Hope For Autism - The Concept Of Symptom Free

I first developed the concept of becomingagencies, and featured on the cover of USA
symptom-free of disability when I was workingtoday. My articles are recommended by The
on my Career Development Award from TheAmerican Speech & Hearing Association as
National Institutes of Health. As a brain scientistexamples of Best Practices.
working for the most rigorous medical researchChanging the Brain
facility in the world, I discovered that manyAll of these populations have symptoms in
disorders thought to be due to permanent brainattention, memory, listening, reading, writing or
malfunction could actually be improved to aspeaking. At the time of our research in stuttering
symptom-free status.for example, this disorder was thought to be a
Brain Based Communication Disorderschronic life long disability. Therapy was organized
At this time, many years before my own autisticaround support groups to manage living with the
son, Whitney was born, I was studying 4problem or therapy to desensitize you so you did
populations:not feel as bad when you stuttered. I headed a
1.Preschool Children With Language Disordersresearch team working on helping stutterers
My staff and I evaluated 600 Head Start childrenbecome symptom free which resulted in changing
per year for 12 years and provided a multiplehow therapists view stuttering world wide. As a
therapy approach to help children become readyresult, I began to see other populations of the
for school. Our average Headstart child was 2communication-impaired differently and started
years behind and was within normal range aftersetting goals for symptom free with all of my
20 sessions.patient groups. From this research we learned
2.School Age Speech-Language impaired Childrenhow to make step by step plans to change the
We evaluated thousands of children as anbrain to reduce or eliminate symptoms.
outreach program to private schools and offeredTurning Disability to Ability
hospital based outpatient treatment for childrenWe found that the fastest way to reach a
who were having trouble at school due tosymptom free goal is to evaluate and train
language processing disorders.positive behaviors. With stutterers for example,
3.Stutterersinstead of working on getting the stuttering to
I treated thousands of stutterers world-wide andstop, we worked on teaching the behaviors that
wrote Stutter-Free Speech (Charles Merrillwould compete with stuttering and replace the
Publishers), which lead to awards from The Whitebehavior. Now we do that with the symptoms of
House and an Oprah interview.autism. We teach the attention, memory and
4.Brain Damaged Hospital Patientscommunication skills that compete with autism to
I provided rehabilitation team services toreplace the symptoms. As a result, we are able
in-patients and out-patients with brain injuries andto turn severe disability into life long ability.
strokes. My work was honored by many federal