[GovernmentShrinker]

For cases as severe as the first one you described, I really think it's important to give up on the child, and focus on saving the rest of the family (not to mention the larger society). Keeping these poor creatures under very heavy sedation at all times would seem to be the reasonable course of action, but this is rarely if ever done, especially outside of an institutional setting.

[ChemistCat]

I don't have an answer even that good.

I do know that a neurologist advised us to institutionalize our son at age 4. "He'll never have any friends. His ability to read is freakish and insignificant, like a trout learning to recognize the difference between a real fly and an artificial fishing lure. His communication is all verbal salad. It's a waste of time to try to educate this child..." And so on, and so on...until I was restraining my husband from punching the guy in the mouth, but that was another story.

Had we listened, and given up, we would have missed out on time with one of the neatest human beings ever born into this world. When he was four, things looked a lot more grim than they turned out to be. Early intervention was for my son everything it's cracked up to be. He got the right medications at the right time, the right professionals at the right time, and it is like God had a hand in everything that has happened. There really seems to be an angel guiding my son's life. He is now mainstreamed in a demanding private school...still odd socially, but in this setting he is thriving, and the other kids love him. He gets As and Bs. Perfect speller. Math comes easy to him. Doesn't give a darn at ALL what ANYONE thinks about him, so he's perfectly happy. Sang a solo at the talent show that brought tears to everyone's eyes. ("God Bless America.")

You don't know when your child is little and his disability seems to be the whole world, if things are going to get better or worse. For me it got so much better it's like a miracle. For some it gets so much worse, Job was by far the luckier.

I think believing in your child and not giving up is part of the cure, when the cure happens. When it doesn't, and you've tried so hard, it is beyond heartbreak. I think the only way to live with that is denial. To keep hoping against hope. To keep trying, even when the kid is no longer just difficult but actually DANGEROUS.

Some autistic children make great gains in early adolescence. However, that is when mental illness is most likely to manifest itself. Schizophrenia runs in families but nobody is really safe from it.