ABA therapy for autism vs the biomedical approach - a parent's perspective
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This is part II of a parent's sharing on ABA therapy for autism, and the role of behavior-based therapies versus the biomedical approach.
This article was edited from a post on the Autism Recovery forum by S Rochilli, who is from Indonesia. Rochilli firmly believes that behavior-based therapies like ABA or Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) should be introduced after biomedical treatment -- not before and not even simultaneously. He shares his experience of treating his three-year-old autistic son.
He ends off with a wise advice: Don't compare your autistic kid with others.
Click here to read Part I of this sharing on ABA therapy for autism.
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That's kind of spoiling him! What if he does recover, but insists on being bribed to study, to clean the home etc? It can happen, it has happened with normal kids who are spoilt!
For my kid, I am now quite optimistic. He has done quite well. At almost 3 years old now, his only issue left is he still does not talk, and still does not respond when called.
But, he often smiles at us, his eye contact is quite reasonable and he just loves to come to us and be cuddled.
My wife keeps saying he is autistic. I tell her: “Look, classic autism means they ignore all other humans around them, but hey, our son now smiles at us, enjoy playing puzzles with us and likes to cuddle with us.”
I don't think I am being too optimistic if I say my son is on his way out of his autism world.
And with his pleasant personality, the moment he starts to talk and is able to interact with the world around him, wouldn't that be pretty normal already? What more do I want ? I have seen "normal" kids who talk but are quite obnoxious in their behavior!
My son achieved all these progress despite not having done chelation therapy. The last porphyrin tests showed he still has heavy metal issues in his body. I look forward excitedly to further progress when we started to take the heavy metals out!
Right now my son still does some ABA therapy for autism, though hardly 40 hours a week. But the sessions don't look like the typical ABA sessions at all!
They look more like a normal classroom sessions where the therapist teaches my son to play, to match shapes, to recognize new words etc.
I have no objections to that, of course ! Even normal kids need schooling to learn. Standard ABA procedures are hardly necessary for my son who has no behavioral issues, just that he is non-verbal.
Early support for ABA therapy for autism
And how I wish I can remind the ABA people that, in the early days when everyone said ABA therapy for autism was useless, a Dr Bernard Rimland said it could be helpful. I agree ABA therapy is better than nothing, when, in those days nobody thought about biomedical treatment.
Ironically, years before he died, Dr Bernard Rimland started to realize that autism is actually a biological problem. That's why he devoted his efforts to biomedical matters. Yet the same ABA people he once supported – and Dr Bernard Rimland's followers still do – now denounce biomedical therapy for autism as worthless and unproven.
To me, this is like divorcing your wife who once supported you and helped you!
My suspicion is that, perhaps in some cases, the people who provide ABA therapy for autism realize that since biomedical treatment speeds up recovery, it could mean less business for them in the future.
My apologies if I sound harsh, but I can't help but feel frustrated that some ABA organizations are stopping parents from learning more about how to speed up recovery. This kind of dogmatic, arrogant "I am the only correct one" attitude does a big disservice to many families suffering from this disorder.
It is especially frustrating when there is already plenty of scientific proof that autism is primarily a biological problem, not a psychological problem.
If a family with limited financial means has to choose between spending their limited funds on 40 hours a week on ABA therapy for autism or biomedical treatment, I will say go for biomed.
Bear in mind that even the people who offer ABA therapy for autism say that if you don't do at least 40 hours a week – which cost a fortune! – ABA might not even do much good. Of course it won't. Even 40 hours a week guarantees nothing, despite what they say.
An autistic child who is heavily poisoned, and with a gut ridden with problems, will be extremely difficult to handle even with 40 hours of ABA therapy a week.
With biomedical treatment, when the pains go away, when the special diet reduces the toxic effect on their gut and brains and when their nutritional status is normalized etc, the kids' behaviour will no doubt improve on their own. Many cases have proved that this will happen.
Apologies for the long post, but I want to share my thoughts with all of you.
ABA therapy for autism / RDI is not worthless. All I am saying is that you should resolve the biomedical issues first, then employ these therapies to play catch up. With luck, these therapies might not even be needed. Instead, the autistic child might able to attend normal schools sooner.
Dr. Kenneth Bock, in his book on biomedical treatment for autism (Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies: The Groundbreaking Program for the 4-A Disorders) wrote that he has met parents who previously did not do biomedical treatment, and they spend all their money on intensive ABA therapy for autism, to no avail.
I don't think Dr Bock is lying. This is a tragedy that could be avoided if parents know what is going on.
Biomedical treatment for autism is not complementary. I believe it should be the primary way out, possibly complemented by ABA therapy, RDI and other behavior modification techniques.
If possible – and I recognise this is not easy – try to alert parents to the dangers of further vaccinations. Biomedical treatment, together with ABA thearpy / RDI may not be able to keep up with further damage caused by vaccinations and other harmful medical procedures. These could send some autistic children beyond the point of no return!
Don't compare
One last thing...
As parents, we must resist the urge to compare our kid's progress with that of other kids. For example, it is easy for me to get depressed when my wife and I see other kids able to talk a little – even though that same kid might freak out in a shopping mall whereas our son is ok in such situations.
I always remind myself and wife that, hey, different kids have different injuries, including different sources as well as intensity of injury. If the causes are different, we cannot use other kid's progress as a benchmark for our own kid.
Even the Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!) practitioners who advocate the biomedical approach agree that different kids will respond differently to various treatments and therapies.
Taking my son as an example, I am acutally not sure if he is purely autistic. He could be autistic as well as suffering from brain injury, or just having pure brain injury.
The exact label is unknown, unknowable and I don't think too much about it. Before he was born, my wife got some dental work done with her amalgam dental fillings.
My wife experienced preterm labor. To delay delivery, the doctors injected her with what they call tocolytic therapy, using a drug called Bricasma. This is an asthma drug used off-label to relax the muscles and delay contractions. Later on I found out that this drug could be a risk factor to hurt the baby's neurological development. That was risk factor # 2.
Not long after birth, my son had an inguinal hernia operation. He was put to total sleep by anasthesia drugs, drugs which, again, could have hurt the brain of such young babies.
But the operation had to be done or else... I had little choice at that time. That was risk factor # 3.
The last two risk factors, on their own, could have resulted in significant brain injury, not to mention the vaccines he received. We stopped before the MMR shot.
Sometimes, the symptoms of other issues like brain injury could overlap those of autism. That is why hyperbaric oxygen therapy or HBOT appears to help my son greatly, since HBOT is most well known for neurological / brain injury cases.
Of course, HBOT often is helpful for autism as well, just that perhaps brain injury might need even more HBOT, possibly at greater pressures with more oxygen.
So do resist comparing with other kids. And don't feel depressed if other similar aged kids make more progress.
It's like trying to compare our own bank accounts with the accounts of rich folks. There is always a higher mountain.
Just do our best and hope for the best.