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Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism | 
 enlarge | Author: Jenny Mccarthy
Publisher: Plume
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Rating:  286 reviews
Sales Rank: 5725
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0452289807
Dewey Decimal Number: 618.92858820092
EAN: 9780452289802
ASIN: 0452289807
Publication Date: August 26, 2008
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Product Description
The New York Times bestseller that is an inspiring story of hope (People) for parents of autistic children
One morning Jenny McCarthy was having a cup of coffee when she sensed something was wrong. She ran into her two-year-old son Evan s room and found him having a seizure. Doctor after doctor misdiagnosed Evan until after many harrowing, life-threatening episodes one good doctor discovered that Evan is autistic.
With a foreword from Dr. David Feinberg, medical director of the Resnick Neuro-psychiatric Hospital at UCLA, and an introduction by Jerry J. Kartzinel, a top pediatric autism specialist, Louder Than Words follows Jenny as she discovered an intense combination of behavioral therapy, diet, and supplements that became the key to saving Evan from autism. Her story sheds much-needed light on autism through her own heartbreak, struggle, and ultimately hopeful example of how a parent can shape a child s life and happiness.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 281 more reviews...
 Highly Offensive and Judgemental October 26, 2007
Kate (CA, USA)
185 out of 273 found this review helpful
I have a son diagnosed with autism and have read many books about it. This book was very offensive to me. The author has every right to try any therapy she thinks is helpful to her child but she has no right to judge parents who do not make the same choice. To describe mothers who do not use DAN doctors as huddling in a corner bemoaning their fate because their children aren't getting better is insulting. Treatments for autism are controversial and parents should make their own choices and leave other parents to do the same.
Her bashing of the medical profession comes off as a selfish tantrum. When you go into a hospital with your child he/she is all you care about but there are other parents there thinking the same thing. The hospital staff has to care for everyone. Being a hysterical demanding basket case doesn't help anyone. It often takes a while to figure out what's really going on so don't describe your doctor as "brain dead".
Since this is an emotional subject, I can see someone venting with a sprinkling of profanity. This book is loaded with it. I had to force myself to keep reading.
I would not recommend this book to anyone. It doesn't just tell a story about a mom with an autistic son. It tells the story of a hysterical, rude judgemental woman who thinks it's her way or the highway.
 An accurate story that speaks for many others October 7, 2007
Grandma (Ocala, FL United States)
80 out of 116 found this review helpful
I am the grandmother of a child with high functioning autism who was damaged by vaccines, and who has made incredible strides forward by biomedical interventions like a gluten-free diet, digestive enzymes, food supplements, and tender loving care. Jenny's story echoes that of many many mothers who were told there was nothing to be done except for therapies. Providing stressful therapies for a child who is physically sick is not always the most successful way to proceed, and in some cases it can be extremely unfair to the child. Autism is a neurobiological condition. Two of my grandsons have documented mercury poisoning...some families have a harder time processing tiny amounts of mercury. When my six year old grandson went on a gluten-free diet one month before his fifth birthday, he was toilet trained in two days. We have been laughed at, the schools and medical professionals have obstructed our progress in some cases instead of helping, and the information in Jenny's book NEEDS to come out. By the way, my PhD is in biology and I worked as a Research Associate for 6.5 years in the nutrition division of a major university. The biology behind these interventions is sound. There are strong political forces trying to keep this information from coming out. It is interesting that the public will listen more easily to a celebrity than to people who are educated in these areas but the important thing is what Jennie says: LISTEN TO THE MOTHERS! (parents, grandparents).
Compelling & Hopeful!...But Lacking a Variety of Teaching Options, Example: No Mention of the Son-Rise Program October 3, 2007
Nicole R. Seidel (Pennsylvania)
63 out of 85 found this review helpful
This is a compelling work that definitely shows there is power in asking questions. The language gets a bit rough, especially when dealing with some of the doctors. Then again, considering at one point Jenny's son was having seizures over and over for more than a day, and the hospital was just having interns treat her son (pumping him full of Valium over and over) and the pediatric neurologist was no where to be found...and neither was her husband. I think most of us would have let some words fly at that point.
Men tend to get a bit of bad rap in this. I understand that this is based on her experience and what was said by other mothers, but let's not put all men in the same boat. A lot of men step up and do what they can to help their wife and their special child. Additionally, I know of a lot of single dads out there who have made their child's recovery their mission in life. Yes, some men, like Jenny's husband, disconnect and run the other direction out of sheer avoidance of the situation, but some others may just be unsure how to help. Men want to "fix" things, and if the fix is not obvious to them sometimes they get lost (not getting a "Sorry your kid has Autism" manual either). So, moms try to be specific about what they can do to help. Don't take the "if he loved me, he'd know what I mean by more help" approach. That only leads to bitterness and stress. If you want him to work on your child's therapy, while you get a shower, tell him that. If you want him to listen to you vent without interrupting with his advice, tell him that. Whatever it is that you really want, tell him (without hostility) what you want him to do. The odds of you getting what you want increase greatly when he actually knows what he is being asked to do.
I'm rather disappointed that Jenny only talks about ABA for a teaching modality, while giving the impression that she looked into all therapies. She talks about
how she went to the book store hoping to find a book where parents recovered their child. Well, she missed "Son-Rise, The Miracle Continues" by Barry Neil Kaufman who's son, Raun, recovered from Autism in the early 1970's.
http://www.amazon.com/Son-Rise-Barry-Neil-Kaufman/dp/0915811618/ref=sr_1_2/104-6260266-6952762?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191392427&sr=1-2
Ironically, there are moments when she seems like she is about to discover some Son-Rise-like philosophies, but doesn't dig further. She stumbles upon the Son-Rise concept of Spacing, yet doesn't appear to realize what she has found. An example of this is when she asks her son "What does a cow say?" and he gives no response, but 45 minutes later, her son tugs on her pant leg and says, "Moo". Our kids need time to process requests. While 45 minutes was excessive, he still answered the question. Which Jenny was quite excited about. It was great! Also, Jenny talks about realizing that if she is going to get language from him, she needs to stop reading his mind. So, she does not open the play room door, until she gets a verbal request. Her son screams, cries and kicks for a long time, before saying "ipen". That which point the door flies open. Jenny refers to this as torturing him to get language. While the technique of "not mind reading" is on target, the philosophy is off. If she looked at it as torture, then her thoughts showed in her body language and facial expression, so her son knew he was pushing her buttons. Him knowing that he was getting to her, likely led him to carry on his tantrum longer than he would have if she would have thought "this is great, I'm going to help him find a more effective form of communication". The tantrum was his best try at getting what he wanted quickly. He likely was in no emotional distress, just trying to figure out what would work.
Also, she comments about how sad it is that there were kids she saw at UCLA doing the same bio-medical interventions and ABA, but they didn't progress like her son. Jenny just chalked it up to a difference in level of severity, not digging further to realize that not all ASD kids respond well to ABA. Children who don't do well with ABA, like our daughter, need another type of teaching modality. An estimated 48% [according to Lovaas ABA] of very young ASD kids to well with one-on-one ABA. Not all kids are receptive to behavioral modification, rather some do much better with a relationship based teaching approach. Additionally, she talks about how expensive ABA is which may lead some parents to believe they will never have enough money to recover their child. Formal training in the Son-Rise Program is much less expensive. My husband [who participated in studying the brain's processes while getting his Graduate Degree at Johns Hopkins University] and I had the formal training in Son-Rise at the Autism Treatment Center of America, and it was the best thing that we ever did for our whole family...that said with various books, DVD's and CD's, it is possible get a reasonable idea of how to set up your own Son-Rise without formal training.
There is not much discussion of how to get more eye contact. Eye contact is vital to meaningful interaction. In February 2007, 60 Minutes did a segment on UC Davis' MIND Institute's work with Autism Spectrum Disorders. 60 Minutes reported using eye tracking technology indicates that children with Autism naturally look at people's mouths instead of eyes, yet the boy, with whom Dr. Sally Rogers using ABA had taken the "in your face", "forcing interaction" (her words) approach for nearly a year, now didn't look anywhere near her face...at one point choosing to look at a wall...and not the wall behind Dr. Rogers, but 90 degrees to the side of her...from a human interaction stand point, this kid was staging a full scale revolt. The boy touched his nose on command, but he was not interacting. By contrast, moments after watching the "60 Minutes" segment, my husband (her father) went into our daughter's play room and said her name, our daughter responded by looking him right in the eyes, saying "I love you!" and giving him a kiss.
Jenny does state the Autism statistics well, so that will help awareness. Also, she goes into a lot of detail about the bio-medical interventions that she heard about and which ones she tried; mainly going gluten free, casein free, [GF/CF] and yeast free (including yeast elimination). It should be noted that Jenny found out about GF/CF from the other mothers in the ABA program; not the ABA program directors at UCLA. By contrast, we found out about GF/CF as part of our Son-Rise training at the Autism Treatment Center of America. Additionally, Son-Rise Teacher, Jonathan Levy mentions GF/CF in his book about helping kids with Autism.
Jenny also does a fair amount of shaking things up with the system that tends to say "sorry you kid has Autism" then tells parents almost nothing about treating it. She attempts create a little "what to do" manual for parents with this work, but again, for teaching purposes, Jenny tells people to look for ABA programs. Then almost as an afterthought, she states that she is looking into a "new" therapy called RDI. Actually, RDI is a relationship modality that has been around since 2001.
RDI and FloorTime are a relationship modalities. Son-Rise is a relationship modality with additional attitudinal training of the parent/caregiver and makes use of setting up a non distracting environment. The attitudinal training helps to ensure that the parent/caregiver is focused and accepting of the child and themselves. If the person working with the child is bringing a lot of baggage into the playroom, for example "if she doesn't say a word soon, I'm a bad mother"..."I can't believe my husband started complaining when he got home"..."Oh God, I hope my car doesn't die soon!" the child will likely start tuning that person out because the child senses something is not right. Thus, the person is less effective as a facilitator for learning. To get an idea of the attitude needed for working with any child [regardless of teaching modality] and a way to defuse stress and thrive with all of life's challenges; not just Autism, I highly recommend the book, "Happiness is a Choice" by Barry Neil Kaufman. http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Choice-Barry-Neil-Kaufman/dp/0449907996/ref=sr_1_1/104-6260266-6952762?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191454004&sr=1-1 The title may seem like a greeting card, but the techniques in the book are quite powerful if you apply them to your individual situation.
Jenny also makes some absolute statements. "You should never..." Now, while I definitely agree with someone stating something, like "You should never let your child play in traffic!" Other areas are not so clear cut. Jenny expresses that one shouldn't encourage their child's stims. Well, that may be true in ABA, but not Son-Rise. Son-Rise uses stims to bond with a child. It's basic friendship making skills...think about it, you like it when your friends take an interest in things you enjoy. Now, what if your friend said that something you love to do was lame and you shouldn't do it, you probably wouldn't feel so friendly. If you walk into a room and a child is just sitting there flicking a piece of paper, that child is not ready to be challenged/taught, so you start flicking a piece of paper too and really get into it. Don't just imitate, but make it fun for yourself. Eventually, the child notices realizes there is somebody who likes to do what they like to do and that's really cool! So the child starts looking your way and you celebrate that by having a look of excitement on your face and saying something like, "Wow, thank you for looking at me!" We love our daughter's stims and since we do them with her, she interacts with us more then as a result, does the stim less because she is too busy playing with us.
Barry Neil Kaufman and his wife Samahria, created the Son-Rise Program after their son was diagnosed severely autistic and mentally retarded and the doctors said that little Raun would never learn much of anything. It should be noted that while Son-Rise is a teaching modality, the Kaufman's were among first (in the early 1970's) to look at food and how it may impact Autism. My husband and I have met Raun a few times, and we can't see anything remotely Autistic about him now. Raun's friends in college (Brown University) never knew about his past condition. Raun is now CEO of the Autism Treatment Center of America
http://www.autismtreatmentcenter.org/contents/about_son-rise/staff_bios.php
Our daughter's progress in the year we have been doing Son-Rise has far out paced the previous 3 years with ABA, in terms of verbal communication (from one word requests to 7 or 8 word spontaneous sentences), eye contact (up to 30 seconds uninterrupted), demeanor (no more 3 hr. tantrums), sleep pattern (no more praying for her to finally go to sleep at 4 a.m.) and toileting (finally in "big girl underwear" and announcing when she has to go). This has been life altering!!!
Jenny talks about getting a "PhD in Google" and how when she found the things that helped her son, she kept thinking why isn't this on the 7 o'clock news every night? It took us almost 3 years of Google searches to stumble upon Son-Rise http://www.autismtreatmentcenter.org/ and I wonder why Son-Rise isn't on the 7 o'clock news every night? That said, the message of this book above all is hope. So I truly applaud that!
So, here is my recommendation, Amazon has free shipping on orders over $25. Get this book "Louder Than Words" and "What You Can Do Right Now to Help Your Child with Autism" by Jonathan Levy (mentioned above), who is a Certified Son-Rise Teacher that has worked one-on-one with over 800 special children. http://www.amazon.com/What-Right-Help-Child-Autism/dp/1402209185/ref=sr_1_1/103-7291337-5129403?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179939405&sr=8-1
This combination will give you a much more comprehensive look at Autism and treating the condition. If you want to go a little further, also get "Happiness is a Choice" mentioned above.
And to see the most comprehensive list of therapies that I have found on the Internet, check out Kyle's Treehouse: http://www.kylestreehouse.org/about.cfm It gives some basic info about all the therapies listed. The therapy pricing might not be up to date, but it will help to figure out what you want to investigate further for your child's needs.
Always remember, THERE IS HOPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
recommended for friends and family members who know parents of children with autism October 12, 2007
Rich/Rose Kish
51 out of 75 found this review helpful
There are books out right now that speak of the Autism perspective but none from someone as well known and vocal as Jenny McCarthy. Her book, as well as her celebrity status, will reach a significant portion of the population who may not know what autism really is. They might know a friend or family member who has a child with autism but does not have enough first hand experience to know what that caregiver is going through on a daily basis, let alone know how a child with autism processes information. It will also bring light to the many many books out there by parents who have been through the same struggles (older books like Judy/Sean Barron, Mary Callahan, etc).
I suppose it goes without saying these types of reviews also become a sounding board for many parents, myself included to let others know they are not alone... the average person in public cannot identify a seemingly quiet child (i.e. flat affect) as having autism because of the short period of time they are in contact. It does not mean this child is the same way all the time. People have actually asserted that they could handle our child if it were in their hands since they spent all of an hour with them! The first time my neighbors knew the extent of my child's behavior was when I had to physically remove my child from the house and outside so he would not slam into furniture during a full blown tantrum and hurt himself. He screamed so loudly that grown men came running out of their homes a block away to see if my child was in danger. Trust me, Jenny is not exaggerating any part of her story when I tell you we have experienced rages in our son, especially when something has been introduced into his gut, be it food or medicine; he seems to be unable to remove from his system and can stay for days, even weeks causing anguish for him.
This book isn't about answers or easy cures that worked for Evan McCarthy; every child with autism is different. For us, we knew we had to figure out a dietary balance for his brain, gut and severe multiple allergies and a proper early intervention program. He no longer looks blankly at a wall, stim for hours or sleeps 4-5 hours at a time. We still have a long way to go with education and diet, but we have a little boy who has shown improvement in socialization with his family and teachers because he is feeling so much better.
As Jenny says in the end, this is a book about FAITH, having faith in yourself as a parent to do the best of your ability in seeking help for your child's health and well being. Some male readers (i.e. fathers) may be put off by the disheartening tone she has towards the father of her son for most of the book but we have to remember it is not directed at fathers in general. This is a telling of her life experience so it is rather autobiographical. I highly recommend for people, who are getting this book for parents of children with autism, to read it first before passing it along... so many parents already know what needs to be done, but they need their friends and family to understand too.
Psuedoscientific Rubish September 25, 2007
Wandering Eye (California)
50 out of 105 found this review helpful
Jenny McCarthy is a bikini model with absolutely no education or other qualifications to be making scientific medical conclusions about the cause or treatment of her son's Autism. In this book she makes lots of bogus and discredited claims linking vaccinations to Autism. On her recent Oprah appearance she admitted that her research consistent of typing "autism" into Google and using her "mommy instinct" to decide which resulting pages to believe. Even a brief glance at an actual scientific-based site on the topic (such as autism-watch.org) reveals the fallacy of her arguments. The fact remains, Thimerosal (a Mercury-containing preservative) has been almost completed discontinued in vaccines, yet Autism diagnoses are up. That is the opposite of what would happen if vaccines caused Autism.
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