4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
a lot of great advice for early intervention, but misinformation too, November 29, 2009
This review is from: Act Early Against Autism: Give Your Child a Fighting Chance from the Start (Paperback)
Unfortunately, I read this book well after my son's own early intervention. But I read it anyway to give myself a boost. The brain is still "plastic" in childhood, so yes early intervention is best, but you have to keep at it as children continue to learn well past the magic age of 5.
I did most of what she did ages 2-6, yet my son has not recovered. He is now 9 years old..and of course, I'm still doing all she recommends and more.... but not with the same "miracle" results she got with Leo... What is frustrating is that I too (like every mother who gets the devastating autism diagnosis) love my son just as fiercely and I too did everytning possible for him, read every book, hired umpteen therapists (at great expense), and trained college kids (at far less expense). But rather than run ourselves into bankruptcy , we borrowed money against our house for his ABA. I would happily trade bankruptcy to achieve the results she did with Leo, but it wasn't an either/or. There are no guarantees, her book will give good advice and hope to mothers of the newly diagnosed, but she should NOT let them off the hook in pursuing diet and other biomedical interventions, although she devotes very little ink to those resources.
And yes, to the reviewer who mentioned siblings, siblings play SUCH an important role in helping to recruit playdates and engage the child with autism..but they too need special attention and my husband and I were careful to give her extra attention, including my husband coaching her sports teams. It is exhausting to try to give both your children what they need when you're all facing autism and the marriage suffers, but as she notes, who has the $$ or energy for marriage counseling? (What helped keep our marriage intact was 1)we truly could not afford divorce or even baby sitters for nights out, but of the two, the latter was cheaper so we sprung for it in order to have almost weekly peaceful dinners out together and, no matter how much we fought before our dates, and even sadly, sometimes during them, they were a net positive where we got to leave the stress of parenting our son for an hour or 2. We did not know how much those dates were helping until we lost our regular Sunday night babysitter and began fighting even more.) Maybe she did not offer marital advice --only empathy--because, according to a recent article in the Washington Post magazine, they did (like some 80 percent of families who face autism in a child) eventually decide to divorce.
But back to the review, what I found lacking in her book and why I prefer Jenny McCarthy's, and Lynn Hamilton's books which advocate the importance of both behavioral therapies AND biomedical interventions is that we did see improvement with GF/CF diet and vitamin supplements (which she said did not help Leo.) That was the missed opportunity...I almost wondered if she does work for pharmaceutical companies that she went out of her way to let vaccines off the hook. At least she interviewed Temple Grandlin and nutrionist Kelly Dorfman who both said how important it is to at least try a gluten/casien free diet....(I loved her quote by Dorfman "everyone hates the stupid diet," but it can really help! ...I was put off that the author said that she tried it but didn't really think it helped and that it would be _too much work_ for her and shw was relieved the tests came back "normal" so he didn't "need" it...but what tests? you still have to try it! Those allergy tests are inaccurate/unreliable. Esp. getting rid of dyes and junk food and pesticides is just plain common sense, the American typical diet of goo and glue (sugar and flour) is terrible for anyone w/ health issues. Unlike so many treatments we forgo because we can't afford them, the diet is affordable and leads to healthier eatting for the entire family, whereas things like secretin, oxygen, etc might not be affordable.
(I did not spend $8,000 on Tomatis, and felt guilty about it, so it was somewhat reassuring to hear that she didn't think it helped Leo.)
And autism is, sadly, "too much work" whatever we do, whether we see great success or smaller success...but what is really alarming is regression! A topic she completely ignored, probably because her son kept progressing. Also she included some weird stat that stated only 180 recorded cases of regressive autism have been identified! EVERY parent (and there are many of us) who blame vaccines as a huge contributing factor in our child's regression into autism(fever, lethargy, seizures, beginning of night terrors, loss of eyecontact, loss of cognitive understanding of books, videos, play skills) would questions those stats.
But there is so much evidence that vaccines play a role in autism, beginning from the HepB given day 1 of our son's birth , never mind that he wasn't at risk for that disease (and it does contain "trace" thirmerosal). Yet she made a point of dimishing the vast amount of evidence that in some babies vaccines do more harm than good...stating SHE did not "blame" his autism on mercury-containing vaccines because he did not regress after his MMR, she had already seen "signs"...why she lets previous vaccines off the hook, while saying she respects parents who believe they are to blame, I don't know. She should have at least mentioned that there is much evidence that vaccines DO play a role, rather than taking at face value "conclusions" from flawed studies (funded by pharmaceutical companies) that there is no evidence of a link. Just ONE convincing example of studies showing the opposite (see below) would help parents who suspect autism to at least DELAY further vaccines/damage to their child's immune system.
(From Dr. Joesph Mercola)
A study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in April 2005, looked at the health outcomes of children who are fully vaccinated, who are partially vaccinated, and who are not vaccinated at all.
All the investigators asked the parents to do was to report atopic illness. Atopic illness means allergies, asthma, eczema, hay fever. The investigators were blinded, meaning they didn't know which category the participants belonged to.
When they assessed the data, they found that the largest number of reports by parents of children with atopic illness were in the kids who were fully vaccinated. The second highest reports were in the families who are partially vaccinated. And the lowest number of reports was in the children who were unvaccinated...
The investigators performed a statistical analysis to see if the data was based on chance or on real statistical differences, and found there were statistically significant differences between these groups. They couldn't understand how this was possible, because the generally accepted consensus is that vaccines are completely safe, and completely effective.
Based on this initial finding, we clearly need to do follow-up studies to ask the same question over and over again; repeat this kind of investigation with different populations across different parts of the country, to unearth the truth!
--Dr. Larry Palevsky, board-certified pediatrician trained at the New York School of Medicine says:
"Certainly, the issue has been raised about the special interests, the money that's tied, the policies, how much money the vaccine manufacturers stand to make, the doctors who make decisions on vaccines, and how much money they stand to make. But we need the science and not this conspiracy theory...
If we just stay with the science, and really start to address the need for the science, and look at the fact that there is a lack of science, we will definitely see that more needs to be done.
We have not done due diligence."
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