To be totally honest, I did not see or hear every minute of the show because, as is always the case in our home, the volume level in our house is incredibly high. And I don't mean the tv. DVR'ing shows is not something we do for one very simple reason: The show would never get watched. We are exhausted by the end of the day and whereas most people put their children to bed and then watch tv or do other things that need to be done, we do not. When the kids' heads hit the beds, so do ours.
From what I did see, I got the impression the show was made more for people in general, not parents of children on the autism spectrum. While this may sound disappointing to me, really, it's not. I am all for any type of educational programming dealing with autism, no matter who it aims to have as the intended target audience.
One thing I was impressed by was the choice of the child who was the main focus of the program. Although I think the narrator mentioned the child had moderate to severe autism, the boy who the narrator spoke of for the majority of the program did not exhibit the stereotypical symptoms of autism that I think a lot of people think of when they hear the word "autistic." He was not running around flapping his arms and acting all haywire. He wasn't out of control. He simply had some problems with being non-verbal, a tad sensitive to noises and things out of his control, and some other things. It is really important to me for people to understand that not all children on the spectrum exhibit Rain Man-like symptoms. As a matter of fact, most spectrum parents are flat out offended by the mere mention of such a disaster of a film. While some people with autism are savants, like the main character of Rain Man, the majority are not. I do not have any numbers in front of me at the moment, but I recall reading something awhile back that said that less than one percent of autistic people are savants.
The aspect of the show that I found most disappointing was its negligence in providing a broad perspective on treatment options for autism. There was one doctor the producers interviewed and his opinions were the only ones offered. Although I do not recall his name, he practices at the MIND Institute, mentioned in this article. The article makes a reference to gluten-free, casein-free diets and that research has "found that many children on the restricted diets become nutritionally deprived." To which, I would reply is most likely a result of the parents of those children not doing their "homework" per se, and not following the diet properly and in the manner it was intended. The doctor interviewed in the show did not go into any great detail mentioning the diet, but I wonder if he feels the same way about the diet as others at the MIND Institute do.
My family and I have been on a gluten-free and casein-free diet for months now and I dare any doctor to declare my children as nutritionally deprived when we feed them healthy servings of meat and poultry, vegetables, and fruits every single day. I would even go so far as to say my children are better off nutritionally than probably the vast majority of American children. When, or perhaps I should say if, the medical community in this country finally realize what doctors in many other first-world countries already know - that dairy products are not a human dietary necessity and that grain products did not play a role in the diets of ancient mankind - I think there are going to be a lot of extremely embarassed "well-educated" professionals out there. But that's an entirely separate
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