A Moms View of Vaccines And Therapies

As promised, here is my second interview with Carol Greenburg.

1. What's your opinion on the question of vaccines causing autism?
There is no credible scientific evidence to support a vaccine/autism connection. I do not personally believe that vaccines cause autism. That said, if there is any event after which your child shows a fundamental and persistant change in behavior, you job as a parent is to investigate whether there might be a chain of causality. That's just good parenting. So leaving vaccines per se out of the discussion, let's say my kid was talking a mile a minute, and then he ate a pancake and hasn't said a word ever since. It's just common sense for me to want to know whatwas in that pancake, and what was going on in the restaurant, and who cooked it, and who served it. Ultimately, after a reasonable investigation of those surrounding circumstances, I would move on and stop focusing on what may or may not have caused his speech loss and focus on whatever is most likely to help him regain his speech.

2. Do you follow or have you used, any kind of special diets or nutritional supplements?
We know many people who do use special diets and supplements with varying results. That option is not as open to us as it is to some other parents, because Arren has many food aversions and is a hypertaster;so we can't just give him a gummy vitamin or slip a supplement into his juice. Back before he decided he hated orange juice and would only drink apple juice, we were able to buy an orange juice he liked that was supplemented with Omega-3, which some evidence suggests reduces inflammation in the brain. Honestly though, it's hard to tell whether Omega-3 was having a significant effect, because overall, between all of his various therapies, Arren is making steady progress. We're grateful for this, and wish we could trace what therapy is causing what improvement, but I doubt we'll ever know.

3. What kind of therapies or programs have had the most affect on your child?
I feel strongly about doing whatever works and so do his teachers,so we all work together very cooperatively. Arren attends an ABA-based school. ABA scares a lot of autistic adults, because they assume it's dehuminizingly Pavlovian, but it doesn't bother me because when its done properly, it can actually be a very flexible individual approach. Any child, autistic or not, has interests that tend to motivate or demotivate him or her. Autistic children's interests are deeper and more passionate if more unusual. So no matter what you callthe type of therapy, ABA, Floortime, or anything else, if you can capture and hang on to an autistic child's particular interest(s) some quality education will happen. Arren is a jock; he's never met a sporthe doesn't like. Whatever they want to call their method, his teachers have got to keep him moving if they want get and keep his attention.That's counter intuitive to folks who have a rigid idea of thereapy as involving a kid sitting in a cubicle doing discrete trials all day. But my kid is more likely to work on his reading hanging upside down from a rope ladder, so that's what works for him, me, and his teachers.

4. Are there any particular therapy or treatment programs that you strongly oppose trying and why?
I don't think there's any diplomatic way of saying this, or perhaps I just don't feel like trying. Chelation is ineffective, dangerous and oughta be outlawed. In general I'd say the more you subscribe to the disease/cure model the more vulnerable you make yourself to snake-oil salespeople. The less you focus on cures and the more you focus on services to address comorbid conditions, the better off you and yourchild are.

About Carol Greenburg

I am an adult with Asperger's Syndrome, the mother of a seven-year-old severely language-delayed autistic child, and executive director of a consulting company that helps parents of children with disabilities in get services for their kids. As part of a partnership with the Brooklyn Parent Center of BCID, I speak frequently at parent support groups, community-based organizations, and at universities all over Brooklyn. The motto in our home, and office is "Not sick. Not Broken. Just Neurologically Outnumbered. To find out more about me, my family and my work, please visit my company website www.bklynsnc.com, my company's Facebook page at Brooklyn Special Needs Consulting, or follow me on Twitter under the username "Aspieadvocate."