With this being April we are all bombarded with Autism Awareness information. I see it on blogs (blogs that NEVER talk about autism at other times), Facebook pages (from folks that couldn’t give you a working definition of autism), and even in stores. I hear lots of noise from families that tell me to “embrace” the beauty of autism and just “accept” my son the way he is. But would anyone tell me to accept my child with cancer the way he was, and just to be happy that he had a shortened life expectancy? No, of course not.
I guess the real issue comes down to those of us that think autism is something you are born with and those of us that know it isn’t. I love Dr. Martha Herbert, author of The Autism Revolution. In that book she says autism is treatable. How does this Harvard Neurologist know such a thing? Because she was willing to acknowledge an believe what she saw, instead of holding fast to what she was taught.
What prompted this little rant of mine was the fact that my 8 year old son, diagnosed with PPD-NOS and of whom I was told to plan his institutionalization, now has an ATEC of 1. An ATEC is an online test called the Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist. You take this test and the closer the child’s score is to 0 the better the child is doing. Well we are now at a 1! Yes a 1 (one). But that isn’t even the reason I am bringing this all up. No, the reason I am bringing this up is the fact that he still scores a 1 is because he still flaps. This flapping has been around forever. We recall seeing him flap at age 3 months, so when I say forever, I mean FOREVER. But just this evening Matthew caught himself right before he started flapping and instead he clapped. He looked at mean with a very knowing gaze and told me point blank that he was happy and that he decided to clap. We exchanged looks and I knew exactly what he was thinking without either of us verbalizing it. He took control of this last vestige of autism and he was going to get rid of it. That doesn’t happen when you are born with autism. No, that happens when a child’s health is successfully addressed, and that child then has control of his own body. We still have a ways to go, I haven’t fully embraced the word “recovered”, but I KNOW, I KNOW that he is healing. And I have to thank every single autism recovery parent that came before me. I learned because they were brave enough to say it was possible.
So that is why I can’t stop telling you Autism Is Treatable. It is! Autism recovery is a terribly long journey, but one I feel every child can reach. You need to search, and search and believe in your instincts. I have seen a ton of possible treatments. I’ve done the research, and then my husband and I discuss the options. When we decide to follow a protocol it is after a lot of thought and discussion. But in the end our child now has an ATEC of 1 and more importantly the ability to CHOOSE how his body will behave! That is success.
