Autistic Child Recovering

As a parent of a child with autism, many people ask me, "Is autism curable?" Most experts will tell you, "No, but it is treatable." However, there are documented cases of an autistic child recovering. Of course, there is a difference between "cure" and "recover." Because there is so much about autism from a neurological standpoint that remains unknown, there can not possible be a "cure" for autism until its cause is discovered. Until the cause is discovered, it is more appropriate to use the word "recover". Total recovery from autism is achieved when the autistic child is indistinguishable from his or her peers.

So autism isn't curable, but people have recovered from it. Almost half of the autistic children who are enrolled in Early Intervention Programs make significant progress toward recovery; some even fully recover. The earlier that autism is detected and diagnosed, the sooner treatment can start and chances for any degree of recovery are much greater.

One method of autistic recovery that has helped my son significantly is Applied Behavior Analysis, or ABA. ABA is especially helpful for children with autism because it teaches life and social skills through careful behavioral observation and positive reinforcement. His ABA therapists are highly trained professionals and he spends almost 30 hours a week learning different behaviors. Once he masters a skill or behavior in ABA, his therapists and I begin to work on his mastery of the skill/behavior in a social setting. It requires a lot of work and commitment, but the results I've seen so far are amazing and I'm more than willing to keep researching ABA techniques and keep in very close contact with his therapists.

There are several techniques that his therapists and I use in ABA. Some of the basics are:

• Prompting—assistance provided by the therapist or parent to encourage a desired response from the autistic child. Verbal prompts are the least desirable since they are the hardest to "fade." Other prompts include modeling the action, gestures, and physical prompting—literally guiding the child's hands in the activity.

• Fading-- the gradual phasing out of prompts, especially verbal prompts

• Chaining—breaking skills down to their individual tasks. For example, instead of "take the dog out", you might ask an autistic child to get the leash, attach it to the dog, and take the dog outside.

• Generalization— the teaching of a skill in a social setting after it has been mastered in therapy

Of course, most children will not recover completely from autism, but all of the parents I've talked to who are engaged in ABA therapy say that it has seriously helped their child and changed their own perceptions of autism. In fact, one parent told me that before her daughter started ABA, she was barely aware of their cat. After several years of ABA, her daughter began to take an interest in the cat—she even feeds it now. Good ABA therapy can make autistic children more aware of the world around them.

So there is definitely no "cure" for autism, and no easy answers. If your child has been diagnosed with autism, the path ahead is not an easy one—but it is filled with memorable achievements and special milestones that most parents don't have the opportunity to experience.