Autism Vox

Slow and Steady: The Treatment Question

by Kristina Chew, PhD on February 25th, 2008

I recently got a message about a local meeting of an autism organization that supports “immediate” alternative treatments for autistic children. I’m not able to attend the meeting and have been thinking about that word “immediate.”

It’s not hard to understand why a parent would want some way to stop a child from head-banging (as my son used to, and frequently), or to wish that getting a child to say that first word could happen at the snap of one’s fingers; that one day you would wake up and your child could seamlessly, smilingly, read sentence after sentence in a book or just join in and play with the other kids on the playground. It’s all too easy to understand why parents wish for a fast and effective treatment, a “magic pill” or “miracle machine” like “Quantum Biofeedback” that is said to use “electronic frequencies” to treat “autism, Parkinson’s, and just about everything in-between” (and with little regard for the validity of its scientific claims); why parents would hope for a treatment that would produce immediate results, and do more than reducing anxiety a little or increasing focusing a bit as traditional medications do, and that would not take days and weeks and months of careful planning, teaching, and evaluations to carry out before any results occurred.

People want to help their kids; there’s no denying that.

There’s an old saying that it takes as long to forget a language as it takes to learn it and sometimes it seems to me that the “treatments” that Charlie been “in” the longest—education, school—have been the most durable, with the longest-lasting effects. Charlie has learned that he’s the person who can figure out how to monitor his anxiety and ask for breaks or help; he’s learned that he can control himself and his feelings and that, while he can’t talk too well, he can communicate what he needs. Teaching him all this took a long time—and I don’t think he’s going to forget these skills any time soon.

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POSTED IN: Junk Science, Language, Treatment