PLT Test Blog

  Some risks are worth taking, however long the journey Academic results are part of most people’s life, whether you love them or loathe them. Most children diagnosed today with autism will do just fine at school, but this was not always the case.   Those born 20 or 30 years ago and diagnosed in early childhood with autism are usually in a much less fortunate position. Today’s post is about level 3 autism and what the Lancet Commission want to call Profound autism. The new idea is that if by age of 8, a child with autism still has severe intellectual disability or minimal language then he/she can be best described as having Profound Autism. In other literature the term SDA (Strictly Defined Autism) was proposed.   I t means what was called autism back in the 1990s and earlier. You can have severe autism with any level of IQ, which I think many people may not be aware of, or even accept.   Monty and his Academic Results The “bravo” for Monty comes from Dr Ben-A...

  There are so many possible autism interventions discussed in this blog, it clearly is not always easy to know their relative merit. There are so many people now diagnosed with autism it is no longer such a meaningful term.   The most extreme autism I think I will have to start calling really severe autism.   A scale of 1 to 100 would be much more helpful than the current levels 1, 2 or 3. I suppose Elon Musk and Greta are level 1. One reader did recent describe the effects of bumetanide in his child as being game changing.   I think it is an excellent description to use.   For our reader Roger, Leucovorin was a game changer. Another reader wrote to me to give an update about his three year old “After 3 months of bumetanide treatment I've seen improvement on his cognition, like, he is now able to finish an apple and take the end to the trash by himself or enter in his room, turn the lights on, take some toy, turn lights off and close the door or eat his lun...

  This time the “Professor” wears the Dunce’s cap I had a surprise last month, talking to my son’s 1:1 assistant, this time about maths (or math in US English). Normally I am trying to simplify school academics, and so if something really is not important, like argumentative writing, I am all for skipping over it.   The idea is that Monty, aged 17 with autism, should focus on useful learning that he has a chance of mastering. Monty’s international school follows an English curriculum and in that model you have a choice in some subjects of studying the core or the extended version. So a typical child who wants to become a doctor, or an engineer, will have to follow the extended version of all their subjects, but someone who is going to shift boxes in a warehouse might opt for the core/simplified versions. Most people lie somewhere in between. People with severe autism would not normally follow any of these academic curricula, because it is all way above their heads.   ...

  Today’s post is about an issue that seems to cause a problem in some countries far more than others. While some people with mild autism (Asperger’s) may feel anxiety when dealing with the police, the big problem occurs when the police are called in to restrain someone with severe autism and particularly someone who is also non-verbal with MR/ID.   Most people with untreated severe autism actually have MR/ID, even if it was never diagnosed. It would never occur to me to call the police to restrain my own son, but in North America this is a regular occurrence.   It sometimes does not end well, often it was the parents who called the police, when it is not the parents it is likely to be the school. The research shows that most often the police in the US do successfully resolve the incident. I did ask my son’s assistant what she knows about the police dealing with aggressive autistic people. She knows lots of people with autism and parents. She initially did not understan...

  I am giving a presentation in November at an online autism conference called Synchrony 2020. It is organized by a group of parents of children with autism.   You can read all about it here:    https://synchronysymposium.com/   If you want to attend this virtual conference there is a coupon code for readers of this blog: - EPIPHANY I am told the coupon code applies only to Early Bird and Regular Price, not to the Day Pass.   Our doctor reader Agnieszka gave a presentation at this event last year. This year Dr Ben-Ari is going to talk about Bumetanide and I am then talking about 8 years of using Bumetanide. The proceeds go towards the Brain Foundation’s funding of autism research.   The Brain Foundation Our mission is to support translational research that will lead to the development of FDA-approved treatments and an improved standard of care for co-morbidities in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.   I suppose my mission is to ...