The son-rise program

[cindy30fish]

Hi, on saturday I went to london to a course aboout autism as I have josh who is 12 and I work with two children as a one to one suppport at school.

 

According to them they can CURE autism and they had a speaker and founder taking it and he said he was Autisic and his prognises was bleak, and that he only had a IQ of30

But now he's gone though uni, and is no longer austic.

They were Talking about AS a lot, I want to sign up for the weeks course ( which as a parent i get 80% off)

But before I do part with any cash can I get others veiws

 

CINdy

Edited October 2, 2006 by cindy30fish

[bid]

There isn't a 'cure' for Autism...it's like saying you can cure someone of being male or female or tall or short, etc, etc

 

Also, I wouldn't want to 'cure' my son (or possibly myself), although I would like appropriate support and help for the things we find difficult.

 

Bid

[mossgrove]

You cannot cure Autism.

 

The Son Rise paople are world-class at marketing and making money. I am not convinced by their claims, nor by their idea that you are giving up on your child if you don't do their program.

 

This subject was discussed here a couple of weeks ago. Most people were sceptical, to say the least.

 

See:

 

http://www.asd-forum.org.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=10046

 

Simon

Edited October 2, 2006 by mossgrove

[cindy30fish]

Wow just read the last topics It is obviously something you feel passionate about.

 

 

Ok I have to go out there and form an opinion for myself, but I will take your comments on board, and thank you. <'>

I will investigate all the angles and if any one wants to hear what I find out I will re-post, They are going to call me on Firday.

I NEVER knock some thing I have not tried. And if i find out it is a money making scheme I will knock it like hell, Or if it does not live up to its claims.

 

 

Although like you we love our children and all there funny ways, We all need to do the best by them for their future.

 

My son gets very distressed about things, and he finds social difficultes hard, I just want him to be happy and have friends and If i can get him support to do this I will look at every possiable help I can get.

 

Hope I haven't Offended any one

[something vague]

Hi Cindy,

 

Good luck with your decision. I was a volunteer on a Son-Rise progrm for many years and absolutely love this style of teaching/being with people. I dont agree with their cure claims but I do believe that they are very good at helping people develop new beliefs as regards their anxieties and fears. The primary goal in SR program is to create a stress free environment where the child can begin to develop new skills. Its incredibly intensive and requires years of dedication..it definately not for everyone and if I was the parent of an autistic child I'm not sure that I would have the drive it takes to pursue such a programme.

 

SV

[Lucas]

I NEVER knock some thing I have not tried.

 

Bare-knuckle boxing, suicide, performing exorcisms, designer-drugs, time-travel, alternative medicine, rewriting history? The list of things that should be knocked but never tried can be even bigger.

 

Sun-Rise is basically ABA only they don't know they're doing ABA, they don't know how to do ABA and they don't even do it properly. ABA itself is full of errors.

 

Sun-Rise is sold by snake oil alternative medicine methods; playing on a parent's guild and fear for one: if you don't do our therapy and cure you're child, you're giving up on them.

 

I've seen some videos somewhere that I'll try to dig up, Sun-Rise isn't quite about making an enviroment stress-free: it's about creating an enviroment that is stress-free for a non-Autistic person and then forcing the Autistic to accept it.

[Ohforaquietlife]

My son gets very distressed about things, and he finds social difficultes hard, I just want him to be happy and have friends and If i can get him support to do this I will look at every possiable help I can get.

 

Hi cindy

 

Before you shell out lots of money on the SonRise programme, look at Relationship Development Intervention www.rdiconnect.com

 

This may be more what you're looking for and aims to help a child function in our world. The child becomes your apprentice and learns from you. With SonRise, as I understand it, the child calls all the shots! That's fine to an extent but RDI will take them much further and build competence in everyday life. It's pretty new but extremely interesting. One of the aims is to enable the child to form real reciprocal friendships and relationships.

 

And as all before have said, hard as all we parents know it is to accept, there is, as yet, no cure for autism and anyone who claims to have one - well be very wary!

 

Regards

 

Ohf!

[LizK]

Hi cindy

 

Before you shell out lots of money on the SonRise programme, look at Relationship Development Intervention www.rdiconnect.com

 

This may be more what you're looking for and aims to help a child function in our world. The child becomes your apprentice and learns from you. With SonRise, as I understand it, the child calls all the shots! That's fine to an extent but RDI will take them much further and build competence in everyday life. It's pretty new but extremely interesting. One of the aims is to enable the child to form real reciprocal friendships and relationships.

 

And as all before have said, hard as all we parents know it is to accept, there is, as yet, no cure for autism and anyone who claims to have one - well be very wary!

 

Regards

 

Ohf!

 

Have you done RDI? I bought the book as it sounded interesting being a developmental rather than behaviorual approach but have yet not found time to read it!

 

Cindy, you might also want to look into Intensive Interaction which is child-led but doesn't involve setting up therapy rooms, shelling out shed loads of cash or offers dubious cures

 

Lx

[Lucas]

From what I have actually seen of Sun-Rise, the child does not always calls the shots, they actually have very limited control and it is natural for them to test how much. Sun-Rise is not equipped to deal with an uncooperative Autistic child especially. The videos I've seen(from the sellers of Sun-Rise themselves) try to demonstrate how effective it is but like a lot of these kind of videos I watch, they miss big points.

 

A mistake made that also happens in ABA is to place the child in a distraction-free enviroment/room, but this is anethema to what is known about Autistic learning: those so-called distractions are learning materials that children are programmed to seek out so they can learn, but to a stronger degree in Autistic children. A distraction-free enviroment is actually an impoverished one for natural Autistic learning.

 

Sun-Rise has not taken criticism from Autistic adults very well, Mr Kauffman even claiming that it's a battle between low and high functioning Autistics, where the low functioning support bonkers interventions like Sun-Rise and high functioners are against them. He provides absolutely no evidence for this and refuses to be drawn by the magnitude of evidence against such a claim.

 

If there is something which claims it's 'intensive' and takes years of dedication: it's duff. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Parenting is intensive and takes many dedicated years, but that has a leviathan of evidence to support it existing in the form of recieved wisdom passed down over centuries. The simple fact is that things like Sun-Rise pretty much act as a substitute to parenting, where every aspect of parenting becomes about Sun-Rise/ABA/IBI. It should be obvious from the moment they say it deals with Autism as a whole, in general, when nothing does but the whole parenting proccess. Speech therapy works on speech, RDI works on human relations, they work on some very specific things and can be demonstrated to do something. This is not the case with so-called Autism interventions. They simply can't work on Autism because to begin with they never define what they think it is, instead opting to rely on the lay terms present in public information leaflets published by Autism societies.