Reply to Child WAS diagnosed as having ASD by Dr. Greenspan?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Well, this probably is a digression but your post elaborates on some of the big problems with Greenspan, whom I have said repeatedly was a visionary, but a limited one.  First of all, he "hated the parents who didn't do enough."  This is true, he treated many parents with contempt.  And the problem is that if a clinician doesn't take families as they are (sometimes the mothers have to work, sometimes there are other children in the family, sometimes loving and dedicated parents simply can't do everything he prescribed) then what good is their approach?  We all know how easy it is for us moms to feel guilty about anything and everything.  How about telling them that because they didn't spend 7 hours a day in a therapeutic session with their child, their child is still autistic?  I don't think its healthy for anyone to spend that amount of time one on one with their child, and I think it is a distortion of the parent-child relationship.  But ultimately, I think it is a recipe for parental overload and family breakdown and I don't see how either of these things help the children.  And I don't see how making parents feel bad about themselves -- which he did on a regular basis -- is helpful either.

And the second problem was his war on ABA.  Now I believe that floortime was a far superior approach for my DS than ABA, and he is on the spectrum.  But it is simply wrong to say that Greenspan was not averse to ABA, he was at war with ABA -- including for kids with ASDs. Which is unfortunate because a blend of the two approaches might be perfect for some kids.

He created this great thing and it has helped tons of kids and will long outlast him.  But he was far, far from perfect.  And I think its telling that we have no parents on these boards who have come forward to say he diagnosed their children with ASDs.[/quote]

I don't think anyone said Dr. Greenspan was "perfect" so I'm not going to try to defend this strange notion that's now arisen that he was "perfect." Maybe he did treat some parents with contempt. I wasn't one of those parents so I can't validate or verify that. He seemed to me to be a doctor who put children's needs first, second, and last. He's a child psychiatrist for special needs children, not a psychiatrist for their parents. So I naturally expected him (and wanted him) to be an advocate for my child. But even then he wasn't cruel or punishing in his demands of DH and me.  He did not ask me to do floor time for 6-7 hours a day for years on end. He asked me to do it for a few months, after which he reduced that to just 4 times a day.  That wasn't an unachievable demand for DH and I. And back then my child was merely 3 years old and not in preschool. So he was home with me. What do most parents do with a three year old if they are a stay at home parent? They don't delegate all care and work to a nanny, they don't plant that child in front of a TV or computer for hours. They naturally spend a lot of time with their 3 yr old, take them to parks, playgrounds, have meals with them, maybe do activities at home with them. So it was only natural and expected that I'd be spending at least 6-7 hours a day with my 3 yr old anyway.   If I couldn't do it because of a job, he said I should hire somebody to do it for us, but did tell us that floor time with parents was the best approach. He also made sure to tell DH and me that we needed to take at least one day a week out for date night to nurture our own relationship because he recognized that doing all this and raising a special needs children could affect a marriage. I read somewhere that Greenspan thought special needs kids should have many siblings if possible because it would help them a lot. Well, DH and I chose not to have any more children for fear that we wouldn't be able to give DC our full attention if we did. Once when I was bemoaning this decision to Greenspan he told me, "Don't beat yourself over it. You guys acted in the best way you knew how." And each time we saw him he would ask us, "So mom and dad, are you taking time out for yourselves?" So none of these things show that Greenspan had contempt for parents, at least not for us. But again, we followed his instructions and with each visit he saw a nice gradual improvement with DC.

So perhaps he had contempt for those parents who he felt could do more but weren't. And let's be honest here, there may be parents who don't want to spend 6-7 hours with their child at home even if they could. Maybe those were the parents he felt frustration with. But if your child has autism or any special needs that requires attention, what do you expect your child's psychiatrist to say, "Oh I get that it's too hard and maybe you feel it's even unhealthy for you, so I don't want to push you to do floor time any more than you feel like?" It's like a dentist telling a parent whose child has fifteen cavities, "I know it's hard to enforce brushing and flossing with your kids so I don't want to pressure you to enforce it any more than would stressful for you." That just ain't gonna happen!

As far as ABA is concerned, I actually heard Dr. Greenspan say to us personally that ABA is suitable for some ASD children, but it was not suitable for our child.

To the PP who wanted to know why I, as the OP, wanted to know if there were any Greenspan-diagnosed autistic kids out there. Curiosity and basically because it surprised me to read that some people he never diagnosed children with that. Hard to believe that one of the foremost autism experts in the country would never have diagnosed any children with autism. He would become a mockery in his field if that were the case. He became an autism expert precisely because he has obviously seen and diagnosed many, many children on the spectrum.

Honestly, for those whose children were diagnosed with ASD, I hope that you found a great program for your kids and they are all improving well. We've been continuing floor time with our child and it has worked wonders. Even though he hardly has any social impairment, we plan to continue with floor time. Since ASD is especially characterized by social impairment, I can understand why Greenspan felt floor time was far superior to ABA for most ASD children. ABA doesn't seem to address the emotional piece that helps to repair the social impairment problem, but floor time does.

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