Never too Young to Start Learnng Not ot Be Autistic

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New York Time Article About Babies Starting Autism Treatment at Six Months

I have extremely mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the brain is most plastic and trainable during infancy, so starting treatment as early as possible does make sense. On the other hand, many people experience autism treatment as cruelly instrusive as it is. Will autistic people who start being trained out of babies never develop signs of autism as one doctor in the article suggests? Or will they be prevent from having any access to their mind as it naturally exists?

Unfortunately, babies being "tested" through treatment will be the determining factor...

It's a very low content article. So, they just make more effort to socialise when playing with the children? It doesn't seem like a terrible thing to do. If it works, then it could save these autistic children a lot of grief in later life.

Forcing behavioral changes doesn't do anything to alter the basic neurology. "You can lead a horse to behaviors, but you can't change the way he thinks."

Ultimately, it only means that later in life, when personality traits, not superficial social behaviors, start causing long term problems, like the inability to hold a job, etc, these kids won't have access to programs and assistance that might help them, because they'll have been 'cured' long ago. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for that therapy as an infant.

I think no one (including the experts in the article) knows what's going to happen. Maybe they'll turn out to be nervous wrecks. The trouble with kind of stuff is there isn't an easy way to be sure of the cause of the outcome. If the kid is a wreck, then it's, "it would've been worse without the intervention." If the kid turns out "well," then the intervention "obviously" worked. There is no way to tell if the kid would've grown up to be very non-autistic in adulthood (and I hear that there is research showing that kids with the most overt autistic traits in childhood tend to have the best outcome, regardless of intervention). Or, more importantly, how do you tell if the treatment was harmful? You'd need identical twin kids, give one the treatment and use the other as a control to figure it out -- and no parent would do that. That's been a problem for researching ABA outcomes IIRC, according to M. Dawson.

I see some near-circular reasoning in the article, too. I.e. "autistic kids don't look at faces so their brain doesn't develop such that they get information from faces." If it's not harmful, fine, try the conditioning and see. But maybe they're not getting information from eye contact because it's horribly invasive and overloading, and they're just learning how to look more normal at the expense of compromised cognitive/communicative/emotional functioning.

Well, as long as autism is "worse than pediatric AIDS," or "worse than cancer," this kind of stuff will be pushed forward at high speed.

I don't agree. Behaviors are very important part of all interactions. More often than not, that's what you're judged on - not your personality. In fact, most people will have very little grasp of what you're about unless you have a very intimate relationship OR unless they're particularly thoughtful. All they'll see is how you behave in any given situation.

My son is a perfect example. He's very bright and has a wonderful sense of humor, but because he would become overwhelmed in certain settings and act in an inappropriate way (he's tactile and grabs or pinches people's faces) most people want nothing to do with him. I don't want to alter his personality at all - he's a great kid. I don't want him pinching people anymore. It's a barrier to developing relationships with other people.

I happen to have learned a WHOLE lot on my own as I grew up. I now counsel others on socialization; I am a life coach, and I write an advice column. I am also still autistic. I know the right things to say and do socially; I know the steps to making and keeping friends and I have learned to watch for and respond to facial expressions and gestures, and again I am still autistic.

For a baby on the spectrum, that is the best that can happen. He or she can learn to socialize, but it will not be what is natural. People with autism and Asperger's can do a great job of going through the motions, but it will not change your basic make up. To believe so is much like believinge that when you teach a one-legged person to use a prosthesis, then it means that they grew a new leg.

Is it even possible to diagnose autism in a 6 month old?

No. So I am guessing they would just apply this method to everyone and it would be the new standard in infant care!

Sheesh that is what I was also wondering!! !! !

Mir

What I find frightening is the bar height this sort of thing seems to be setting for parents. Another big thing to add to the parental "to do" list, least you fail your child and make him something "less" than he was supposed to be. Did you notice that both parents in that article have quit their jobs to focus on their kids? How many people can make that choice? I mean, seriously. We're already given this barrage of ideals that is impossible to meet, we don't need more. They all end up in the pile called "ways to feel guilty for not being perfect in every interaction with your child." When did loving your kids and doing your best stop being enough?

Did anyone else see the connection to the old refrigerator parent in this theory?

Perhaps black infants can be taught to act white if we start early enough on them,or early signs of LGBT at puberty can be `remedied` by a strong dose of `therapy`.

This... is not the same thing... at all.

Yes, if you are high enough on the spectrum to begin with then you can improve.

I was a totally weird kid but now I am only a slightly weird introverted adult.

My niece (now about 25 years old) was very strange until she went to a special school. Now she is married and has a university degree.

At the age of five she was still pulling down her pants and pooping on the carpet. We never thought that she could improve so much yet she did.