Thanks very much for your comments—–hope is crucial, indeed. In our case, education and educational therapies have meant the most, especially as we’ve seen the changes in our son—greatest source of hope, for sure.

Very best——

Though you made it clear that you did not care for my terminology, I wonder if you grasped the whole point of my article.

The point was not specifying the various treatments or therapies or diet.

There is a strict word count and criteria when submitting an article to a newspaper.–the bottom line being the paper directs the author to stick to one subject; my subject was hope.

The whole point of the article was HOPE. Hope for our children with autism and hope for parents dealing with the stress, heartache and joys of raising a child with autism. Nothing more. I believe you may have read more into my article than the obvious.
A child with autism always has room to grow and improve…that is the kind of hope I believe in.

Never underestimate the power of the conjunctive and: it compels its two arguments to coexist peacefully.

Treating gastrointestinal distress; exercising and strengthening executive function skills or versatility in allocation of attention; developing at least one reliable, trusted, and acknowledged modality of communication: all of these make sense, and help the individual achieve a better quality of life. And none of these things are going to make an individual “less autistic”.

Extinguishing hand-flapping, OTOH, is an attempt to do just that, and in the end does none of these things.

“Indistinguishability from nonautistic peers” is simply the wrong goal and the wrong metric.

If you are going to look for intensive 1:1 educational or therapeutic services, whether they’re being marketed as “ABA” or otherwise, look for providers and programs oriented around goals of building skills and leveraging the individual’s innate strengths, not around making the individual “look less autistic”.

That’s one way that hope really does start with acceptance. The real kind. Not the strawman promulgated by those who fear and work to deny a greater role for self-advocates and their allies in public discourse and policymaking about autism.

From NPR’s “This I believe”
http://tinyurl.com/5a7n2p

Autism is defined by a list of symptoms. If one chooses to take action to one of those symptoms via a drug, a teaching method, or just assuring the child it is welcome, then one has not fully embraced their child’s autism as they chose to change one of its manifestations.

I see it this way. I am a flawed person as is my wife. We both know that and we both try to improve in these problem areas, but both of us know that we will be loved by other should we fail. I don’t spend my days thinking of my wife’s flaws. I’m more concerned with my own.
We love each other despite our imperfections.

My child has a disabling disorder called autism. It has manifested itself in her quite differently than it has in some. Just as I don’t dwell on my wife’s flaws, I don’t dwell on my daughter’s disabilities. She would be better off in life if her disabilities were eliminated. However that does not mean she is not loved/accepted as she is. Just as my wife loves, accepts me as I am.

Now it could be argued that autism is like a person’s height. There’s nothing which can be done about it. If I or my wife thought that my shortcomings had to do with my being shorter or taller than average, it does no one good because I cannot change that. My height is fixed.

One can view the autism in the same way. However height passed a certain age is fixed. How autism manifests itself is not.

H6, the straw-man was in reference to the weary-worn argument that some groups put forth about others claiming they don’t treat medical illnesses — which couldn’t be further from the truth. I really quite don’t understand the meaning of your words above.

Do you have HHV-6?