How will changing the autism criteria help kids?
That was the headline in today’s paper. So, if your child was diagnosed with autism in the past, he could be instantly “cured” in the near future—if he doesn’t fit the new definition. But why doesn’t that sound . . . right?
Here’s what has transpired to date. A panel of experts, appointed by the American Psychiatric Association, is recommending pretty dramatic changes in the present criteria for diagnosing autism.
For example, with the new guidelines, there would no longer be related disorder categories, such as Asperger’s or PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified).
Instead, there would be just one autism spectrum disorder, and qualifying for that diagnosis would be much more difficult than the current guidelines.
But here’s the upside. These experts claim that such changes could dramatically affect the rate of autism.(In some places, the rate of autism is now as high as 1 in 100 children.) In fact, Dr. Fred R. Volkman, director of the Child Study Center at Yale University of Medicine says, “The proposed changes would put an end to the autism epidemic. We would nip it in the bud.”
Okay, first pause.
Changing statistics do not improve a problem. For example, we could raise the driving alcohol limit, and thereby greatly reduce the number of people arrested for drunk driving. But a change in those statistics wouldn’t mean we’re now any safer on the road. In fact, changing the criteria for drunk driving (by making it so less people were deemed driving under the influence) would only put everyone more at risk.
Second pause.
Is money partially (or completely) driving this reclassification? With the current criteria, hundreds of thousands of people receive state-backed special services. So, you gotta wonder if tightening the criteria for autism and eliminating its related disorders isn’t just a creative way to help fix existing state budget problems.
That being said, diagnosing autism and its related disorders has always been subjective, and this latest attempt to change the criteria underscores that point. In other words, such diagnoses have never come about in the same way, for example, as a cancer diagnosis—where there’s tangible “proof.”
And here’s another truth: While parents of kids with Asperger’s and PDD-NOS may presently qualify for certain resources, those services are limited. Often, such assistance does not even render significant results.
So maybe this is one of those blessings in disguise.
Maybe—if such changes pass—more parents will be motivated to learn about brain organization and how they can facilitate positive changes in their child’s brain wiring. Maybe more parents will no longer be resigned to out-of-bounds behaviors that they’ve been told to “expect” if their child has autism or one of its related disorders.
And maybe, just maybe, the focus will return to this question: How can we best help kids who are struggling? If that is the driving question, then having or not having a diagnosis becomes irrelevant.
Kids who are diagnosed as being bipolar are often given medications that have only been approved for adults.
I felt encouraged when I started reading, “Mommy, Am I Really Bipolar?” in the June 27 issue of Newsweek. In the beginning of the article, Dr. Stuart Kaplan, a child psychiatrist with close to five decades of experience, makes the case there is no scientific basis for a bipolar diagnosis for kids.
He claims the bipolar childhood diagnosis only took hold for two main reasons. First, the authors of a book called The Bipolar Child were featured on 20/20 and Oprah. Following those broadcasts, pharmaceutical companies immediately seized on the current buzz. They began to offer lucrative opportunities for doctors to give industry-sponsored talks to other doctors, with the hopes that more kids would be diagnosed as bipolar and be prescribed their already adult-approved drugs.
In 2006, I was mistakenly invited to attend one of those talks. I say it was an error because I thought I was being invited to a dinner to share ideas on innovative ways to help kids who struggled with attention issues.
I did not know that I was going to be the only non-doctor in the room. I did not know that the expensive dinner would be complete with centerpieces and take-home goodies that had the sponsoring drug company’s name on everything. I did not know the guest speaker was going to be a psychiatrist who was paid by the drug company. And yes, this psychiatrist spent more than an hour convincing the rest of the doctors in the room to consider a childhood bipolar diagnosis and to use these new drug options with their patients.
So five years later, no surprise that I find myself feeling rather enthused when reading Dr. Kaplan’s article. Here, he’s telling the world that hundreds of thousands of children in the United States are taking adult drugs for a diagnosis he believes does not exist in childhood. He even goes on to mock how “not waking easily” in the morning has now become considered a sign of being bipolar (this behavior is on the accepted checklist).
The more I read, the more I’m loving it. Someone in the medical community is challenging what often seems like an indiscriminate prescribing of powerful drugs to young children. Someone with clout is getting others to think about exploring whether this (and other) behaviors could actually be related to something else less ominous.
For example, I’ve met lots of kids with underdeveloped vestibular systems who have trouble waking up in the morning. How do we know there was a vestibular connection? Well, once these kids’ vestibular systems improved (by doing specific movements, not by taking drugs), they awakened easily.
So I’m smiling as I continue to read, believing that Dr. Kaplan is setting the stage for what’s going to be a good thought-provoking article for mainstream America. But then I read a little more—and, boy, was I ever wrong.
True, he does not believe these kids are bipolar . . . but (are you ready?) he claims these are really kids who have severe ADD and OCD. Worst of all, his point is misdiagnosing these kids means they’re now missing out on being treated with drugs for those diagnoses.
Ah, not to be discouraged. Dr. Kaplan ends his article with hope that the tide may be turning. The American Psychiatric Association is presently deciding on new criteria that could dramatically reduce the bipolar “fad diagnosis.” They are recommending a new diagnosis called temper disregulation disorder, citing that this would be a more accurate way to describe extreme irritability in children.
Too cynical to think that drug companies are already starting to ponder what could be prescribed for this diagnosis?
Well, I’m not giving up that, someday, the article I thought I was going to read will be printed in mainstream media. But guess for now, that time has yet to come.
We regain hope when we learn
the brain can change.
The numbers keep going up.
According to an article by Bloomberg News, the number of children with ADHD has risen 33% in the past decade. Autism has risen nearly fourfold. In total, about one in six children in the United States has a developmental disability, which is an estimated 10 million kids.
With those numbers, the article raised these concerns: How will we provide enough services to help that many kids? What is it going to cost?
There were no answers. So, maybe it’s time to look through a different lens to help these struggling kids.
I’ve had the pleasure of working with thousands of kids who had developmental disabilities when they first started the Brain Highways program. Yet, many (if not all) of those disabilities dwindled and disappeared once the kids started organizing their brain. Every time.
But here’s what I also know: Despite the fact that thousands of kids have changed how their brain functions, we’ll continue to see more doom and gloom articles in the very near future.
So something has to change — like maybe right now.
There are just too many kids with brilliant minds and compassionate hearts that we’re overlooking. Who knows? The next incredible inventor, musician, writer, or mathematician may be sitting right next to us—and we don’t even know it.
So I’m asking parents who have participated in brain organization programs to “pay it forward.” Write your newspaper’s editors. Tell your doctors and classroom teachers. Revisit prior therapists. Shout it from the rooftop: We don’t have to sit, helpless, and watch the numbers rise. The brain can change. Best of all, we can teach parents how to help their kids do this.
Of course, the naysayers will say: What? You’re giving parents false hope. Where’s the research?
Count on that last question. It’s often asked as a way of silencing those who are doing something new and different. It’s also meant to remind parents that there are charlatans and snake oil out there.
And yes, there are. But this is also true: Many kids have participated in researched-based programs that yielded little or no notable improvements.
So that also needs to be said, again and again: Researched-based programs don’t necessarily guarantee results for your child. And programs without research aren’t all snake oil. (Why do I think those comments just made me a target and arrows are flying my way?)
But I’ve decided to stick my neck out there.
Let me clarify. Am I against research? Of course not. It’s important to document results. But it’s also possible to do so without published research.
For example, the Brain Highways program has concrete, objective ways to measure success, but we lack formal published, scientific studies. Why? Well, those studies cost a lot of money. They also require unbiased, qualified people to do the work (if the study is going to have true merit), as well as time to track long-term results. Couple that reality with how many people need help right now . . and we’ve chosen to go straight to the latter by teaching parents how to facilitate their kids’ brain organization—today. It’s today that Tommy or Susie or Trevor needs help.
So, here’s what we can do. Let’s start our very own Brain Changing Awareness Week. Why not? The goal: Use Twitter, Facebook, email, and personal contacts to send this simple two-part message to as many people as possible: The brain can change, and parents can learn how to facilitate their kids’ brain organization.
There are millions of kids waiting and hoping that message is heard.
Parenting presents different challenges when the brain is not organized as intended.
Amy Chua is a professor of law at Yale. Yet, her case that Chinese mothers are superior to Western parents is weak.
In her article, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, she claims that the solution to substandard performance is “always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it.”
Well, lucky for Ms. Chua that her kids must have developed their lower centers of the brain and inhibited their primitive reflexes. Otherwise, I think she’d have a very different take on parenting.
That’s because it doesn’t matter how much a parent screams or threatens or takes away belongings (she gives several examples where she is proud to have done this) when such development is incomplete. The truth is, no parent—Chinese or Western— can “will” a brain to do something if it’s not wired to do so.
So I’d like to suggest different criteria for identifying superior parents. I think that title should go to moms and dads who know whether their child has completed their lower brain development—and who then learn how to help their child build those highways, if warranted.
That, Amy Chua, is the best way to guarantee our children become who they are supposed to be.
Kids have the right to ride school busses without being bullied.
As parents, we’re wired to protect our kids at all times. But what happens when we react without thinking through the consequences?
Last week a dad was arrested for coming onto a school bus and screaming profanities to those who had been bullying his daughter who has cerebral palsy. Once the story hit the media, the man received a lot of support and empathy from other parents, especially after he stated that he felt this was his only recourse when the school and bus driver did nothing to help his child.
I’m with the group who doesn’t think the man should have been arrested for trying to protect his daughter. But I always find myself asking questions when situations are not so clear cut, and several come to mind with this incident:
• Was his daughter actually safer after he went on the bus?
• Since he threatened the kids collectively, could that also be considered a kind of bullying in itself?
• Did the other kids on the bus (who were not involved in the bullying) feel unsafe by the father’s actions?
• If his daughter was not safe on the bus, then why was she still riding on it?
So what might have been a different option when the school was not responsive?
The father could have written the school board that he was keeping his child home from school every day until they could prove that all kids were safe on the bus. He could have also solicited as many parents as possible to do the same, noting that any child on the bus could be the bullies’ next victim. This type of action would have likely caught the media’s attention to do a story, especially since bullying has become a hot topic.
And why might the school have responded to the above solution and not the father’s individual calls? Namely, unexcused absences cost the schools a lot of money that they cannot afford to lose. Also, school board officials are elected, so they try to avoid negative publicity whenever possible.
Sure, we’d all prefer that school officials would act solely out of sheer concern for a child. But we may have to settle for finding other ways to motivate them.
In short, there’s no getting around this truth: Ultimately, we’re the ones who have to ensure that our kids are safe. But to make certain that happens, we may first have to rein in the primitive part of our brain—where we’re wired to react and protect—so that we can then use the better part of our brain to come up with a good, viable solution.
