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Autism Turned Inside Out
By Marlene Suliteanu, O.T.R.
Say you take your three-year-old, Adam, to a specialist
– let’s call her Jane – recommended to you by a trusted
and respected friend. His pediatrician called Adam
"autistic" and a neurologist diagnosed him
with "PDD."
Little Adam has never let you hug him, has no speech,
pulls off almost any clothing you put on him, can’t
attend to anything for even ten seconds – except,
oddly, when he plays barefoot in grass or outside
with water and mud – and, also weird, every hair on
his head stands straight up. Adam never looks at you
or anyone. He’s extremely hyperactive, with good gross
motor coordination, so you know there’s nothing wrong
with his muscles.
You take Adam to see Jane. You immediately discern
unusual aspects of her assessment, like, she asks
you not about Adam but about your house, your clothes,
stuff like that. Jane seems unusually interested in
the fact that you live under major power lines, that
you wear shiny synthetic clothes, that you protect
your furniture with plastic covers. But that’s puzzling,
not shocking. The shocker is that Adam hugs and cuddles
Jane – in her lap! – and develops eye contact with
her, even completes a three year- old’s puzzle, fully
attentive to its challenge.
She’s a wizard? or the Pied Piper? Well, maybe, but
the friend who recommended Jane said she also works
with adults.
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Can’t picture that? Try this:
The school district has been providing Bob, your twelve
year-old autistic son, with special services for the
past nine years. He has virtually no language, although
he’s blurted out phrases like Video Ranger, Captain
Crunch, Taco Bell – out of context. Bob is very thin,
frail, with such low muscle tone he needs someone
to support his hand in order for him to write his
first name, and even then he only makes a sort of
sketchy stab at it; likewise to try to draw a circle
or a square. And he fatigues easily, still naps every
day. He flaps his hands a lot, rocks his whole trunk;
worse, he spits on people when he’s agitated. He never
looks straight at anyone and in general distances
himself from others. He doesn’t eat well – no chewing
– and resists most of your grooming efforts.
You take him to Jane. After her assessment, during
which Bob displayed all his usual kinds of visual
and motor behavior, he of course seems to pay no attention
to Jane’s explanation of what she learned about him,
nor to the activities she recommends that you do with
him at home. For one of those, called Face Tapping,
Jane provides you with a diagrammatic representation
of the Trigeminal Nerve distribution (Cranial V),
likening the drawing to a map for you to follow around
Bob’s face. Jane teaches you how to use a rhythmic,
alternating-hand, symmetrical, gentle tapping.
Diligent and hopeful, you implement the program Jane
taught you. Thirty-six hours later Bob grimaces while
you tap on his face. So you ask – because Jane said
to be alert to his tolerance to everything you do
– "Do you want me to stop? Am I hurting you?"
And he answers, "No. Need to talk better."
This is the same Bob who has only announced "Captain
Crunch" without any apparent context, till now.
When you pull shut your agape mouth and still the
shivers in your elbows, you dash to phone your husband
at work, to share this breakthrough. When you and
he stop laughing and crying together, you turn to
Bob, saying, "It’s your dad. Do you want to speak
to him?" You’ve said that, of course, thousands
of times before.
Bob takes the receiver for the first time, now, and
says into it, "I love you Daddy. I love you Daddy."
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These are actual case histories from the experience
of The HANDLE Institute in Seattle. (Read the entire
article in the July-August issue of the Autism Asperger’s
Digest. Subscribe today!)
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