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Letters in issue 13 |
Alternative therapies for Autism
As a parent who has tried natural remedies, and is trained in such fields, there is a time when danger in behaviours needs urgent attention that natural medications can’t offer assistance with. Understanding the dilemma that parents face with multiple children and safety and duty of care issues, needs to be an accepted understanding from all sides of the debate. Beating ourselves up over our principles ‘against’ medication is an unnecessary load of guilt that parents who are already distressed need no more extra judgements from community, when we are talking about extreme behaviour/safety issues.
Natural medications have their place and no doubt if you’re on the road of autism you will test every available and affordable therapy to offer your child the best chances. I have three boys with autism. When death from behaviours of danger such as self harm, knives, cords, heights and sibling terror, bashings… there comes a time when actions are taken out of your hands because of survival for the whole family. I ask your readers to not judge parents who have tried natural remedies, but need to resort to traditional methods, to survive one day at a time. The sad fact in the story was the limited Australian information, lack of discussion on supports, and local point of view. The community brings up the children, therefore the community needs to accept and support the people that don’t fit into society norms.
K. Wisbey
NSW
Thank you for your special feature about autism. I have a small boy who was diagnosed with autism this year. We are seeing a DAN! doctor about testing and intense biomedical treatments like chelation for our son. The idea terrifies me. It is a bewildering maze we run through as we try to help our child, and do no harm. Your article was thoroughly researched and will be a very helpful tool to show to our friends and family who may have questions about the course we are on. Just one point; your article was very thorough in its discussion of bio-medical treatments for autism, but did not mention anything about intense one to one therapies like ABA (applied behavioural analysis) that are also helping many children on their road to recovery.
Anne Southan
NSW
Editor’s response:
The article Autism is Treatable: hope that is real, treatments that heal (Dec 04 – Feb 05) is about alternative therapies for autism, ABA being fairly well known and therefore not classified as alternative. These alternative treatments can get kids ready for work like ABA and speech therapy. A lot of autistic kids can’t do the ABA or speech therapy because they are too far along and unstable. The alternative approach helps them to stabilise and focus enough to do the behavioural work. For more information on ABA see the website for the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies www.behavior.org/autism
Biodegradable nappies
I am expecting our first baby in February. I am looking into using a combination of cloth and biodegradable disposable nappies and plan to build a vermiculture worm farm to break down the biodegradable nappies. I work at Blacktown Council and the pound uses 4 large worm farms to break down the manure from the pound’s animals, so I’ve seen something similar to what I want working.
I am interested in any information you may have about vermiculture and biodegradable disposable nappies and need to know about how the worms reduce the faecal coliform and where (shade or sun) and with what to construct (wood and fly screen) the worm farm.
I plan to build a 1.5 m square worm farm with a lid that opens in for parts so I can work one side of the farm at a time. I plan to incorporate pvc pipe with fly screens into the sides for aeration, and have a tap to remove the liquid. I am not sure how long the nappies will take to compost, or whether being in full sun is a problem. I need to find out if the lid needs to be dark or is fly screen ok for aeration. The worm farm at the pound attracted heaps of flies, so I need to alleviate this problem.
Do you know of anyone who has tried this type of thing? Or have any contacts that I could get some more information?
Jane Peacock
Environmental Policy Officer
Blacktown City Council
NSW
Editorial response
Congratulations! You are an inspiration to parents everywhere. You demonstrate to us all that with a bit of initiative and a small space (only 1.5 sq metres!) that a person can take complete responsibility for their own waste, of which disposable nappies are a huge part of. Please keep us informed of your progress so we can keep readers informed and inspired about what is possible and what is easy! The trend in purchasing eco-disposables resolves the issue of guilt and convenience more than landfill. Your solution is truly practical. We will need to do some research on eco-disposable nappies, so stay tuned to byronchild for more information.
Jannine Barron
Nature’s Child (www.natureschild.com.au) and byronchild contributing editor.
Psychiatry and the schools: Mental hygiene in the 21st century
Current estimates are that we have over 10 million school-age children in the United States on psychiatric drugs today! That would be close to 20% of our nation’s school-age children, which is about a 5000% increase since 1970. All these young people on drugs, despite two significant facts:
1. No children’s behavioural problem routinely seen by a psychiatrist or other physician has been scientifically demonstrated to be of biological or genetic causation.
2. Psychiatric drugs are dangerous: they are toxic and many die from these drugs.
Overcoming strong resistance from psychiatry and psychology and ‘Big Pharma’ and their related allies like the support groups for people with so-called ADD (CHADD) and other ‘mental illnesses’ (NAMI), the very good news is that on Friday December 3rd, 2004 President Bush signed into law the ‘Prohibition on Mandatory Medication Amendment’ (formerly the Child Medication Safety Act). This law prohibits school personnel from forcing parents to drug their children for classroom or behaviour problems.
So we make a little progress. Incredibly enough, however, promoters of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry are not satisfied with drugging 15-20% of our nation’s children. This summer, President Bush’s New Freedom Commission (NFC) unveiled an initiative to screen for possible ‘mental illness’ all 52 million children and 6 million adults in our nation’s public schools. Not only that, but the screening is linked to a policy which has been used in Texas and other states to require certain recommended drugs for treatment!
For those who still believe that the schools are about academic education, it is time to wake up to the overwhelming presence of psychiatry in the schools and resolve to do something about it. The NFC’s understanding of freedom is clearly not freedom to be or think or do, but freedom to be ‘treated’ with psychotropic drugs as the educational/psychiatric forces deem necessary.
All across the country, citizens are mobilising to fight this draconian pharmaceutical intrusion into the schools and our children’s lives. Two organisations, Parents for a Label and Drug Free Education (www.ablechild.org), and Texans For Safe Education (www.wildestcolts.com) have joined forces to sponsor a declaration of refusal to comply with any New Freedom Commission mandate for universal mental health screening of children in the schools. We invite all concerned adults to join the already over 7200 citizens who have signed this online petition (http://www.ablechild.org/declaration%20of%20refusal.aspx), and declare with us that we will not allow our children to be the subjects of any form of New Freedom Commission recommendations to screen our children for signs of ‘mental illness’.
John Breeding
Texas, USA
Understanding Children’s Emotions
I wanted to thank you for your article Understanding Children’s Feelings. I have never been able to stand the sound of babies crying and have been priding myself on having a two-month-old son who cries for less than 5 minutes a day. Having now read most of The Aware Baby by Aletha Solter I am concerned I have been repressing his emotions by over-using a dummy. I am now trying to encourage my son to cry in my arms as much as he wants when he wants and we are up to 15 minutes per day!
Your article and Solter’s book have helped me feel gifted that my son feels comfortable enough to cry with me and I now only let him suck on a dummy when he is calm. My husband and I now refer to crying as ‘releasing emotions’ which doesn’t have the negative connotations associated with the word crying!
Gwyn Beasley
email
Festival for Men
I’m writing to spread the word on a wonderful event which is happening up here on the beautiful Sunshine Coast. It is the Manshine men’s festival which has been happening now for 14 years. This is the second year which I have been involved, and I love it!! Manshine is where each man has the opportunity to experience truth, feelings and gifts in a great weekend of kindness, straight talk and respect. The dates are April 29-May 2 which is the May-day long weekend. Any queries or bookings can be on 0423 838 585. Looking forward to being with you beautiful men.
Regards, Mick Earle
email
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The Chemical Maze
Over 70,000 copies of Bill Statham's shopping companion, The Chemical Maze had been sold by March 2007. 'Our mission is to assist people from all walks of life to become more aware of the potential health effects of food additives and ingredients in
Price: $ 20.00
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Nappy Free! DVD
Nappy Free, a half hr dvd, explores a method of baby hygiene called 'elimination communication', which can reduce or remove the need for nappies (cloth or disposable, and all the potential allergens and environmental costs they carry), depending how
Price: $ 46.00
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Kindred strives to adhere to strict advertising guidelines. Please help us keep our Google Ads in alignment with Kindred's values. Contact us with the URL of any ad on this page if you think it is contradictory to our content.Thank you. |
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After Attachment … What Then?
We did everything by the book: birthed at home, breastfed over two years, co-slept and wore our babies on our bodies 24/7 — why then do some attached children seem anxious, over-sensitive, angry and even hostile sometimes?
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Little Greenies
While environmental issues were on the radar screen when I was at school from the late 70s through to 1990, the issues were not as ominous a concern as they are today. The environment was still viewed by most as a backdrop to life, not an issue that thre |
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Still Born
The death of a baby, particularly a stillborn baby, is often not seen in the same light as the death of a child or adult. Still Born is also still born, and grieving parents have had a loss few people understand. |
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Weaning April
I can remember those days when April was around 4 months old and refusing to feed. It was hot. I was a new mum, worrying a lot about my baby and how she fed and slept. I spoke to different ABA counselors about breast refusal and got lots of great ideas to |
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Teens, Screens and Technology Creep
In a well-known education journal, a computer hardware ad depicts an empty classroom, with computers on each desk. Outside in the background is an empty schoolyard. The children are clustered off to one side, faces pressed against the classroom window pee |
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