"The Horse boy"

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This documentary airs tonight on PBS' Independent Lens. It might be on in your local area at the same time if you're in a EST/EDT zone.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/horse-boy/film.html

No further comments necessary from me. I will withhold judgement until I see it

Looks pretty normal to me. I've not raised a child who didn't act more or less like that at that age. My middle son is the animal buff. Eldest son was taking apart and reassembling electronics, and creating things that can fly out of all sorts of odd junk at that age, an doing algebra (out loud, not written). Little guy was doing music and drawing but was less verbal than the child in that video at that age, but could get his ideas across in other ways. They were all very good at categorizing and making all sorts of leaps in logic without being told.

Once we were driving by the scene of a fire. My eldest, who was maybe 9 at the time, glanced at the scene. Then he began describing the fire. It was an explosion that started in one part of the building then moved upwards, then out, with some kind of secondary explosion. We didn't know that, but I went home and looked up the news article about that and he got all his details right, just by glancing at the scene as we drove past it. He didn't get that close or have more than few seconds to make his observations.

I just watched that a few days ago on netflix...

I was really upset seeing all the things that the parents put that kid through. I get that they wanted him to be able to have friends and not have so many meltdowns and to poop on the toilet, but putting him through all that? Yeah, there were times when he definitely appeared to be enjoying the trip, and that was great, but he also had a lot of bad experiences that were unnecessary and could have been avoided. The part where the shaman was beating the drum right in the boy's face and he just kept screaming and screaming...it was so upsetting and struck me as really wrong. The parents said that they've "tried everything," but I don't really believe that. They already knew that he loves animals, especially horses, and he could relax and talk when he was around him, so why not just work off of that and stay at home? And yet instead, they took him on this stressful journey during which at one point he was, for the first time, really upset about being on a horse. What???

I do think it's great that he doesn't experience so many meltdowns anymore. But the route he had to take to get there...really don't think that was the only way. And there wasn't enough focus on his feelings. It was more about his parents' personal feelings, and his parents' feeling about him. He's a little kid and he didn't really get a choice in all this; he got pulled into it. At least the parents expressed concern and guilt about their decision to bring him on this journey.

I don't know, maybe I'm just looking at this too critically, but there were parts of this documentary that really did not sit well with me.

I must have just seen a short clip. I didn't see any shaman's or drums, just a very proud dad talking about the neat stuff his child was doing and an adorable little boy playing with animals and toys.

I wrote a small review of the PBS version of the movie. The actual movie is 90 minutes, the PBS version is 60, but you can read my small review of it at http://lifeontheothersideofthewall.blog ... or-at.html

My review of it is in the bottom half of that blog entry.

I don't watch such documentaries, anymore. They just make me depressed. I want to see positive things about autism, not negative things.