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Here are some suggested organisations that offer expert advice on special needs.

SN children

I love these videos

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el0fant · 10/09/2007 00:04

I visit this page periodically and feel increasingly convinced that this "RPM" method could be a lifechanger for many individuals with autism and their families:

www.halo-soma.org/learning_videos.php

Today I watched videos there of "Daniel" and "Ben" and I am again convinced that "Soma" is on to something.

If I can summarize corrrectly, she goes from the assumption that the kids are just as smart and aware as anyone else, but simply have significant difficulty with retrieval, control, and initiation. These difficulties (and their stimming) may make them APPEAR less intelligent or aware than they actually are, but these are just a red herring.

To work around the childrens' difficulties, she physically "prompts" them, at first simply to communicate in whatever limited ways they can (e.g. swipe at one of two pieces of paper containing answer choices), and eventually to begin to use a letter board to communicate. From there the sky is the limit.

It is amazing to me to watch these videos. It quickly becomes clear that children who are uncontrollably yawning or spinning o making "whooping" sounds are actually listening thoughtfully at the same time.

I hope that someone will at least give this method a try. As far as I can tell, its pretty much free, and I don't see any hints of quackery or grandiosity in the method.

By the way, I am not a paid advertiser, as I fear I might be perceived, having posted a similar post once or twice before about this RPM thing. I have been posting here occasionally ever since I got great advice here about my son a couple years back, when I thought he might be autistic.

My son is not autistic, as it turns out, but I am still interested in autism, and I still feel a kinship with those who are autistic or love an autistic individual. Why? "Three reasons. One: I believe that a "touch" of autism explains some quirkiness on his part and mine, and I yearn to know more; Every bit I learn resonates with me and how I feel in the world. Two reasons: I consider the question "what is autism" to be as great a scientific mystery as "is there alien life out there?" and "is there a grand unified theory of physics" and such.

Perhaps most importatnly, I feel it would be a great tragedy for the autistics out there if we NTs are repeatedly and grossly underestimating the mental capacity of many autistics on a grand scale.

For what its worth, I feel many therapies out there miss the mark, and that this is a tragedy in itself. Bluntly stated, to me much of the biomed seems to be pseudoscientific quackery, while much of the ABA-based therapies seem mindnumbingly tedious at best for both therapist and child. Were my child autistic, I would start with 1) Floortime, 2) RPM, and 3) talking with adult autistics about their experience. All of these seem to respect the child/adult as a person, and to assume that the sky is the limit.

Thank you for listening.

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