Autism Cured? - Whitney's Story

[George Giles]

Autism. I heard the diagnosis but my heart raged against what my mind
knew to be true. I was aware of the possibility as the signs were
clear, but still I was devastated. But such was the situation that
despite being a world renowned brain specialist and an expert in
communication problems, I faced a blank wall becoming simply another
mother faced with a difficult diagnosis.
I clearly remember the day I was in the hospital about to give birth
to my third child. The contraction inducing drugs had been
administered and I excitedly looked forward to meeting my new baby. I
focused on my breathing, the doctor's instructions and the fetal heart
monitor. Suddenly, the room cleared and the doctor spoke. "The
umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby's neck four times...listen
carefully to my instructions," he paused. "Cheri, this is the hardest
thing you will ever be asked to do." A few months later, I was
beginning to suspect that wasn't true.
Whitney seemed to have no emotional responses. While the other older
children would cuddle with me, their youngest sibling was lost in his
own world. It was as if he was a shell for whom his parents or
siblings did not exist.
Having worked with thousands of stutterers, apraxics and stroke
patients as well as children with delayed language, I was faced with a
major question. Did Whitney have a disease that would need a cure or
did Whitney have a group of symptoms that could be trained. If I could
figure out the symptom clusters as I had done with the other
communication disorders, then perhaps, Whitney could learn to become
symptom free.
I discerned a pattern'Whitney, had a knack of returning to places he
had been to earlier. He was also always ripping apart his toys and
examining their working. Most importantly, he was problem solving.
This was no mentally retarded boy. He seemed to accessing his visual
memory and his visual mechanical thinking.
My 15 years of research before Whitney's birth had fine tuned my mind
to catch the pattern -this would be the way to pierce the walls of
silence surrounding my darling son. My other children, Vanessa and
William and I worked together to reach William through his silent
visual world.
Soon a new educational system soon evolved. The educational tools were
pictures, videos, logos. I discovered that many children with symptoms
of autism were also highly visual and have at least one highly visual
parent.
Both parent and child think in a color world of images rather than
words. The parents are in fields like engineering, architecture,
medicine, computers, art, and business. They are extremely capable of
intelligent thought and communication but they think in pictures first
and then convert to words. The autistic child of the visual parent may
have visuals that are over-working to the point that language in under
developed or as in Whitney's case non-existent.
This inability to process and produce language can lead to onset of as
many as 50 symptoms in behavior, coping and communication. From
Whitney's change profile, I isolated symptoms that characterize
prognostic predictors of becoming symptom free.
Our goal for Whitney was to help him become symptom-free and to enable
him to become his own advocate. Soon my son was telling a committee,
and winning his argument, that he no longer needed special education
support. Whitney was right. By high school he was one of the bright
kids of the school, playing championship football for an outstanding
team, winning state honors in science and acting and producing plays.
Now Whitney is studying for his degree in Chemical Engineering in New
York City. To hear Whitney tell his own story go to www.ebrainlabs.com
The mother in me struggled against the doctor in me when considering -
whether to share my family's traumatic experience with the world or
let it be a closed chapter. This was particularly so as the topic was
unpleasant to Whitney. The mother wanted to protect my child and honor
his wishes but what of the other mothers who were enduring this
challenge?
Whitney, himself, reconciled this dilemma for me as he feels strongly
that his story should be used to help others. He and his siblings
helped me write a book Maverick Mind. The book's revelations of my
path breaking discovery were hailed by the scientific community and
harried parents alike. The visual thinkers or Highly Visual Minds are
now called Mavericks.
In the video, Understanding the Maverick Mind (www.ebrainlabs.com),
Whitney's older brother William explains the method, "The visual
thinking system is so strong that we harness it by training that it
can be completely independent of language. Mavericks improve when we
are able to teach the visual and verbal thinking systems to work
together in synergy, molding the two systems to function as companion
partners. As the harmony between these systems increases, we can teach
the verbal system to work alone, which allows the Maverick to become
symptom free."