Say what!

I learned something new yesterday...we parents do not have to come up with the $70,000 per year for ABA Therapy that our autistic children so desperately need! It turns out that all we have to do is contact our schools. Call early Intervention! They will immediately enroll our child and get them started with their 40 hours of intensive one on one ABA therapy!

Hmmm. Perhaps I called the wrong early intervention. Does anyone out there know the right phone number? Or maybe I need to find out the planet where the mom who made that comment lives!


Yesterday, I eagerly awaited the morning show, "The View" to see what kind of coverage they would have regarding Autism. I had heard that they were devoting an entire hour to the topic. I knew it was focusing on the Autism Speaks video, "Autism Every Day". I have heard a lot of criticism for that documentary being too bleak. I, myself, saw the video as serving the purpose of drawing attention to the plight of families experiencing the disorder. Yes, it was a bit over the top. Yes, it was dark. But it did make a point...that autism can be overwhelming. Notice the words "can be". I didn't say "is". Autism can be very overwhelming for a family. Some families pull through it. Some do not. Let's face it, if the movie said "Autism is rough. But we are managing fine" what kind of funding would it draw? And let's face it...this world is about funding.

I figured that they would show the snippets of darkness from the "Autism Every Day" video and offset it with interviews with families. Yep. That is what it was. Lots of statistics. For those of us in the trenches this provided nothing new. We saw children who were verbal and a couple who were not. It demonstrated the spectrum. We also saw a young lady who was 17 and talked to the parents who expressed their concern about what would happen to their daughter when she lost her school services. One little guy was "on his way to recovery" and we witnessed a good banter between he and his mom. It was beautiful!

But what did the worried parent sitting at home with their 2 year old who was showing signs of autism take away from this episode? Early Intervention is key. ABA is the way to do it. Call your school. They will be chomping at the bit to give you your free 40 hours of intensive one on one therapy. This therapy is what will save your child. The viewer also met families that have have done wonderful and are coping well. (Interestingly, these "representative" autism families all had books that they authored to present to the audience.)

But this new parent to Autismville really got no answers about what causes autism. Apparantly it is genetic and the Y chromosome holds some of the blame. One participant mentioned testosterone and that discussion was immediately squashed. You see, the simple version of that story is that testosterone suppresses the body's detoxification processes. If discussion went to detoxification it might go to environment. If it went to environment it might go to mercury. If it went to mercury it might go to vaccines. If it went to vaccines it might go to pharmaceuticals. If it went to pharmaceuticals...the companies that paid for the commercials would get really upset! It is always about the funding!

Thankfully this new autism parent came away from this show with hope. I agree that that is great. But they also came away with the false belief that the school system is going to give their child all of the services he needs. Also, when the parent researches and comes across biomedicals, he is going to think that since there was no discussion of the biomedical therapies on a "current" show about autism then there must not be any credibility to it.

The outside observer who isn't living autism watched this and became worried about the children in their life. Then their concerns were lessened when they realized that this is a genetic disorder and there has never been any autism in their own family. So they must be safe. And gosh, the plight of these families to help their children isn't so bad...after all, the schools provide everything they need! What are these families always complaining about...they don't need additional funding!

In some respects, I feel that this attempt to shine the spotlight on autism did more harm than good.