CNN: Teen's family transformed after autism intervention

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This was posted by a "good guy", on the alt.support.autism newsgroup:

$4,000 a day for a bully? there's any number of bad neighbors that would do it for free...

that being said, someone somewhere's got a screw loose.

Anyone else here been through A.B.A.? Some trainers are good, and some, as it is said here, are bullies. I have had both.

I didn't see any bullying. All I saw was teaching.

It appeared to get some results, although I think she'll go back to her old ways when the rewards get old.

'Marissa's mother also learned some lessons about her daughter that week. "I learned that Marissa is smart," Mary Bilson said. "Smarter than I thought."'

^ I think part of the problem is that Marissa is a lot smarter than her parents are, and knows how to milk them. I've known a few seriously autistic kids, and if their parents are smart too, then they aren't nearly as much trouble as that. They're still trouble, of course, but you can take them out in public. But then again, they aren't as likely to run off and get into hardcore drugs and wind up pregnant like so many "normal" teens do. But I guess that doesn't cause parents gray hair.

Yeah, the problem is that they automatically assumed that all of Marissa's outburts were out of her control. To many people "autistic= helpless, ret*d", and parents are no exception. They assumed "Oh, she's only autistic, she can't help it. Let's just give her everything she wants." And because of this, she learned to use tantrums to her advantage. They assumed that she wasn't intelligent enough to try and manipulate them.

One thing that a lot of parents need to learn is that there is a big difference between a legitimate stress-induced meltdown, and some brat throwing a fit because their parents wouldn't buy them something.

I have to agree with Spokane_Girl and cyberscan on this. I don't see any aggression, intimidation or anything bully-like about the therapist's approach . Sure, it would be nice to be able to work out the root of her behaviour and why she acts out, but it couldn't be easy to do. Their result seems good and the girl doesn't seem to have come to any harm.

Did it look obvious to anyone else she was choosing to have her tantrums because she knew it got her way?

I mean look how well she succeed a in a few days so it's obvious she knew what she was doing. She was given rewards so that could be why she was behaving but what happens when they all end or they get old? Would she go back to her old self?
Being given rewards got her to work on herself and control her behavior.

It's a shame how people have to look at a disability and assume they don't know any better or they don't understand their actions. I mean we are smart as anyone else and we are capable of bullying and being bad as anyone else. Having a disability doesn't stop us from being all innocent and angels.

As somebody who used to have tantrums (albeit somewhat psychotic tantrums) to get attention and to get people to notice me because nobody paid attention to "that ret*d", it seems to me that the key is NOT REWARDING the deviant behavior. For me, I went away to college in a different city, and all of a sudden nobody rewarded me for tantruming, and I was promptly tossed out of school, so I realized that I had some control over myself. I then went to a shrink and therapist and it took a while but I rewired the paths in my brain so that I didn't have this Pavlov's Dog response to things. That's what's really wrong with this girl, she's trained. I hate to say she's trained like you train a dog, but it's the same concept-she gets rewards for bad behavior, so that's what she does.

The key is to not reward bad behavior instead of simply giving her sweets or whatever for good behavior. She needs to learn that bad behavior will be punished. Her parents didn't do that. They rewarded her. She plays by a different set of rules due to bad behavior, which is the worst thing they can do. She should play by the same rules as her siblings. When she tantrums, just put her in a room until she calms down or something. It doesn't need to be total sensory deprivation like in schools, but she shouldn't have things to break and such. I think she's very smart, and she knows what works. If it doesn't work anymore, then she eventually will stop doing it. Stopping at 13 is much easier than at 23, as I had to do.