Adolescent medicine practitioner and Yale faculty member Dr. Sydney Speiesel has written an article for Slate about the multitude of different treatments available to autistics, and examines the efficacy of some of the more popular ones before questioning why parents swear by treatments which don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny.
For years there have been organizations touting horseback riding as therapeutic for a wide range of disabilities. Recently, autism has been added to the list. Proponents of hippotherapy for autistic individuals claim that the symbiotic relationship between horse and rider helps develop and strengthen theory of mind, balance and proprioception. It’s also really fun! To learn more about therapeutic riding for someone in your bunch, check out the links below.
CARD – Community Association for Riding for the Disabled
Toronto, ON.
CanTRA – Canadian Therapeutic Riding Association
Guelph, ON, with affiliated centres across Canada
NARHA – North American Riding for the Handicapped Association
Denver, Colorado, with affiliated centres across North America
April is Autism Awareness Month. It’s estimated that one child in 150 (one in 95 boys) lands somewhere in the autism spectrum. Autism can be characterized by sensory integration issues, social awkwardness and obsessive interests, and the spectrum is quite wide, encompassing both quirky genius and non-verbal mental retardation. Often, autistic adults and children can appear, on short observation, “normal”, making it difficult for them to obtain the understanding and services they need to function at the top of their ability. A Room of Mama’s Own is a blog written and maintained by a mother of an autistic child, and her post, A Tale of Two Mothers, really captures what it’s like to parent an autistic child in public.
