In two-parent homes, usually one parent is in more denial than the other, that their
child might have autism, and this causes tension in marriages.
In today's video blog, I'll discuss autism denial and how to get a parent out of denial
and into action.
Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Barbera, autism mom, board certified behavior analyst, online course
creator, and the bestselling author of The Verbal Behavior Approach.
Each week, I provide you with some of my ideas about turning autism around, so if you haven't
subscribed to my YouTube channel, you can do that now.
In the first page of my book, The Verbal Behavior Approach, I talk about the very first time
my husband mentioned the possibility of autism when [Lucas 00:00:47] was just 21 months old.
I'm gonna read you just the first page just to get a sense of what I was feeling.
“I was a registered nurse with more than a decade of experience, but when my physician
husband first mentioned the possibility that my then 21-month-old son Lucas might have
autism, I was as bewildered and angry as any parent.
To be honest, I had very little experience with autism, and it simply never crossed my
mind that my first born son was anything less than perfect.”
“So what made my husband think that my son had autism?
He pointed out that Lucas wanted to watch television too much, and he didn't play with
toys.
And that at times, Lucas simply appeared to be in his own world.
At that time, I wasn't willing to look at the possibility.
I argued that Lucas had language, a good 10 words, which wasn't that unusual for a child
under two, and that he was a warm, cuddly baby.
He didn't look like he had autism since he didn't fit the picture I had in my mind of
what autism was supposed to look like.
He wasn't banging his head, he wasn't rocking, he wasn't doing anything that I considered
to be autistic.
I told my husband on that day that he was crazy for bringing up autism and I told him
that Lucas didn't have it, and that I never, never wanted to hear the word autism again.”
And, after he mentioned it, and I told him i never wanted to hear it, I quickly went
into a deep state of denial for over a year.
This denial didn't help anyone, especially Lucas, who fell further and further behind
his peers to the point where I had to do something.
But, that year was so critical.
So, as I mentioned a minute ago, in two-parent homes, one parent is usually partially or
completely in denial about their child's delays and possible autism.
And in our case, I was definitely the one in denial about Lucas' autism, which is really
hard to believe now.
One of my first video blogs two years ago is on denial, so you may want to check that
out, too, but it's kind of ironic that I was the one in denial back then because now, I
am so far into the autism world.
I say, speak, type, write, autism, so many times a day.
I don't even know if I could keep track.
But I was in denial for about a year, and when I think back when I look at the young
children that I've worked with over the past years, I know that that year that I was in
denial was such a critical year for Lucas.
But back in the late 1990s, when Lucas was starting to show signs of autism, I didn't
know any of these techniques, either.
Now that I know the techniques, it's very exciting when I get to work with very, very
young children, because that's when we are going to see the most progress, if we intervene
at the earliest signs, and that's why I'm on such a strong mission to help parents not
be in denial.
Just get the child evaluated, whether it's autism or not, I know these techniques that
I'm teaching work like a charm.
To address autism denial, you need to realize that everyone has their own history and their
own baggage, and their own culture, and to understand the dynamics between parents, if
it's a two-parent family.
And whether it's a single parent or two-parent family, there's also grandparents and other
relatives who often come into the mix, in terms of denial.
I know my mother-in-law was one of the first people to tell my husband she thought there
might be a problem.
This was later, after he mentioned the possibility.
I know that there are other grandparents that are totally onboard or totally not onboard,
and then you have to deal with the dynamics of all that going on, too.
What do you do with a parent that's in denial?
What if you're starting to accept things yourself about your delays in your child but your partner
is not?
For me, what got me out of denial after that whole year, where I literally was not open
to discussing autism at all, was an autism mom that I went to visit who told me two things.
I didn't have Lucas there with me at the visit, and at that point I was still telling this
mom that I thought it was just a significant language delay, not autism.
But she had a child with autism, and she was telling me that even if Lucas just had a speech
delay, as I was hoping, she suggested that I needed to learn about ABA, Applied Behavior
Analysis treatment.
Since with ABA, even young children who were diagnosed with severe autism could be treated
and in some cases, actually in almost half the cases in the original [inaudible 00:06:09]
study, young children, she told me, could recover from autism.
This same autism mom, on the same day, told me that the earlier you start intensive ABA
therapy, and the more mild the autism to start, the better the outcome.
Basically, after a year in denial, this autism mom told me that there was real treatment
for kids with autism, and real hope that ABA therapy could work.
And it could work even if Lucas didn't have autism and it was just a speech delay.
Either way, I needed to get on it, I needed to learn about ABA, so literally on the way
home from this mom's house, I stopped at the bookstore and started looking into autism
and ABA, buying two books and reading them very quickly.
After reading the description of autism in these two books that were both written by
Catherine Maurice, I knew that Lucas had autism.
And more importantly, I knew that I needed to help get him diagnosed and start ABA as
soon as possible.
Today, more than two decades after my period of denial, there are more people that know
people with kids with autism.
There's less stigma, there's more evidence to show that intervening early can really
turn things around.
People are less likely to be in denial now than they were in the late 1990s, but denial
is still a big issue for many people.
There's also another big issue that wasn't so bad back in the late 1990s.
The waiting lists to get an autism evaluation and ABA therapy started are very long, so
some people are telling me, a lot of people are telling me, that just to get their child
to a developmental pediatrician for an evaluation is a nine-month to two-year waiting list.
Can you imagine if you thought your toddler might have cancer and were told that you'd
have to wait nine months to two years to get it looked at to see if it was actually cancer?
Then there's often more lines and more waiting lists for good ABA treatment.
It is just crucial that parents get out of denial as soon as possible and get on wait
lists.
And, there's a lot you can do to turn speech delays and early signs of autism around even
without a diagnosis while you're waiting for an evaluation, for instance.
If you're a parent, grandparent, early intervention professional or concerned friend, who is worried
about a one to three-year-old who's showing signs of autism, hyperactivity, excessive
tantrums or delays in language, I urge you to attend a free online workshop at MaryBarbera.com/toddlerworkshop.
When you get more information from the workshop, this will empower you to help get anyone out
of denial and share that workshop with them, too.
But you might need to watch it first and gather some more information.
Wherever you're watching this, leave me a comment, give me a thumbs up and share this
video with others who might benefit, and I will see you right here next week.