And that’s just as important as all the research in the world Catherine. Thank you for sharing your story.

That is what my son’s special preschool team did. This team consisted of a teacher, aide, speech/language therapist and OT/PT (occupational/physical therapy). You may want more of the latter. The doctor that was most involved was the neurologist, and his most useful function was writing the letters that convinced our health insurance to pay for the private speech therapy.

Thanks for the clarification about your therapist’s opinions.

Most of those tests are available through most hospital labs. They are often much cheaper than the “DAN!” recommended mail-order labs. See:
http://neurodiversity.com/webl.....ion-autism

If only to provide some information to us, it would be interesting if you could get that therapist to provide you a piece of paper with the list of the references that she researched. Especially about the doctors not charging “most of the time”... that sounds very suspicious.

I would question your therapist recommending such tests and chelation. This may be beyond the scope of her expertise, and she should be reminded that she is to provide therapy and that your child’s doctor is the one who should provide medical referrals.

Thats a fascinating comment and I commend you for taking as much of an evidenced-based approach as you could under the circumstances.

I think the problem on a wider scale is that we see autism as a problem. the vast majority of the autistic people I’ve spoken with don’t see autism as a problem – and that includes people who others would classify as high and low functioning – but as a way of being, a viewpoint I’ve come to accept and see the sense of myself.

However, that doesn’t negate the fact that people with autism sometimes have comorbidities that can be disabling (e.g. constipation, epilepsy) that should be intervened in. You yourself have elected to go down an ABA based path. Personally, here in the UK, not a lot is known or offered about ABA so we persue other options (notably TEEACH/PECS/etc).

My overall stance is therefore that I don’t wish to alter the fact of my daughters autism but I cannot ignore the specific issues that affect her.

I guess the ‘am I doing everything I can’ question is one only you can answer. To me I have to balance the need to keep my daughter healthy above all else and therefore treatments that have no safety or eficacy trials or too much of an unknown quantity – especially when the underlying premise of the treatment is very ambiguous or demonstrably false (e.g the whole vaccine thing).

The first thing I want people to think about are all of the statements on how their child got better or worse when they stopped giving this enzyme or gave more to this vitamin. As a mother of a child in intense behavior modification, I have to say that your child would be doing that regardless of what you gave him or her. True behavior modification also means realizing that your child’s behaviors are reinforced in one way or the other all of the time. I am not saying it is our “fault”. It’s human nature. How we respond or don’t respond every moment of the day will shape their behavior. If you “ignore” a tantrum, then praise them once they are quiet, you may wonder why tantrums are now getting worse. Maybe the length of time between the end of the tantrum and the time he/she was praised wasn’t long enough. Or the praise he received for calming down was too overplayed. Clearly, the intention isn’t to make it worse. But maybe this happens a few times and soon he realizes tantrum, stop crying, then tickles or treats. Trust me I have been there many times over. There is no way to prepare in advance. But a good behaviorist will look at any behavior and be able to find a way to change it.

I don’t mean to bore you with the details…. I just want to make it clear to anyone who reads this that we do shape all their behaviors, sometimes we aware, sometimes we are not. So how would one doing biomedical treatments know if it is causing the changes? Just yell at a kid once and give attention to him for inappropriate behavior or let them escape a task because you are trying to ignore the tantrum when in turn you may have reinforced him to use a tantrum to escape the task the next time, and it just so happens you started a new pill the week before. Are you going to assume that the pill has made them worse? All I am asking is for those who argue with you regarding critical thinking to realize that behaviors change constantly and are very dependent on everyone else’s behaviors so you are doing your pocketbook and pills an injustice if you don’t realize this. And before anyone thinks I am insulting them for contributing to their child’s behavior, let me remind you I am speaking from my own experience, therefore I am insulting myself as well.

The second thing I want to say is that anyone who has tried behavior modification and was unsuccessful, please think about this. If you had a program or even a single protocol and after two weeks to one month you saw no progress, then shame on your therapist or psychologist or whoever designed your program for not changing it. If it has stayed the same for longer than a month, you weren’t with the right behaviorist. This person should be able to pull out a plan b, c, d and so on and be able to explain as to why your program didn’t work as well as justify and provide data explaining why plan b should be your next move. Please just be aware that there are several cookie cutter type programs. I know, because we started with one and it worked great for about 2 months. When my son decided he had enough, the first behaviorist had no clue how to make him want to learn. She didn’t know where to go but to continue what we were doing. Unfortunately we had to take a few months to focus and learn what would motivate him to want to learn. Please watch for cookie cutter programs when you know other’s are doing the same as you. They shouldn’t be. Every child is different and learns differently.

Sorry about the soap box. I will get off now.

This week, I talked to a woman who wanted to inform me of all the biomedical treatments she has done for her son and how he is cured. I listened and bit my tongue ALOT. However, it does raise the question “Am I doing everything I can?” I am willing to have further labs done. If for no other reason, than to justify to myself that not only does my son not fit into the typical description, but his labwork proves it. If some things do come back way off base, then I will approach the need for supplements if I feel it is warranted (in normal doses). Problem is, I don’t have the time to research which labs should show whether or not further testing needs to be done. Do you have any suggestions? And have you heard what laboratory to use or not use? If I can do a few more tests, then I can make a better decision as to whether or not adding to our treatment would be useful to our son.

I am hoping you’ve lit a fire under enough people that you can give me suggestions as of where to go from here.

Thanks, K

My concern: My son recently went to the doctors office for routine hep shots and chicken pox. Two days later we receive a call from the doctors office stating that they erroneously gave our boy an mmr shot instead of the chicken pox shot. Problem is our son already had his mmr shot about a year ago.

Question: Does anybody know the effects of a double shot of mmr within 1 year? Is this serious? Please help.