{"id":37,"date":"2010-02-09T06:15:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T06:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2010\/02\/the-burden-of-the-spectrum\/"},"modified":"2010-02-09T06:15:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T06:15:00","slug":"the-burden-of-the-spectrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/the-burden-of-the-spectrum\/","title":{"rendered":"The Burden of the Spectrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am putting up an excerpt from The Autism Mom’s Survival Guide<\/span><\/a> today (Tuesday) rather than Friday. Fridays I tend to want to post about Nat. This piece is from Chapter Two, Surviving the Great Autism Therapy Chase<\/span>. Remember, the focus of the book is not on the parenting of autistic children, but rather, finding happiness as a parent of an autistic child. Happiness, big and small, given the context of autism in the family. The solutions I have found range from large and philosophical, to focused and pragmatic. No solutions in today’s excerpt, however; you’ll have to wait for the book! \ud83d\ude42\"\"<\/a> Pictured here is Nat (with me) last June, going to his prom.<\/p>\n

…Families need help determining whether their children actually improved due to whatever therapies they\u2019re using, or if they were simply misdiagnosed as \u201clower functioning\u201d at the first office visit…<\/p>\n

… If these children are all autistic, why do their outcomes vary so much? Why do some children seem to benefit from certain therapies while others do not? It is this confusion that gives autism a particularly soul-consuming quality for parents. Unlike most other medical diagnoses, there\u2019s little precision or clarity\u2014about what the disorder is, what the prognosis is, or about how best to treat it.<\/p>\n

Raquel from Arizona was spitting mad when I first talked to her about her child\u2019s autism. The ambiguity of the spectrum left her filled with a sense of frustration and impotence. She felt she was being led nowhere by doctors, autism books, and the autism community at large. \u201cWith most other special needs, you know more,\u201d Raquel said, and as the mother of both a child with cerebral palsy and one with autism, she should know. \u201cWith my older son, who has CP, we looked into a couple of alternative therapies. But we understood that no matter what, he\u2019s still going to have CP. We weren\u2019t going to be able to cure him.\u201d In the case of autism, however, many parents and professionals feel that one therapy or another can not only improve a child\u2019s functioning but can actually cure them.<\/p>\n

Raquel, like many autism parents, believes that autism is a unique childhood disorder in that so many children are diagnosed but so little is known about best practice, treatment, and prognosis. \u201cWhat we\u2019re calling autism is probably a bunch of different things,\u201d Raquel says. Although not everyone I talked to would agree with Raquel on this assertion, most parents would agree that the spectrum is huge
and varied and that that in itself can be an obstacle to our peace of mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am putting up an excerpt from The Autism Mom’s Survival Guide today (Tuesday) rather than Friday. Fridays I tend to want to post about Nat. This piece is from Chapter Two, Surviving the Great Autism Therapy Chase. Remember, the focus of the book is not on the parenting of autistic children, but rather, finding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-B","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}