Quoted from jonny_eh

I checked out the site, but due to my substandard understanding of French, it didn't do much for me.

I'm curious about this treatment. What is it? Who created it? Why is it not covered? What scientific evidence is there for its efficacy? (Anecdotal evidence is a FAR cry from scientific). That's a LOT of money to spend on a treatment, I hope it's very well researched!

Unfortunately, there's a lot of pseudoscience in the world of autism. When it comes to diagnosing, curing, or explaining the causes there's no shortage of crazy crackpot ideas.

Quoted Text

Pros and cons of the Program

Pros

One of the biggest advantages reported by parents doing the Program is the amount of productive and positive time they can spend with their child (Jordan and Powell 1993). Williams (2004) carried out a survey on parents doing the Program, and many noted that the family generally felt more positive and interaction amongst the whole family had improved since doing the Program (Williams 2004). The Program shares a number of features with other autism-specific programs, particularly the environmental and sensory impact and the need to develop empathy for the way the child sees the world. However, possibly the most striking feature of the Program, is the huge amount of one-to-one intervention the child can receive on a daily basis. There is research to support that such huge levels of intensive interaction can encourage development in the child, though this is not specifically in regards to Son-Rise (Jordan and Powell 1993).

Cons

Apart from the costs of the Program, a major criticism of Son-Rise is that the Options Institute has never allowed or carried out any formal research on the effectiveness of it. It argues that it does not have the resources to carry out any large scale evaluation of the success rate (Kaufman, R. 2002), but it is said to have also turned down external researchers' requests as well. Jordan (1993) points out that the informal, successful reports there have been of the Program have been with young children and there are no reports on older children (Jordan 1993). It is possible that the Program works better for some children than others, with Jordan suggesting that it may depend on a 'certain level of intellectual potential' (Jordan 1993 and Williams and Wishart 1999).

Another difficulty that parents commonly face is recruiting and retaining enough volunteers for the Program. This can be unreliable, especially around holidays when many students go home, resulting in the parents having to cover many hours of the Program themselves (Macey 1994). Williams (2004) found in her survey that the most common obstacle was the lack of, or high turnover of, volunteers. Parents worked for an average of 11 hours a week out of a possible 19 and as a result other problems arise such as not spending enough time with the rest of the family. Howlin (1997) emphasises that any benefits to a child from an intensive program must be weighed against the disruption to family life and relationships (Williams and Wishart 1999). In the UK there may also be difficulties associated with vetting procedures for those working with children.

The emphasis on gaining eye contact is also questioned by some professionals. For some people on the autism spectrum, eye contact can be distressing and uncomfortable. Luke Jackson, a teenager with Asperger syndrome, describes giving someone eye contact as feeling 'as if their eyes are burning me' (Jackson 2002 p70). He also finds it difficult to listen to someone at the same time as looking at them (Jackson 2002). This again emphasises, how the intervention may be more effective for some children than others.

Quoted from Tuborg

THat's a boat load of sewing for $18,000 man - good stuff!  

Those jean bags are neat - wonder if she could have different model sizes - you know the annorexic super model size, the rosanne barr size, and the oprah size.   Oprah-size would be random depending on her current size...