Information for other Parents with an autistic child
Our experience of programmes and "cures"
We have looked at and tried a range of diagnoses and assistance for Emily. There are a lot of "silver bullet" approaches that try to convince you that a particular approach works to cure everything. In particular, allergy induced autism approaches we found to be of little credibility or effect. We have also found the National Autistic Society to be of very little practical use unless you want to park your child in an institution.
There appear to be two parallel problems to deal with, which are linked but need separate treatment. The first is a dietary problem and the second is the behavioural one. There is no doubt that many autistic children have dietary disorders and it may be these that lead to the behavioural development problem in the first place. The dietary problems appear to be linked to compromises to the immune system at an early age.
The best way that we can characterise the process is that it seems to be necessary to allow the dietary system to be as unchallenged as possible, to return to the early simple food that a baby might have, in order to rebuild its ability to deal with the more complex components of most food. Emily was on a gluten and casein free diet with several supplements for nearly two years and now has a more normal diet supported by Bio-Kult (an immune and digestive system supplement) and “eye q” marine fish oil. Her diet is still controlled though in that she has as few E numbered colours and food additives as possible. She also never has MSG or Aspartame, and little sugar. However, she likes fish, meat, curries, hummus, chorizo sausage and chilli, but not cucumber, banana or peas! Rather like any other child really.
We operated an ABA program for Emily for two years until we became uncomfortable that it was making her robotic, and not developing our eye-contact and relationships. We were also concerned that we were unable to make contact with other families following the program to compare notes and see what progress they were making.
We then found the Son-Rise program when Raun Kaufman first came to Britain. One of the things that gave us comfort with Son-Rise was their acknowledgement that there was a dietary issue that also needed to be dealt with, alongside the behavioural development programme.
We are happy to talk to any family that would like to know more about our experience of treatments for autism and the Son-Rise program. Please call – see the Contact page.
