Success stories from people like you

Below you will find a  true story of one of our clients. 

An autistic child starts to socialize

"Look!" Laura said, pointing a finger towards her son Patrick who was running happily around the office. "Now he is hyperactive!" "No," I answered quietly. "He is just starting to be the little boy you always wanted to have!" When Patrick had come to me a few months earlier, he sat in a corner of the play room, silently and with an empty stare. On other days, he rocked on his belly, muttering incomprehensible words or repeating the same set of sentences over and again. He covered his ears with his hands when hearing faint sounds but didn't budge when a door banged behind him. He loved lining up little cars meticulously on the carpet of the office, forgetting the world around himself. Patrick had been diagnosed recently with autism and his parents were in despair.

Over the last few months, Patrick's behavior has changed dramatically. Now he rarely puts his hands over his ears to protect himself. He has started to make more eye contact and is more and more in touch with his environment. His speech has become clearer and he has started to relate to his teacher and to the kids in his Special-Ed class. On that particular day, he was having fun at the expense of three other boys who were not autistic. They had set up a target to shoot at in a corner of the playroom, and Patrick was rushing to steal it, before they could aim at it. He was smiling mischievously: it was great fun! Laura had a hard time adjusting to the image of her son: her little boy who had spent most of his time lost in a world of his own, was now playing with other kids.

Back to School

X was a little boy of 5 who came to us in 2008. He had received a diagnosis of "Autistic with Mild PDD" from the Spastics Society of Karnataka. He had an enormous difficulty communicating with other kids. Basic touch with other children was problematic. Basically, he only communicated with adults. That communication was often repetitive- echolalia. He repeated questions. When he got an answer, it was as though he hadn't heard anything at all; he just repeated the question again. He had a difficulty communicating what he wanted with his parents. Also.... there were often bouts of extreme frustration and screaming, when he could not communicate what he wanted and when the parents could not understand what exactly he was trying to say. Something that other kids and the rest of us take completely for granted - a simple "I am hungry," was impossible for him to say. The mother was worried about the language barrier. The little fellow spoke only Kannada and very little English. I told her not to worry, we would manage with her translation and told her to bring him for a Listening Test (LT). At the first LT, I will never forget how the mother literally rubbed his eyes in an attempt to bring him into the here and now, because he was off somewhere, in some other world. He was the cutest little fellow, with the cutest little haircut. We started the Tomatis Listening with them. The first breakthrough came at the end of the first block of 3 weeks. He said in Kannada to his mother " I am hungry, give me rice puffs". When I heard that, I knew, the first step had been made. After that it was a long step by step process. The parents and sometimes the mother with the grandparents, had to keep coming back to Auroville (India) every 2 months or so. Little by little, he started expressing himself more and more. At the end of another block, he made a big breakthrough and hugged another kid. After that, there was no stopping him. In the Nursery school, he started playing with the other kids in the sandbox. He even went overboard, kissing the other kids! The level of commitment of the two parents, was simply incredible. I was amazed by them. Their patience, their commitment, their willingness and openness to try, their trust, the lengths they went to for him. When we got our new office, i was able to do Night Therapy with them. Night Therapy allows us to make interventions which would otherwise be difficult to make during the day. The little fellow would arrive at 8pm in his pajamas and go to sleep in one of the rooms with his headphones on. He really looked forward to listening to Mozart. Sometimes there would be an occasional tear or two. Sometimes his face looked so sad, as though he were carrying a deep sadness from far away. But little by little, that started to go away too. As we worked, he started to get more of a sense of himself, more confidence, more expression...

And then recently, on their last block this year, the parents told me the good news : in order to enter a new school, he had to go through a series of psychological tests. Guess what? He was officially declared "No Longer Autistic"!

Wow! There are just no words to describe the utter joy of hearing that.

(Posted by Mita Radhakrishnan , Links to this post )
 

Autism Research

Please see the Research section

Awakening Ashley by Sharon Ruben

This book of depicts a little girl’s recovery from autism using the Tomatis Method (see Literature)