So picture this. Your husband is holed up in the man-cave like converted garage playing an online role playing game, your daughter is sleeping soundly in her crib, you’re eating steak and sweet potatoes by yourself at the kitchen table wondering what you’re going to do with yourself this evening, and your best friend asks you to be a guest blogger on her baby-making blog. Well why not? Sure!
At first I was overwhelmed with, “What would I even talk about?” “She looks like she’s eventually going to make her way through every parenting topic out there”, etc. Then I knew what I would blog about. I would blog about what I know. And what I know is behavior. I am a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. Which means I have a Masters of Education in Special Education, a Post-Graduate Certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis and over 1500 supervised hours of conducting ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) Therapy to children. On top of that I was a Behavior Intervention Teacher for a school district for 7 years. So I’ll talk about that.
Probably the only people who have heard of ABA Therapy are those who know and love someone with autism. Currently it is the only approved therapy for those with autism by the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is the only therapy with scientifically valid proof that it works for those with autism. Here's a long list debunking other therapies I hadn’t even heard of!). 31 one states require private insurance companies to cover it. Not chelation therapy. Not dolphin therapy. Not hyperbaric chamber therapy. Not special diets, etc. ABA Therapy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
In hyperbaric chamber therapy, they increase the amount of oxygen in the brain of the patient to stimulate the creation of new blood vessels in the brain. Mmmkay...
Photo from here.
What’s horrible is the kids that have actually died, or been hospitalized by these unscientific treatments. At best it’s wasting time and money that could be better spent elsewhere, wasting valuable time a child has to learn, grow and overcome their disability. Autism Speaks did an informal survey of parents asking them which therapies worked best for their child and only Speech and Occupational Therapies were ranked higher than ABA.
Even RDI (Relationship Development Intervention) which is an up and coming popular parent choice has yet to be studied by someone other than the one guy who created the program and has the sole financial stake in people buying his program. How do people suddenly think , “Oh I definitely trust this program that hasn’t been studied yet except one time in an unscientific way by the one guy who gains a profit by proving that it works!”
I guess the same way people still out there believe that vaccines cause autism despite study after study proving this false. Another study came out just this year looking at over 10 years of data, over 1,000 children and found no correlation. which seconds a previous study in 2004 also showing autism not caused by vaccines. Seriously, why do people believe a Playboy Bunny over an actual scientist? The man who started this whole myth conducted an unethical study on TWELVE kids in 1998 lost his license to practice and his paper has been redacted from all published journals. Lo and behold he had a patent related to a new MMR vaccine that he would thus be rewarded handsomely if the old MMR vaccine was somehow proved to be ineffective – or better yet, dangerous!! And people believe this crap? For a really cool graphic showing # of deaths to certain diseases pre-vaccine era and post vaccines go here.
I guess the same way people still out there believe that vaccines cause autism despite study after study proving this false. Another study came out just this year looking at over 10 years of data, over 1,000 children and found no correlation. which seconds a previous study in 2004 also showing autism not caused by vaccines. Seriously, why do people believe a Playboy Bunny over an actual scientist? The man who started this whole myth conducted an unethical study on TWELVE kids in 1998 lost his license to practice and his paper has been redacted from all published journals. Lo and behold he had a patent related to a new MMR vaccine that he would thus be rewarded handsomely if the old MMR vaccine was somehow proved to be ineffective – or better yet, dangerous!! And people believe this crap? For a really cool graphic showing # of deaths to certain diseases pre-vaccine era and post vaccines go here.
Why should the average person care about autism? With 1 in 88 children being diagnosed with autism – this is important information for everyone. A study conducted in 2006 found that it costs society $3.2 million to care for an individual with autism over his or her lifetime and that it costs society an estimated $35 billion EACH YEAR to care for all individuals with autism. Your health insurance premiums could go up 1-3% just because of the rising cost of providing coverage to the rising number of people with autism.
My husband would like me to amend my statement. He was not playing an online role playing game but playing a role playing game online. Apparently there is a big difference.
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