Challenging the child with ASD

by Benison O'Reilly on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

It’s difficult to open a magazine or newspaper or turn on the TV these days without reading or seeing something about autism.  I have a subscription to Marie Claire magazine and the August issue contained an article about Rupert Isaacson, Kristin Neff and their son Rowan, who has autism. The family travelled across Mongolia on horseback, visiting shamans, in an effort to help Rowan.  The five-year old was apparently transformed by the experience:  his tantrums stopped, he became more sociable, and toilet trained for the first time. It’s a compelling story, one which was also featured on Nine’s Sixty Minutes and in the Sydney Morning Herald.

At first I was sceptical. Not another wacky ‘cure’ for autism, I thought. However, by the time I’d finished Kristin Neff’s article in Marie Claire, she’d swung me around.  Her conclusion:

Was Rowan cured of his autism? No. He is still autistic. But he’s now so functional that some people have trouble telling he is “on the spectrum”. Was it the shamans, or simply the effect of taking him to a radically new environment and pushing him to his limit? I honestly don’t know.

After reading their story I am not so surprised at Rowan’s transformation, even if not 100% convinced that shamanism played a role.

In essence, this is the approach we take with our son Joe. We (well, particularly my husband) involve him in everything. He plays soccer (not very well), goes camping and bowling and bushwalking, and does all the things a typical child would be expected to do, just with a bit of extra support.  Joe keeps improving, too, although we cannot definitely point to his lifestyle as the cause of this.

Sometimes there is the temptation not to challenge individuals with ASD:  to keep their lives on even keel and only do the things that they are already comfortable doing, but we need always to remember that limiting their life experiences may just limit them.

Tags: autism, Books