Author David Mitchell: learning to live with my son's autism

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The below mentioned article was published in the Guardian newspaper in the UK.

Novelist David Mitchell looks back on the heartbreak – and joy – of learning that his son had autism. Plus, below, an extract from the book by a young Japanese boy that helped him.

"So. The child psychologist across the desk has just told you that your three-year-old is "presenting behaviour consistent with that of an individual on the autistic spectrum". You feel trepidation, sure, a foreboding that your life as a parent is going to be much tougher than the one you signed up for, but also a dash of validation. At least you now have a 10-page report to show to friends and relatives who have been insisting that boys are slower than girls, or that late language is to be expected in a bilingual household, or that you were just the same at that age. It's a relief that your child's lack of eye contact, speech and interest in picture books now has a reason and a name. You send some generic emails to people who ought to know first containing the words "by the way", "looks like", "has autism", "but don't worry" and "confirmed what we thought anyway". The replies come quickly but read awkwardly: condolences are inappropriate in the absence of a corpse, and there aren't any So Sorry Your Offspring Has Turned Out Autistic e-cards. People send newspaper cuttings about autism, too – about how horse-riding and shamans in Mongolia helped one kid, about a famous writer whose son has autism and is doing fine, about a breakthrough diet based on hemp and acacia berries. The clippings go in the compost........"

Full article here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/ ... ons-autism

David Mitchell certainly hit the mark

**You learn that treatment is called "intervention", and that while 10-15 hours a week are recommended, your local care-provider has the resources to offer only about 15 hours per year – and, after sickness and staff training, this will become 10 hours. One afternoon, a therapist from the care-provider is so fazed by your kid headbanging the kitchen floor that she flees before the session is over, and you realise you'll have to pay privately. **

In the real world most working families can't do the prescribed 20-40 hrs per week ABA for their child. Almost all the health practitioners/therapists I've dealt with are i) entirely focussed on the money they charge ii) mainly concerned about your credit rating and ability to pay the bills iii) not committed enough to stick it out with your child.

In the case of iii) (and resonating Mitchell's observations) we had a $200/hr speech therapist who milked us dry of our early intervention funding. Once we had to pay out of our pockets she made some fuss over my daughter's progress and flew the coop. I saw her recently at our local bakery and she didn't bother to ask how my daughter was progressing.

we did the diet interventions, it was only one food to eliminate gluten, since our son was mostly eating gf anyways due to the 13 other food allergies he had. We did a lot of ABA early on w/son....thankfully I'm good at finding loopholes and managed to force our insurance to pay for it for the important years......Calculated the cost of Speech/ABA and got trained how to do ABA myself and went back to school to do speech therapy(it was actually cheaper).....son is still non verbal and I've given up on the medical side of intervention as we now know what is wrong w/him......his immune system doesn't fight off yeast, and he didn't fight off strep infections(this is not just strep)but a vaccine took care of that.