with the outside world better. As a family, we were doing just fine, but he couldn’t interact with other people, and we couldn’t figure out how to help him do that. Now he is learning to navigate the rest of the world a little better.
One of his STs uses a little bit of ABA, in the form of discrete trials (which seems to be a fancy way of saying “flashcards” and “visually supported short answer quizzes”. It is marginally practical for real life (that part of it, she also does stuff that is enormously practical and we duplicate at home), but seems like it is really beneficial to get him used to being tested and evaluated. Although I don’t agree with standardized testing, I would be doing a disservice to him to not prepare him for it if I intend to have him in school. (more on that later). It gives him a framework to be able to show his knowledge in a way a tester can understand. It doesn’t catch everything, that is for sure, but at least they are able to get some level of understanding of his knowledge base.
Then there is Floortime, which I agree with the most. I really need to finish the book (in my spare time *humph*), but it sure is a lot more in line with my views. At it’s core, it basically says to meet the child where they are at instead of where they *should* be. Sounds like good parenting to me, and sort of sad it has to be written in a book. A lot of what I have read is right in line with what we were doing anyway, so it hasn’t been difficult to incorporate in our lives. We don’t do a formal “NOW IS THERAPY TIME” in our house (unless there is a specific concept he is having problems with, but that is pretty limited). We just try to incorporate techniques from ST, OT and Floortime in a more mindful way than we did before we learned that a lot of the things we were doing had nifty little labels. (like, when he is getting really anxious/stimmy, we decide to do a few OT things that helps him get the deep pressure without him resorting to banging into walls to try and feel better inside his skin)
