Clinic Notes: Discussion Board

As promised, I have added a discussion board to my website. Visit http://www.aba4autism.com and read the posts and add your input or ask questions. I have posted several topics for discusion. Students in my ABA class will be posting weekly as a part of their practicum experience and the ABA therapist who work for me will also be posting.

Clinic Notes: The First ABA Program for a Child with Autism

I get many emails, letters, and phone calls from parents who want to start ABA. They give me a "shopping list" of behavioral problems in their child--usually starting with serious problems like self-injurious or aggressive behavior and continuing with sensory problems, compliance problems and communication problems. While all these behavior problems need to be addressed they leave out the behavior problem that needs to be dealt with first in many children with autism. Eye contact, both on command and spontaneous. It has been my experience that ABA is going nowhere if eye contact is not established. This is the first ABA program in my eBook and the one we always take up first in children who do not make eye contact.

Clinic Notes: Autism and Mirrors

Many parents who bring their children with autism to my clinic complain that their children are fascinated--really happily obsessed with mirrors. They tell me that their child will spend countless hours watching themselves in mirrors---posing--performing different movements over and over again. Not all children with autism are interested in mirrors but a significant number are. Some parents take all of the mirrors down and then find their child looking at their reflections in glass windows or doors. In my case history eBook, Little Bubba would look at his reflection in the toilet bowl water.
No one knows what causes this obsession and no one has a good procedure to treat it that I know of besides taking all of the mirrors down or redirection the child to some other activity.

Clinic Notes: Autism and Fever

It's winter and the kids who come to my clinic are catching colds, stomach viruses, and other types of infections. Of course, some are too sick to make it to their appointments. But a few of those that are sick with a fever actually do better. The change in the child's behavior is so dramatic that some parents have learned that when their child with autism or some other neuropsychological disorder starts acting unusually normal they feel their child's forehead to see if the child has a fever.
The improvement can be very dramatic, sometimes like a metamorphosis in which the child with autism or some other neuropsychological disorder suddenly becomes almost normal.
In the case history eBook on my website, Little Bubba's Not Ready for Nashville Yet, I present a case, "The Sometimes Son," where I document the first case I observed. As I state: "Not only parents, but also the staffs at institutions report improvements in autistic children with high fever. In 1980, a viral epidemic causing high fever hit Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in New York. All of the staff there noticed an improvement in the autistic children they worked with. Sadly, after a few days, the fever dissipated and all of the children became autistic again."

Clinic Notes: Some Children with Autism Live in a Third World Country

Several times a week I get an email or a phone call from a mother who has a child with autism. The school system is not providing ABA services or if they are it is with a special ed teacher who has been sent to a one day workshop on ABA and told to provide ABA for too many children. If the child is receiving speech it is in a group and only several times a month. No evaluation by a pediatric neurologist, often no evaluation or services by an OT.
Mom wants to know if I can help. I tell her that I can see her child weekly and set up ABA programs to be run at home and hopefully in the school. And I can make the necessary referals that her child needs. Just talk to the special ed supervisor and see if they will pay for your child's services. Of course, after 35 years I know which school systems will pay and which ones won't. In some school systems the child with autism gets just about the same level of services if he or she lived in a third world country. Autism is treatable if you live in the right place or have money.

Clinic Notes: Viruses and Autism

This morning I published a summary of a study on my web site which found that cerebral palsy was twice as frequent in children exposed to the herpes B virus perinatally. I was reminded of the studies that have implicated the Borna virus in schizophrenia.
In a study we presented at a conference earlier this year,(And posted in this blog),infections in the biological mother were a predictor of autism. Unfortunately,we did not ask mothers the type of infection they had.
In a second survey that we are conducting now, we will gather as much information as we can as to the type of infections in mothers of children with autism. We have nearly 900 surveys that we are analyzing, but it is not too late to go to my web site (ABA4Autism.com) and take the survey. We can use surveys from mothers of children on the Autism Spectrum as well as mothers of normally developing children. Thanks for your participation

Clinic Notes: Alternative Therapies for Autism

When a child is first diagnosed with autism parents are confused with all of the therapies available. I receive countless emails, phone calls, letters, and personal visits asking my opinion.
I have been practicing for 35 years and I have found ABA along with medications such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, Resperidol, and occassionally Adderal to be effective, along with speech, occupational, and sometime physical therapy. Children with autism do much better when they get these therapies at an early age. (I see a lot of two year olds in my clinic) and they seem to do better if they are in daycare, at least some of the time.

I have watched parents try alternative therapies--diet--vitamin supplements, etc. and have yet to see significant improvement. I read and hear anecdotal reports of children who are much improved on these alternative therapies, and I hope that thhese reports are true, but I have yet to see it.