Good gravy! Out of luck at the pot luck.
Therapists piss me off.
People in the mental health profession are taught the ways of diagnosing and treating neurological disorders and mental illnesses. They’re taught to have their DSM-IV at their side, always at the ready to figure out the patient’s condition. In some ways, this training makes their senses more acute. They view the world and the people in it with a bit more cognizance of that which constitutes “normal.” In other ways, however, this training blinds them. Once they’re taught to see the world through the eyes of a therapist, they cannot readily turn it off, and a kind of mental block has been established.
My wife dragged me to a gathering of parents put on by our local school district. She (along with these other parents) had taken a course in the More Than Words therapeutic approach, which is a floortime-ish program developed by the Hanen group. The course was already over, but they wanted to have one final pot luck get-together, this time with children, at the request of a few parents in the group. The official reason for the ‘children’ part of the mix was for the kids to be able to spend time with each other and play while the parents chatted, though I somehow suspect the real agenda was, “Please bring your kid so that I can observe him and see how he stacks up to mine.” After about five minutes, I was ready to leave again. Rubén seemed to concur.
Which brings me to my point. We’d taken off our coats, mumbled a few polite hellos, and placed Rubén in the vicinity of the therapeutic toys and the other children. We wandered into the kitchen area, set down our dish to pass, and greeted the therapist. At this point, Rubén came and found us, and lead us by the hand to the door, as if to say, “Mommy, I just woke up from my nap and I’m still kind of groggy. You woke me up and brought me to a new, strange room I’ve never been in before, and then left me alone. This place is loud, creepy, and it smells weird. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go now.” Couldn’t agree with you more, dude.
At this point, the therapists plainly states, “Aww, looks like he doesn’t like the disruption to his routine.” I wanted to barf.
As a general rule, autistic children feel a lot more comfortable with a lot of routine and structure. Many need to know exactly what to expect, and can’t seem to wrap their brains around the unexpected curveballs that life sometimes throws at them. But every kid is different. Children on the (very broad) autism spectrum, while often sharing certain commonalities, are actually more different than they are alike. A trained autism specialist really ought to know this.
“He doesn’t have any problems with disruptions to his routine,” I retorted. Which is true. Hell, we’ve flown the kid across the Atlantic 8 or 9 times now. I don’t know a single neurotypical child his age who could handle that kind of journey better than he has.
This person looked at me as if a couple of Martian antennae were suddenly sprouting from my head. She was physically unable to see my beautiful son as anything other than an “autistic child.” And autistic children need routine or they get cranky. Who the hell was I to question this?
To answer, I am…
1. …the father of an amazing little guy. He’s not autistic. He’s not a symbol. He’s not a cause. He’s my baby boy.
2. …someone who knows my kid a lot better than you.
3. …knowledgable enough about this spectrum to know that every child has different needs and capabilities. There’s no cookie-cutter pattern to follow, and making general statements such as “these kids do x” or “these kids need y” only serves to further prove point #2.
Maybe I’m overreacting. It was just a side-comment that this person probably doesn’t even remember making. But it just got to me. I think it’s because the more time we spend with all the professionals the therapeutic community has to offer, the more we realize that they just can’t help us. We can’t recover our son if we surround him with people who don’t believe in recovery.
This same therapist has discouraged my wife from discussing our biomedical interventions with the other parents. The official reason was “the others can’t afford it.” As if we can. Little does she know (or likely care) that dietary alterations and epsom salt baths (a large container of which costs $1.95 at Meijer) cost very little and can make a huge impact on certain kids. Some interventions, such as chelation, do cost more, but seem to pack the greatest punch at giving kids on the spectrum a chance at a real life.
Therapeutic interventionists don’t see it that way. They subscribe to the standard belief still held by mainstream medicine: “It’s genetic, it’s incurable. Early intervention will increase the chance that they can lead higher-functioning lives, but those lives will never be normal.”
With everything the alternative community has learned and all that can be done to facilitate recovery, I find it profoundly sad that most parents will never even hear about it. Don’t you?
February 16th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
Amen!! I hate labels!!!! People have preconceived notions when they know a child’s dx and have any kind of letters behind their names….I could go on and on about this topic but when people see my kid, they should see him, not his diagnosis. I believe in recovery as we grow closer, slowly every day. I would have talked up biomed just to spite that therapist…you don’t have to be rich to pursue simple vitamin supps and epsom salts (as you said). Sorry for the rant but I could go on and on…….
February 17th, 2005 at 1:25 am
It’s job security. Recovered kids do not need therapists. I hate the whole idea of treating a seriously sick child with any kind of “therapy” or behavior management.
February 18th, 2005 at 10:57 am
Hi! I found this site by accident but I totally relate! I like most therapists, especially my ABA people, but yeah that one sounds so selfish. I am on an autism web forum where parents exchange things they’ve found that worked, and yeah some of them we couldn’t afford, but I look forward to the day we can. The people that piss me off are the doctors who think they know better than me what my child needs. My neurologist told me not to look into yeast as a culprit, but I defied him and I am so happy I did. Treating his yeast has been a major success, and though I know chelation will likely be next my son would still be a zombie if he hadn’t gotten anti-fungals. He’s still obviously PDD, but this biomedical stuff really works. Don’t listen to that therapist!
February 22nd, 2005 at 3:09 am
That therapist would have made me barf too. I hate when professionals pigeonhole kids based on what they think they know about a diagnosis. It infuriates me. There are good ones too, however. Plenty of them. You just have to be willing to be picky. I don’t avoid the diagnosis but boy do I avoid the people who make assumptions based on that diagnosis. Every kid is different. Especially our kids.
As for the biomedical angle: I may not think it’s necessary for my own child, but I think it’s very wrong to deny it — or the knowledge of it — to anyone. Everyone should be free to make that call. See above. Every child is different. We know our own children. We should have power and information to make those crucial decisions.
February 22nd, 2005 at 3:14 am
Oh, and I disagree, Lynn. I don’t think it’s job security. I think it’s dislike of anything that’s not officially sanctioned. I see it all the time in other medical arenas. Brilliant, promising treatments shunned by the establishment and lumped with quackery without any real examination of the treatment itself.
February 23rd, 2005 at 9:36 pm
i hate most therapists also…and i AM one. a lot of them are infuriating because they’ve learned one way and they hold on to that one way and don’t open their minds to other things/techniques the children may respond to. i must be honest that i never promise recovery. i cannot. i can promise trying my very best to help their child communicate and function as normally as possible. but i don’t have a magic wand, a magic spell, or a crystal ball with which to predict what any treatment or time is going to bring to each child. i believe that each and every child is unique and original in the same way every CHILD is unique and original. the difference is that typically developing children we don’t need to unlock, while as the kids i work with we do. anyway, i understand your frustration of being pigeonholed.
April 24th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
April 24th, 2005 at 12:14 pm
when all you have is a hammer to work with, everything looks like a nail.