Info on Son Rise

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Here is some information on the Son-Rise program. As people can see from the third and most credible source, "parents reported that family life was more or less stressful as a result of involvement in the intervention." Additionally " and Wishart (2003) found that there were some negative effects of intervention use on the parents – most commonly, a lack of time to spend with other family members."

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http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Autism-therapies

Son-Rise

Main article: Son-Rise

The Son-Rise program was developed by Samahria & Barry Neil Kaufman, who founded the Option Institute to promulgate their more general philosophy upon which the Son-Rise program is partially based, and to provide training in this treatment approach. It is a home-based program with emphasis on eye contact, accepting the child without judgment, and engaging the child in a noncoercive way. The Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT)[9] maintains a description of the Son-Rise Program.[10] Son-Rise is an autism treatment program developed by Barry Neil Kaufman and his wife Samahria Lyte Kaufman. ... The Option Institute was founded in [1983] by Barry Neil Kaufman and his wife Samahria Lyte Kaufman. ... Socrates (central bare-chested figure) about to drink hemlock as mandated by the court. ...

Criticism about the Son-Rise program revolves around the fact that there are no scientific studies that validate its claims. Critics have also pointed out that it may provide "false hope" to desperate parents.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/autism.html

Options Therapy

Options therapy grew out of the book Son Rise (Kaufman, 1976), written by parents of an autistic child. The parents reported that they spent many hours every day mirroring the actions of their autistic child without placing demands on him. They theorized that they could enter the world of their son and in turn gradually draw him out. Following the reported success of this treatment with their son, the couple began charging fees to teach this method in workshops. Questions have been raised as to whether the boy was actually autistic (Siegal, 1996). We could locate no published studies investigating the use of options therapy for autism.

http://www.researchautism.net/interventionitem.ikml?print & ra=23 & infolevel=4

There are many anecdotal reports from a variety of sources which claim that the Son-Rise™ programme is effective in helping people with autism.

Unfortunately we have been unable to identify a single scientifically valid and reliable research study into the effects of the Son-Rise™ programme on children with autistic spectrum disorders.

The two studies we did find reported on the effects of the programme on the families of the children undertaking the programme and documented its use in the UK.

and Wishart (2003) found that there were some negative effects of intervention use on the parents – most commonly, a lack of time to spend with other family members. This is perhaps not unexpected in an intensive home-based intervention.

They also found that almost equal numbers of parents reported that family life was more or less stressful as a result of involvement in the intervention. Parents tended to report more positive effects for the family when few financial difficulties were caused by running the programme and when they perceived that the intervention was effective for their child.

Because of the lack of scientific evidence in favour of the Son-Rise programme, we are currently unable to recommend its use. However, given the amount of existing anecdotal evidence, we feel that large scale, objective research into the programme is justified.