Its past time to get beyond labels

Its past time to get beyond these labels, Autism, Auditory Processing Disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder, ADHD, PDD-NOS, etc...

or at least reconsider what they mean. We take 10,000 children and based on an arbitrary distribution of symptoms, we divide these children up into groups. We tend to forget that these groupings DO NOT EXIST! We (the cultural, we) made them up.

This is exactly the reason why my next book is to be titled, "There is no IS Autism. It's like taking a field of Daisies and dividing them up into groups based on the number of leaves facing north, south, east, or west. Yes, we will find numerical patterns, just as we find patterns in children. But what do those patterns mean? Do they really provide any ability to predict (and control) the next group of Daisies?

I'd say no. Simply overlaying an inherently chaotic system with rational methodology or quanitification does not provide any measure of prediction and control despite the illusion that we have measured and analyzed the system.

Its time we acknowledge that simply placing a child into an artificially defined group does not give us any actual ability to predict or control the behavior of the individual child beyond a statistical probability (similarly to knowing the probable location of a quantum particle).

In the model we use at the NLC, there are no discrete groups (ADHD, Dyslexia, APD, SPD, AS, PDD, OCD, ODD, etc.). There is only a continuum from what we like to call Left-Brain (Auditory) Thinkers to Right-Brain (Visual-Spatial) Thinkers. There is also another continuum from Logic/Reason Thinkers to Feeling/Kinesthetic 'thinkers'.

Depending upon where a person falls along the spectrum on these two scales will dramatically effect how they think, feel, behave, communicate, and process information. Coincidentally, the patterns of Auditory vs. Visual and Logic vs. Kinesthetic remarkably coincide with the Meyers-Briggs patterns and the four Greek Temperments.

If you go too far from the center in any direction you will invariably exhibit a growing list of symptoms consistent with one and probably more than one group. The nice thing is that the dual spectrum model has, over the past six years provided the basis for helping a large number of children and teens overcome many of the effects of these challenges. http://www.swish4fish.com