Autism Recovery:TV Character

 I guess being autistic has now become the IT characteristic for new TV characters. But I’m going to focus on Max Braverman from Parenthood. I know a lot of people love that show, and I do TiVo it myself, but I’m pretty disappointed with how they portray Max’s family life. I get the fact that this is a TV show and they don’t want to show it exactly how it is because that may not be so interesting. But I gotta say there are some general inconsistencies and errors that really bug me. 

1. They don’t discover Max’s autism diagnosis until he gets so overwhelmed in school that he knocks over a fish tank. Being in California, one state with an extremely large number of children on the autism spectrum, I would suspect the teachers had some knowledge of autism and what it means to be on the spectrum. Obviously this outburst was not the first he had. Also, his sister, in a later episode says she knew something was wrong because life always revolved around what Max wanted. These are not dumb people, how did they, their extended family, teachers and pediatrician not figure this out earlier? It is like his autism dropped from the heavens.
2. Max gets an ABA therapist and within a few sessions he can approach and engage other children. Within one school year he is ready to be mainstreamed with what appears to be no supports at all. His therapist quickly leaves and is not replaced! This just doesn’t happen. Families go through years of ABA and in school therapy. They haven’t given him any supports and all of a sudden he can go to class and not knock over fish tanks? Doesn’t make sense. Families dealing with autism have tons of therapy and tons of therapists. Our own family has 3 out of school therapists and 4 in school therapists.
3. Apparently his cousin, Amber, is an autism whisperer, because she spends one week of detention with him and teaches him how to read people’s facial expressions, use appropriate inflection and apologize in a manner that seems sincere. All from watching celebrities and political figures on YouTube during detention for pushing his cousin. We need her in our home, because we are still working on all of this after 4 years. Amazing!
4. He is brilliant! Every single autistic human being is too, if you didn’t know. They are all savants. No, in reality they aren’t. There is a subset of autistics that are savants, and many do have narrow, intense interests, but they all aren’t math wizards like Max Braverman. They run the full range of intelligence, you just hear more about the savants.
5. Lastly, this isn’t exactly about Max, but instead about the family, the Lessings, they turned to for additional autism support. The show made this family out to be goofs and quacks because they used the gluten free/casein free diet and were adamant about using alternative therapies to help their son. The diet does work for at least 20% of those families that try it. That is one in five according to the Johns Hopkins IAN project. That is not an insignificant amount, and the IAN Project even admits that the numbers are probably low because not everyone tries the diet. It could be higher if more used the protocol.

Stay well.