Since 2001, my family has struggled with the face of autism in our own home via the diagnosis of our son. I was not willing to accept the phrase, “there’s nothing we can do but add in behavior treatment and behavior modification drugs,” so I kept on.

Yes, my friends, there is a cause. Yes, there are biomedical treatments available. The problems are so many that I fear to even go into them all. There is no set of rules to treatment and recover which applies to all patients, which sends the medical community in flight. Who wants a medical practice based on theories and “unproven” treatments? In this day of malpractice suits? I think not!

What I believe we must do is keep a level head, look at all the angles, YES, do a story on biomedical causes and treatment therapies (or maybe a month long show), stop arguing and get to work.

As for my family, we decided to ignore conventional medicine, stay out of the controverys, go the “alternative” biomedical intervention route, doing extreme gluten free/casein free diet, nutritional therapy, chelation and methylcobolamin therapy for our son’s autism. We have been doing this since 2002. It is NOT an overnight process. It takes discipline, a willingness to make mistakes, a willingness to fail, and a strong determination to keep on keeping on the face of little to no results.

But . . . the biomedical treatments worked for us and we have our son back. How about we do a story on that?

I digress. I saw the show and obviously The View is not an appropriate venue to even talk about autism. It’s a show where a bunch of everday women supposedly get together every day a shoot the breeze. The forum itself was innappropriate. The things that the hosts were obviously coached on (those obvious things about autism they needed to know to have a conversation) were really basic and so the show never scratched the surface which I’m sure it was never meant to.

Interestingly, Toni Braxton talked about Suzanne Wright being so nice and calling her on the phone when she heard her son was diagnosed and offered anything, everything she needed. What’s funny is Toni Braxton and Bill Cosby are doing a benefit for Autism Speaks in Las Vegas, so how Suzanne Wright help her is questionable. It looks like the tables got turned there somehow.

Seeing Temple Grandin is always a pleasure and she was kind of funny as well. There were some issues that were touched on that obviously promoted or perpetrated some theories that may or may not be true but that was never said except by the pediatrician mother of two autistic boys. In fact Rosie said to Temple, so like all these brilliant guys in the Silicon Valley are probably autistic. Temple said yes and to paraphrase you wouldn’t have this studio or lights if there weren’t austic people which was really funny. But still I thought that Rosie set her up. There is no proof that people that are good with computers and code are autistic, so to me, responsibility would dictate that it be phrased as “there’s one of many theories that says high tech computer programmers may be somewhere on the autistic spectrum.”

What I came away with was a daydream essentially of how I wished I could have been on the show with my daughter and all the things I would have said she would have said and done. So to me, the opportunity for autism information to be disseminated on national television is not an opportunity to be squandered the way it was trivialized on The View.

But it’s The View, I didn’t expect rocket science. I also know how difficult it is, how autism has become such a loaded word, subject. And I fully understand it. I come from a place where my child at 4 does fairly well. She is verbal and gifted, hyperlexic, superfast learner, yet she most definitely “thinks different.” If she was a computer she’d be a Mac. Her future, like all autistic children, is uncertain. Will she ever answer a question like “how was school today?” I don’t know. My point is some would consider her to be quote unquote high functioning which is not a term I use.

While she may be representative of an autistic child, I then think about those children who have much more severe behavior issues. And I’m not sure I want to speak about how treatable and what a gift autism can be. I feel like it is so for me and my daughter, but I’m not so sure what a gift it is for those kids who can’t speak, can’t sit still for a minute, bang their heads all day and really suffer in ways I’m not sure I can comprehend every day of their lives.

So, for me “autism” becomes something I’m afraid to talk about because the spectrum is so big, anything I say or you say, or anyone says is bound to offend someone because it doesn’t apply. One thing I’ve learned: autism is relentless in many ways not the least of which being that it does not bend to generalizations.

All in all, I think The View should stick to what the do best. Nothing.

It appeared that ABC tried their best to find ASD adults, families, and children that have varied “parking spots” on the spectrum. One can tell that ABC tried their best to stress just a few points (simplify) that say the same thing – Autism is treatable, early intervention is key, what the signs are, and that Autism is also a gift, not a death sentence.

All good news! I also blogged about it after watching it last nite.

For mysef, dwelling on “the cause” has not proved the most productive way of helping my son.

Anybody see all the show and want to share?

On a personal note, when I found out my son had autism, the CAUSE didn’t matter that much to me. He is autistic and nothing can change that; now I want to know where to go FROM there. Of course I’m hoping that someday scientists will find a cause and, IF there are environmental issues, they should be eliminated if possible. But at this point I don’t want to dwell on that because it won’t make any difference to my child and all the other ones that are already autistic. I want to know what to do to give him/them the best quality of life under the given circumstances.