A psychology professor has presented some research to a conference which suggests that at least 1 in 10 children with autism can “recover” from it – mostly after receiving years of intensive behavioural therapy.
Recovery is “not a realistic expectation for the majority of kids,” but parents should know it can happen, Fein said.
Children with autism should all be getting the intensive boost to their comunication and other skills AS SOON AS they are diagnosed. Diagnosis should be looked for, by parents who suspect that their child has some behaviour problem.
At that point the battle begins. Local authorities seem to blinker the parents, refusing help whilst pretending that it is being given. Several years down the line, when the parents realise that the oft-stated ’1-to-1′ help amounts to no more than a totally un skilled classroom helper keeping the child occupied and out of the way, large amounts of further damage has already been done to that child.
It needs to be realised that Speech and Language therapists do not work with individual children, leaving unqualified classroom assistants to flounder with third or fourth hand information, which helps the child not at all.
Why do our Primary Care Trusts – who employ Speech and Language therapists – let our children down so badly?
Why do ‘professionals such’ as head teachers, SENCOs, educational psychologists, SEN Officers etc, knowingly allow such desperately needy children and their parents be let down over years?
What use is it to autistic children to be left floundering?
Then comes the fight to claw back the help which should have been given from the very earliest stages. At this point, every ‘professional’ who has knowingly let down the child, acts to guard his or her own back. That makes the job of the former-trusting-parent doubly difficult.
This leaves the parent fighting on all fronts. The child remains years behind in education, years behind in communication skills, with the learned idea that he is no more than a nuisance who needs to be excluded in a class full of other children.
Not much help is it? So what can be done to help autistic children to reach their own full potential? Who will help them? Who will stop rubbishing the parental attempts to help the child, and – for a change – give positive help and support and realise that a caring parent is the best expert on what works with that parent’s autistic child? But parents need treaining. Early training on a progressively workable method of helping their own child. They also need the full support of a caring specialist, in their efforts to help their own child. It is a dreadfully lonely job otherwise.
Yet Autism is only a more extreme form of male mechanistic behaviour. Many males – and some females – are good at work which includes large elements of mechanistic behaviour – but not so good at something which requires empathy and intuition.
Let autsitic children prepare to take their part in life once they become adult. Help them now, and many will be able to stand on their own two feet in adulthood. The rest will live a far more fulfilling life.
Isn’t that the point of living at all?