Autism Cures? (Thomas Sowell)

"New Ways to Diagnose Autism Earlier" read a recent headline in the Wall Street Journal. There is no question that you can diagnose anything as early as you want. The real question is whether the diagnosis will turn out to be correct.

My own awareness of how easy it is to make false diagnoses of autism grew out of experiences with a group of parents of late-talking children that I formed back in 1993.

A number of those children were diagnosed as autistic. But the passing years have shown most of the diagnoses to have been false, as most of these children have not only begun talking but have developed socially.

I did absolutely nothing to produce these results. As a layman, I refused to diagnose these children, much less suggest any treatment, even though many parents wanted such advice.

As word of my group spread, various parents would write to ask if they could bring their child to me to seek my impression or advice. I declined every time.

Yet, if I had concocted some half-baked method of diagnosing and treating these children, I could now claim a high rate of success in "curing" autism, based on case studies. Perhaps my success rate would be as high as that claimed by various programs being touted in the media.

If a child is not autistic to begin with, almost anything will "cure" him with the passage of time.

My work brought me into contact with Professor Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University, who has specialized in the study of late-talking children— and who is qualified to diagnose autism.

Professor Camarata has organized his own group of parents of late-talking children, which has grown to hundreds, as compared to the several dozen children in my group. Yet the kinds of children and the kinds of families are remarkably similar in the two groups, in ways spelled out in my book "The Einstein Syndrome."

The difference is that Professor Camarata is not a layman but a dedicated professional, with decades of experience— and he too has expressed dismay at the number of false diagnoses of autism that he has encountered.

What Camarata has also encountered is something that I encountered in my smaller group— parents who have been told to allow their child to be diagnosed as autistic, in order to become eligible for government money that is available, and can be used for speech therapy or whatever other treatment the child might need.

How much this may have contributed to the soaring statistics on the number of children diagnosed as autistic is something that nobody knows— and apparently not many people are talking about it.

Another factor in the great increase in the number of children diagnosed as autistic is a growing practice of referring to children as being on "the autistic spectrum."

In other words, a child may not actually be autistic but has a number of characteristics common among autistic children. The problem with this approach is that lots of children who are not autistic have characteristics that are common among autistic children.

For example, a study of high-IQ children by Professor Ellen Winner of Boston College found these children to have "obsessive interests" and "often play alone and enjoy solitude," as well as being children who "seem to march to their own drummer" and have "prodigious memories." Many of the children in my group and in Professor Camarata's group have these characteristics.

Those who diagnose children by running down a checklist of "symptoms" can find many apparently "autistic" children or children on "the autism spectrum."

Parents need to be spared the emotional trauma of false diagnoses and children need to be spared stressful treatments that follow false diagnoses. Yet the "autism spectrum" concept provides lots of wiggle room for those who are making false diagnoses.

Real autism may not get as much money as it needs if much of that money is dissipated on children who are not in fact autistic. But money is money to those who are running research projects— and a gullible media helps them get that money.

lol!

Oh, not for lack of trying. He had an older sister and brother who never let him get a word in edgewise.

My son had this problem, too. And so did my youngest of my brothers. He didn't speak until he was 4. And yes, both my son and my brother were/are good listeners.

I've learned a lot about slow-speakers, through vast amounts of research. And during the "rough" years, quite a number of parents brought their "late speakers" to me. I worked with them using a variety of techniques I found successful with my son.

Late speakers, and for a range of causes/reasons tend to be more visually oriented. What this means, effectively, the real world is like one big TV screen to them. They are in the world, but not necessarily "interactive" with that world.

One very effective interactive use is when speaking to your "late-speaking" child, go ahead and put your finger to your mouth as you begin speaking, visually drawing a line with your finger from your mouth to their mouth, face, person. Ask them to respond, using your finger point to their mouth, and bring their line of focus, with your fingerpointing to youself. As though your finger were the bouncing ball on their words. This application was used for all verbal communications until it became clear that the finger was no longer necessary to focus the child's attention. (And yes, in public and at home. For as long as it takes. And yes, other kids and adults did ask if my son was "deaf".)

In the first place, this focuses the child. It also gives them a visual cue. And, it breaks that TV screen "barrier" erected by their "self-sense". I've had some kids begin yakking up a storm within two weeks of this treatment. Some have taken longer, and require more visual cue treatments.

And I'll share here the more remarkable I've learned in working with late-talkers. Foreign films. Excellent children's film with English in subtitles. This has proven successful in two areas: One, the child to cognize the sounds he is hearing are not like the ones he's used to. It shakes them up a bit. And you get to see if your child even notices the difference. When they do, you explain that the words on the screen represent the language he is accustomed to. What I'm saying is, I've found many "late speakers" latch onto the written word like it was the 2nd coming! Somehow, the pattern of the written word clicks with them. And applied after the finger-mouth focusing techniques have been established.

And my success rate with "late talkers" was unanimously successful. I'm no therapist, etc. I had to learn on my own how to keep my son from the "state gauntlet" and I did tremendous research. People who'd heard my story either in print, radio, elsewhere; kept showing up asking me to just "try" with their late talkers; as they too were being targeted by the State.

My thought was: I have no idea!!! Well, all I can do is share what worked for us. So, try, we did. Just basic, down-home techniques. In some families, there were issues in the home which exacerbated the late-talking, and yes, I was blunt enough to reveal these to the parent: Stop answering for the child. Stop making this child a "dependent". "stop the verbal coddling. shut down the interference, when your child directs a verbal communication to you or others; become the best listener. (And you might be listening to nonsense, in the beginning, but it will and does sort out.)

Just my experience, here, and these were kids going to be running the ADD/ADH gauntlet, and yes, we, in California, knew full well, the extent to which our freedoms could be abrupted and abrogated by the State.

I'm sharing what I did, and what worked. I'm in no way saying this will incite all late-talkers to speech, nor that all are merely late-talkers.

But I've always wondered, through these years, if the child just simply began "clicking" into the speech issue, and would have done so simply at that time regardless of whether or not we'd done these techniques.

Perhaps, it was purely the special attention given to the matter.

I'd trust Dr. Camarata and Dr. Sowell's counsel, first and foremost! :)

What I'm sharing here will cost you nothing; and cause no harm to your child, should any reading this, have a late-talker in the home.

And, it's not??? lol.

For many, uber, years, I'd constantly get wise-cracked about and over my being from the "land of fruits and nuts". Around 1979, I was at a work-related conference in Fort Lauderdale, FLA. Employees from all over the world. I hit it off right quick with two gents from England. And after the conference, as they had to go to CA, and I was returning to CA, the two ribbed me near non-stop about my "nutty flakiness". Sure, we all used to laugh. CA, latest in all types of experimentation. So cutting edge.

The liberal cutting edge of the last 20 years has been a bloody nightmare come full force into real time.

I think, from time to time, of these two dear men from England. And while CA has turned into a fascistic Democrat orgy-land, England is being overrun by radical Muslims and the same grotty liberal fascists my old state "got" under the guise of "fruits and nuts".

It's really not a laughing matter at all.

"The Dream and the Nightmare". Yes, it can happen anywhere. I pray for England.

Thanks to you, I just now read an informative article about Vitamin D, which buttresses what you've posted.

Doctors address vitamin D deficiencies:

--snip

Alice Carter, a 63-year-old from Milwaukee, is lying on a bed with chest pain in the ER at Sinai Medical Center.

After Whitcomb determines the Milwaukee woman is having a bout of angina, he begins telling her about vitamin D.

He seems pleasantly surprised when she tells him that she started taking 1,000 IU a day about a year ago, but he says she should up the dose to 2,000.

"Your skin pigment protects you from sunburn, but it also means you need to get three to four times as much sunlight to make the same amount of vitamin D," he tells Carter, who is African-American.

He tells her that many African-Americans he has tested have vitamin D levels of less than 10, but blacks living near the equator in Africa have levels near 60, he says.

"So are you saying I need to move down South?" she jokes.

Whitcomb says that won't be necessary if she increases her summertime dose to 2,000 IU and her wintertime dose to 4,000.

"I'll take the 2,000," she says.

--end snip

As i say, my boy is 21 now and he really “never shuts up” and we love that.

It’s been a long time ago and i don’t remember what we did at home to try and help him but i don’t remember being very concerned about it because i could see he was trying to talk. We did try to get the other two kids to let him talk once in awhile (which they ignored most times). He just must’ve thought at the time that when someone else was talking it wasn’t his turn to talk. So he would patiently close his mouth again until it was he got another chance which was really cute. He was otherwise sociable and affectionate. Would sit on peoples laps and make sounds or laugh or screech! I knew all along he wanted to talk.

My youngest daughter (4th child) was funny with talking. One day she didn’t talk. The next day she was speaking in complete sentences and without any speech impediments. No trouble with “R” sounds. No baby talk. So she was listening all that time too. She was about 3 years old.

I like your suggestions tho and hope people with late talkers will read your post and try your methods. For me, i don’t have grandchildren yet, and hopefully when i do there will be no issue with this, but if so, i’ll have an idea of how to begin. But as i told my brother and my friend, sometimes boys just don’t develop speaking skills as quickly as girls.

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