Typing reveals autistic child's inner thoughts

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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 7482134017

I recorded this myself off of my own TV. Aired on CNN Headline News at around 9:30 AM EST on 29 Mar 2008.

That's a very good video. I've enjoyed watching it.

I've even sent the link, to my parents.

The more I see stuff like this, the more important it is for the world to know that auties and aspies don't need curing, they need communication tools.

The unnamed "organisation" in the video was CAN (Cure Autism Now), now merged with Autism Speaks. I get the impression that Soma Mukhopadhyay's trademark "Rapid Prompting Method" is marketed via the SOMA organisation. It looks like another way of getting autistics to act normal.

Oops... Sorry. Didn't realize that, I just taped it.

I was just slotting in a word of caution. I'm sure many techniques help. I just like to know more about things before I enthuse about them. It took me eight months to decide if WP was a good idea.

I was posting it mostly because it was about autism, and was expecting certain people to have complaints about it. So go ahead. :p

As long as they arent using him as something to cure I think its ok. This is a good video and I think finding better ways of teaching people with autism is great and far better than trying to cure them.

One thing I am afraid of is if they do have methods like this which improve autistic peoples communication skills and then combine them with ineffective cures/treatments but still can present them as effective by showing these changes so they can sell their drugs.

Maybe this is what is already happening?

I have often wondered that maybe they target children with their treatments because at some point an autistic child will naturally improve and gain an understanding of their world they never realised at some age which becomes a perfect opportunity for them to say that their treatments fixed these children.

Teaching a nonverbal child to type is a wonderful thing, but I'm hesitant to use anything on my son that looks so torturous. You can achieve results with gentler methods. It looks worse then ABA, to me, as ABA at least offers rewards.

I almost had a very important friendship and professional association destroyed before I found out that AS promoted eugenics... It's not an easy world to navigate.

From what I've seen the only really pro apsie place that is of a national/international scope is here. That is going to change, though.

And showing my ignorance, I must ask this question... Do autistic children actually improve? Can an autistic learn to fake NTism as well as an aspie can or are there major physical or mental blocks that are automatically insurmountable?

I'm glad that someone else picked up on that. In the video clip, I very clearly (thought) I saw her "bullying" the kids into doing what she wanted them to do.

Ugh. I just watched it again. It just looks like child abuse.

It is in my book.

I show up at my sons' school unannounced to see his therapy sessions. I remember one ASD specialist in general was giving all she had in an attempt to impress me. When the session ended she asked me what I thought of how she did in using discrete trials. (which is something very close as what the lady in the video was doing, it really isn't anything new) His therapist was shaking a tambarine in his face saying "do this!" And, using a reward object to illicit eye contact. I calmly said "get out of his face. You expect him to learn to read your expression, and understand your body language, when it's clear to me that you don't have a clue in hell what his expressions, or body language means. He's covering his ears, and pulling away. It's too loud, too close, and too much. Respect his space, and way of being, and he'll respect yours."

She did change her way of teaching, and he still learned, but was a happy 2 year old through out the process.