Raun Kaufman says he was cured of autism, what do you think?

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He does seem more charming than average. But I knew an adult aspie who's just as animated as him. He just had a bit of quirk that this guy is lacking. He's a driving instructor and his special interest is the rules of the road and driving. He's a lot of people's favorite teacher.

It's not that he's animated. It's that he has that big charisma factor and doesn't have a trace of AS traits. Is someone who formerly had lots of AS traits but no longer struggles or has to use compensatory mechanisms autistic? Like someone who can do that naturally without planning or thinking about it?

I think if Raun Kaufman was or is Autistic is a secondary issue.

The important issues are.
Thier judgement Autistic traits such as stimming and bieng alone in your own world are bad things.

And most importantly they advocate tricking your own kids. A con artist figures out where you are vulnarable, fools you by pretending to be your friend so he or she can exploit your vulnarabilities so he or she can get you to give them money. These Son-Rise bastards pray on parents who are afraid or dislike thier own kids Autism and get them to con thier own kids. Instead of conning thier kids of money followers end up conning thier kids out of a part of who they are. Hypothetically lets say this is works or is somewhat effective at recovering a person from thier autism. Eventually as a teen or adult they are going to find what thier parents did to them. Even if the "recovered" person is happy with the results this is likely cause a lot of trust issues with parents, and possibly identity issues and who knows what other problems.

I find it strange that a program that prided itself on being so child-centered involved confining the child to a single room of the house. Other programs the Son-Rise people condemned as more restrictive actually had a wider-ranging scope, teaching a greater range of life skills. Also, the slogan, "to love is to be happy with" indicates that they don't really care if the child improves.

My parents through the advice of my pediatrician trained in caring for autistic kids, and therapists he referred them to, plus a lot of reading, gave them a lot of expertise over the years on how to work with me. They never would have considered something like son-rise. And they never did stuff like mimic my stimming. They always communicated with me in an ordinary way, which was great. And they always treated me like a regular person as much as they could.

I imagine there are many that can pass as NT when older, perhaps a lot don't even know they're Autistic.

Is it really passing if they don't consciously use social scripts or strategies? If their difficulties go away without coping skills?

Nope. You can learn to pass and you can be really good at it, but no matter how good you are at acting NT, you're still acting NT. You don't become NT by passing.

Acting is conscious and scripted. He doesn't seem conscious and scripted. I think if you no longer have to make a conscious effort to fit in and naturally talk and act like an NT, you are effectively cured. I think he's one of the only cases.

When you practice something enough, though it becomes second nature and no longer thought about. Doesn't make him NT though. Let's look at it another way, we all have to consciously learn how to drive, we don't do it naturally but eventually we don't have to think about it. Aspies are not born with the ability to socialise well straight away but if mild enough they can practice and eventually it may become intuitive.

If it becomes intuitive for someone, how would they still be disabled though? Autism is defined as being disabled. Disabled means limited abilities. If it's intuitive, it's not limited and there's no struggle.

Not saying it is disabling anymore or even that in Raun's case and others like it that they would even meet diagnostic criteria anymore but is their brain wired the same way as someone that never battled Autism, maybe not as this article suggests:

https://iancommunity.org/ssc/recovery-l ... -diagnosis

But their brain is also not wired the same as the typical autistic. it became something that isn't like the typical autistic or NT. Their brains became wired different. That's not using coping skills.

Everytime we learn a new skill new connections are made in our brain. So our brains can adapt. So in this case, yes they are showing differences between bot NT and Autsim groups. So it's almost like sub-conscious adaptation, I'm not saying consciously scripting. If i said that earlier, I apologise, that's not exactly what I meant.

I think this is kind of what happened to me, though I still have Special Interests. I think if the brain can, it adapts where it needs to and in most cases now, that's the social domain. Special interests, I would say is a major strength associated with Autism, so I can't see the brain adapting to lose that.

Of course, many remain visibly Autistic throughout their lives and as to why they don't adapt the same way who knows. I thought maybe because of severity to begin with but Raun claims he was severely Autistic.

Have you ever tried testing your brain? It would be interesting to see the results and see if there are adaptations. If autism is defined as a brain type, they wouldn't be autistic because they have different brain connections than both autistics and NTs. If it's defined as inability, they wouldn't be either because they just use different connections to do the same thing. Being non autistic and being NT are not the same things.

I think most people don't make those adaptations because only some brains are able to have that level of neuroplasticity and in a lot of cases that neuroplasticity can only be activated with something extremely intense and extensive like son rise.

I guess you can say my mother conned me too. What she did was she found ways to help me so it would look like a game to me, not work or make me feel broken or that I need to be fixed. I see nothing wrong with that. I think the problem with therapies are lot of them are made to make the kid feel they are broken and have something wrong with them so it just makes it harder for them to learn. Do I feel my mom fixed me? Yes. Do I feel she didn't really accept me? Yes. But this is all normal stuff. No parent wants their kid to be different and they all want the to be normal and happy so they do what they can to help them. If my mom had just accepted I had a language delay and left it alone and did nothing to help me, who knows what I would have been like. If she just accepted I lived in the moment who knows what would have happened. She would have done nothing if she had just accepted it. No parent accepts their kid's disability or otherwise they wouldn't be doing anything about it to help them. Sometimes it does help the child and sometimes it doesn't. I think it depends on the child and some can recover and some don't.

I wonder why lot of parents don't try the Sun Rise program and see if it works for their child? It worked with Raun and his parents were told by professionals to not do what they were doing with him or it would keep on encouraging his autistic behavior and they were wrong because he did finally start to connect to them and break through.

Was he ever autistic to begin with I don't know but I do hear anything is possible. People can either believe it or just think he was never it to begin with.