Slide 12:
By August, her auditory processing was up; her social skills were
up. She was not sick anymore. The parents were obviously very happy. In December 1996,
their statement to me was that she was doing excellent. She was on Amphoteracin and
Prozac. In her case, she did well with a little bit of Echinacea. Many of these kids will
get hyper or irritable on Echinacea, but in her case was doing OK. She still had
behavioral issues.
I want to stress this point because this is something that has
really become apparent over the years working with your children. Here is a girl, who even
at that point, I would dare say to you many, many parents with an autistic child would
have been thrilled to have this child functioning at the level she was. What I’m
looking for is that cognitive functioning. But what really was also coming through, she
was still acting out, giving trouble in class, giving trouble at home largely because she
had never grown through the normal social stages of how do you raise a child from 2 years
old, to 3 years old, to 4 years old. Whose in control? How is a child (that child)
expected to behave, listen, comply, etc.
And so, it became obvious to the parents thankfully, and the
teachers, that what they were looking at were behavioral situations. But this child,
cognitively, was doing extremely well. She toilet trained.
Now, as much as I’ve done things a little differently over
the years, I’ve also always had to ask myself why or explain something. And one of
the things that I got used to very quickly on the faxes was a fax would come back that the
child toilet trained. Why should they? Well you go to pediatric psychologists, pediatric
neuroanatomists and other people with more expertise than me. There’s a very simple
answer that applies to pediatrics. I’ve always been taught as a pediatrician that you
don’t rush your child on toilet training. When they are ready, they will toilet
train. This same thing is happening with these children as their brain, literally, turns
back on, starts moving from that 15to 18 month-old to 2 year old to 2 and-a-half year old
level, at some point the child toilet trains like any other child.
