Autism Recovery - Can Your Child Grow Out of It?

All right, so we're going to talk about autism recovery, whether it's something that is possible. And I'm sharing all of these by my own personal experience. And in no way am I saying that, you know, this is the truth. You should listen to me, and I just want you to listen to my experience and what we were able to achieve through speech therapy and ABA therapy or whatever kind of therapy you like to label our services as. But at this moment in time, this is what we have found. Okay? The first thing is you should ask yourself questions before you think about these things. And it's very, very difficult for parents, I know, especially listening to someone on the Internet randomly like myself. I'm not a doctor. I'm a person who works over the Internet with parents. And at this time, if you don't think this is a credible source, by all means listen to someone with a. Who. Who's wearing a lab coat or a suit on the Internet. Right. It doesn't add any type of legitimacy, you know, through my appearance. Right. I'm just telling you, okay, if you don't trust, it's fine. You can move on and watch another video. Okay? So the first thing is, autism isn't a medical condition. So as opposed to. Many people would say, like, autism isn't something that is, quote, unquote, curable. Right? It's not. Is there a recovery by that means? Well, it's really up to what you define by recovery, which we'll talk about later. Okay, so. So autism isn't a medical condition. It's something that is, you know, like some people would say it's an operating system. It's a type of how a child or a person operates in the world. Okay. And it's because it's called a spectrum. That means people who have autism, so to speak, will have different types of functionality, personalities, ability and so on, just like the neurotypical people like you and I most probably, if you're watching this. Right. So it's not a medical condition. It's not something that's so, quote, unquote, curable so far. So the next point is, what do you mean by recovery? How do you define it? Right. Sometimes we say recovery means that, oh, as long as my kid is functional, they're able to go to school, they will have friends and whatever and live in the world, then it should be counted as recovery. And most of the time, when we're working with parents, obviously when we talk to clients and our students, we're trying to set an expectation. Right. We're Trying to tell them that, okay, look, autism is something that you can cope with. It's something that you have to live with already. But at the same time, think about what you mean by recovery, what, what the expectation is in your heart, right? If you think about, like, if you have such a high expectation about, like, fully, the word is full recovery. They're okay now, a miracle happened or whatever, it might happen. And they're also might not happen. So why I say this is because sometimes there are some misdiagnosis of autism, right? And nowadays there's something called virtual autism going around, and the professional body, our colleagues and so on, they're not recognizing this as a real term. And from my end, from my perspective, from what I see from my clients and so on, I think there is some credit to this claim that there is, like, children will act as if, like autism, like symptoms without the neurological or the sensory profiles of quote, unquote, real autistic child. And obviously a lot of parents will say, yeah, this is like, bet this is virtual autism. You got to listen to me, it's not the real thing. And that's why it's curable and reversible and so on. Well, that might be the truth or it may not be, right? Right now we don't have any guidelines. And from my perspective, from what we've been seeing, we do see if we cut down on the screen time and so on, it does help the child a lot in terms of helping them go up, in terms of the communication intention, their language acquisition and so forth, and other skills. Okay? So anyways, think about what recovery means to you, okay? At this point, set a goal that is just above what your child is currently operating at and think about that instead of thinking about, oh, it's a full recovery. No, anything that requires therapy, anything that requires special care is always step by step. So I don't want you to put your hopes into a full recovery. That's going to be very difficult for you to navigate as a parent. So the next point is, what do you want? Right? And what does the child want versus kind of situation? Because obviously, if a child is below five or below a certain age or, you know, sometimes even below 10, you know better than the child, right? You know better than the child. You know exactly what they should be doing, should not be doing. Okay, Whether you like it or not, whether people on the Internet nowadays, they comment and say, oh, it's toxic to provide therapy to children. You know, like ABA therapy is abusive, you know, therapy, speech therapy is treating people Special. And therefore, you know, it's toxic, whatever it is. First of all, I don't have any type of opinion on that, so don't ask me. Some parents are saying, oh, what do you have to say to the children or the adults who have been through ABA therapy and have ptsd? I don't know, man. Don't ask me. I'm just a practitioner. I teach parents and children, and I do what I think is best. Okay. And if I see results, I keep doing it. If I don't see, I stop. Right. And what is your want? And what is. What does a child want? Is very, very different from a child who has autism at a young age. They do not understand the reason to communicate. They don't care. Really? When I say they don't care, I get a lot of backlash and say, how can you say it's not care? Right. Well, the thing is, they only care for any type of benefit that they get from you. Right. And this is very apparent, especially when they start grabbing things from you, get a tantrum if they don't get a certain thing from you, and you can impose your wants on the child. And this is kind of like therapy in the beginning. In the beginning, okay. When you want the child to communicate in order for them to get something and this. This relationship. All right? A lot of parents cannot get past, especially those who are from the Western world. All right? Not to say they're like. Not to try to have any cultural segregation here. What I'm trying to say is if you want your child to communicate with you, you need to have something that they want. Okay. What about children who are a lot older? So there are some cases. Right. Which I've talked to before. Like, the child was perfectly able to use language typing. And because of the sensory and motor complications that come with autism, the little girl, the daughter couldn't really verbalize. Right. It was even difficult for her to imitate speech sounds. And this is actually a speech disorder that came with or on conjunction with autism. So she would text her mom on WhatsApp and say, I don't want to go for speech therapy. There's no point. I can text you. I can use apps. Why do you want me to talk? Right. So this is when you need to increase that and increase the motivation and let them understand why they're supposed to do that. And as much as you can, you can fight and say that we're imposing our wants in them. The. The problem is this. They are the minority, and we are the majority. Right. Especially for me, Even speaking, right? If I am a foreign alien in foreign country, okay, I will have to. And I would need to conform to cultural differences, right? Because if I don't, it would be disrespectful. I don't get people's help, people won't want to listen to me, right? I don't get what I want, so on, so forth. So at the same time, right, we must do our best to teach autistic people, children to able to cope with society needs or else the person who will suffer is the autistic child. Okay? So going back to the point we had to talk to, it's still in progress, right? I haven't heard from the mother for a very long time. My opinion was that we need to tell her why she needs to communicate with verbally, all right? Or else she's not gonna be able to attend therapy or care, so to speak, right? So what do we do is that we create contexts where she finds communication fun. And we start off with play, right? Very naturalistic, so to speak. So we start off with like things that she likes, right? Things that are, you know, intrinsically motivating to her, right? Maybe she likes to play Switch, then we gotta play Switch, right? If she likes board games, then we play board games. But. But sometimes these contexts need to be built and nurtured and taught, so to speak. And then the language follows the context, as a lot of times what we say inside of this, of this very channel. All right, if you search and watch all the other videos, you'll see there's a running context inside of agents of speech. Okay? And another example would be an autistic adult who used to be my, my student. She didn't see the need to learn language and become. And overcome her sensory, overcome her physical. You know, she had some dyspraxia pretty much. So she didn't see a need for that until a day where something tragic happened in the family. I'm not here to disclose anything. And then she decided that she needed to stand up for herself, right? And so when that happened, it was a more of an emotional and a personal reason why she decided to go and help herself and let learn more and speak better and, and walk better and accept different sensory things and be less rigid and so on. Okay? So anyways, here we're talking about like autism recovery. Most of you guys watching here would be having a child who just got autism or like just got the diagnosis or in fear of the diagnosis or even like some parents who are veterans in this field who know More than I do in terms of like all the, all the theories and whatnot. Right. So a lot of people are saying, oh, you must do intense therapy and do, and do early intervention as soon as possible. Right. So there's a huge thing that people are struggling with and it's like intense therapy or is it home therapy? Should I give it to someone else or should I do it myself? Right. And the answer online is always the earlier the better, the more the better. Right. So to me, that whole golden age of getting early intervention is a dilemma. Right. Obviously, if you start earlier, it'll be easier. It'll be easier for you to get into the mood, for the child to get into the mood to become a lifestyle that you are, you will sit down with, with, with a kid to teach him or her stuff. Okay, so intense therapy versus home therapy sometimes is what I hear from parents. Am I going to have to send them to like a ABA center for five times a week and have them sit down like three hours every session just to learn something or should I do at home? The answer obviously from every professional would be do both. Right. So why and how then? Okay, so first of all, you need to get an assessment to see if intense therapy is needed or not. Well, obviously a lot of those bad, bad actors in the industry that they think any child would require a certain amount of therapy time just to get you involved and earn more money. Right? And, but not. How do you spot a good therapy center or a good therapist is that they're willing to transfer the skills to you and you don't see them trying to hide anything. Right. The stuff they're doing is exactly what they're telling you to do at home. Those are good stuff. Right? So look out for those. And at the same time, why you want both, like intense therapy and home therapy is because the work doesn't just stop after you leave the clinic. You know, know you have to help the child at home as well. Okay, so anyways, recovery in itself is up to you to define what it is, right? If you think that it's a full recovery, then sadly the answer to that is I don't know. And I don't, I don't know how to answer that question. And, and I have that question all the time. Every time a parent comes to me and she, she or he asks that question to me, I'm like, I don't have a crystal ball. I can't see the future. I don't know whether this is something that child can grow out of or, or whatever. Therapy in itself, doing work is to reduce the risk. And you're trying your best to teach as much as possible. Right. So some parents will ask, what, what about other methods of treatment? Right. Well, what about, like, dietary, medical, you know, oxygen tank, chamber thingy? All of these are in general, very good for health. I, I would say, like, even people who are not on the spectrum are perfectly healthy nowadays. We're striving for that as well. Right. Okay. I know a bunch of Indonesian parents who go to America just to get their child inside of a cryo chamber, so so to speak, and have that oxygen pumped into that tank and have them like, it's like, to help with their symptoms. Right. And I've. I've also seen people who are doing biomedical hacking, so to speak, to help with the child's autistic traits. The thing is, I have no idea. I'm not a doctor. I'm not here to say anything. But what I can tell you is, from my experience, if you teach the underlying deficits, right, Letting the child understand why they need to communicate. Yeah. Why they're supposed to use language, why they need to act and behave a little differently when people around, typically speaking, we can get their symptoms to be, to be culpable at the very, very least. Right. But if we're talking about, oh, maybe the underlying reasons for the sensory overload is because of gut health or whatever. I don't know any of that. That's up to you, trying doctors and whatnot. Right. All we can do here as, as a parent, as a teacher, as a therapist, is that we can only treat at a behavioral level, which, to be very honest, is just us teaching. Right. Any level that is below. Right. We can't do cognitive level because we cannot reason with the child at, at a young age. We can do that for the, the adults or the adolescents that we talked about just now when, when we're talking about what you want versus what the child wants. Right? But if, if it's talking about like a biomedical level or organic level or whatever, I have no idea. And people are still like, everyone's working hard to find an answer to that as well. All right, so that's all for this video. If you enjoyed it, please let me know in the comments below. Let me know your. Your thoughts and whatever. This is an open forum. Obviously, some people believe that autism is something that is recoverable, so to speak, but without any definition of which. So tell me about your stories and so on in the comments. And if you haven't, please go to agents of Speech.com checklist to grab a list of tools and toys for starting home therapy today. Okay, that's it for today. I'll see you guys in the next week. Bye.