Thread by @Kaija_Rayne

Chp 21: THE COMMODITIZATION OF HOPE

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

And we're in a chapter praising the Tomotis method of 'training'.

I don't know what it is, but just because of the fact that the TODAY SHOW featured it, (they're a pawn for Auti$m $ peaks or so I've been informed.)

and based on how it's described, it's more autistic torture.

Must be nice to have enough ready cash to drop 3k per treatment on this 'therapy'.

I don't make that in a year.

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

She's asking all sorts of questions about THIS method that she REALLY SHOULD'VE ASKED about ABA.

ABA almost always fails in the 20s and 30s for autistic people. It's usually presaged by a mental breakdown.

Oops.

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

She's bitching about hemorrhaging money to treatments. She says 'if only'

You know what? IF ONLY YOU HAD INVESTED IN YOUR SON and not these ridiculous torture techniques.

80k a year would've made a wonderful, inclusive, HELPFUL environment to grow in

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

Instead she puts him in a dank basement.

for 40 hours a week.

and locks him in his bedroom.

and wonders why he has anger issues.

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

At least she finally researched Lovaas and learned that the vaunted results from his studies

CONDUCTED IN THE BLOODY 1950s! have never been duplicated.

Probably should have looked at that before torturing her son w/them.

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

This book is a mess, editorially. It's hardly readable, and yes, it's an ARC but I read a LOT of ARCs and this one is by far the worse one.

I certainly, as an author, wouldn't submit to a press that put out such shoddy work.

"...our child has an incurable and intractable brain disorder that will only respond a finite amount to any intervention, regardless of the intensity and cost that bankrupts some families. Maybe, autism is that inscrutable and permanent."

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

Or Maybe... just

throwing this out there, society needs to ACTUALLY LISTEN to adult autistics. MANY OF US were in EXACTLY the same situations as Zack. As Gus & Henry, as all of the other of these books ABOUT us were & are.

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

Maybe, just MAYBE it's society that's fvcking us up w/these 'treatments' that are more like torture and should be freaking illegal.

MAYBE there's nothing wrong with us in the first place and if you all just stopped being so self-centered you'd see that?

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

Bitter laughs.

"Zack has certainly made concrete gains through his many years of ABA, but might he have made similar gains in a public preschool autism program for no cost? Might he have ended up looking identical to how he looks now at age 5, or even

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

better if he'd been exposed to other autistic peers in the program with whom he might have made a genuine connection?"

Damned right he would've. Poor kid. That poor kid. Gods.

#KaeEditsAUWE #ElmoMum

She says that 'recovered' autistics are 'exceedingly rare'.

I dunno, my #ActuallyAutistic community, are we? #AskingAutistics Are we 'exceedingly rare'? Or is she so deluded she hasn't any idea what she's talking about.

wrap of chapter.