Search Results - Kaufman, Barry Neil

Son-Rise

Son-Rise is a home-based program for children and adults with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities, which was developed by campaign manager Barry Neil Kaufman and his wife, Samahria Lyte, for their son Raun, who was diagnosed with autism and is claimed to have fully recovered from his condition. The program is described by Autism Speaks as a "child-centered program that places parents as the key therapists and directors of their program".

Parents are trained at the Kaufman's Autism Treatment Center of America, the division of The Option Institute in Sheffield, Massachusetts that teaches The Son-Rise Program. There, the Kaufman family and their fellow staff members teach families and professionals how to be aware of their attitudes—a core principle of the therapy—for bonding and relationship building, as well as creating a low-stimulus, distraction-free playroom, so the autistic child can feel secure and in control of the over-stimulation. Parents and facilitators imitate an autistic person's exclusive and restricted stimming behavior until the autistic person shows social cues for willing engagement. Then encouragement for more complex social activities is done in a non-coercive way. If the autistic person moves away from social interaction, the facilitator gives the autistic person their space by using parallel play to gain the child's or the adult's trust. To encourage skill acquisition, the program uses the autistic person's particular motivation for learning.

The program's developers claim that if the parents learn to accept their loved one without judgement they will teach themselves to interact with others, and that this will allow them to engage in social interaction because they chose to learn the skills. A 2003 study found that involvement with the program led to more drawbacks than benefits for the involved families over time, though there was a strong correlation between patterns of intervention implementation and parental perceptions of intervention efficacy. A 2006 study found that the program is not always implemented as it is described in the literature, which means it will be difficult to evaluate its success and failure rate. Provided by Wikipedia