Change is possible.

Recently I have been talking to a number of parents who think that they have a time limit on how long they can help their children.

One Mom said that she is nervous because her child is 12 years old, and she has only 2 years left until he is 14 to help him make changes. When I asked her what happens when he is 14, she said "oh well everyone knows that once a child hits puberty then they cannot learn anymore new things." I asked her who everyone was, and she named a doctor she had talked to.

Another Mom who has child who was four told me that she only had 9 more months to get her child to speak and she felt that the "clock was ticking, and she had to do more." When I asked her why, she said that she had been told that he would not be able to speak if he had not learnt to before the age of five, and that everyone thinks that.

Interestingly enough I then talked to a Mom who had a child who was 6 years old, and she said that she, " was panicking because when her daughter turns 7 then she looses the capacity to learn to speak." When I asked her why she said that again, that it was a known fact, and that all her daughters teachers told her this.

Here at The Autism Treatment Center of America, not only do we not believe that there is an age limit on when a child can learn to speak, or learn anything. We know this to be true from our experience. I have worked as a Son-Rise Program Teacher for the last 17 years, and worked with over a thousand different children of different ages and different diagnosis. I have seen with my own eyes a teenager aged 16 say his first sentence, a woman of over thirty asked for ' A cup of tea" for the first time, a few amongst many who have learn to speak after the age of 5 or 7. If these children can do it, there is no reason why others cannot too.

These past two weeks we have been working with a man of 32 , in The Son-Rise Program Intensive. In under two weeks his interactive attention span has nearly doubled, and he has greatly reduced his need to Vomit. Before he came here he would walk around with a basket to vomit into, and vomit numerous times a day. He has not vomited for 5 days. These are significant changes, at the age of 32.

So, if you hear yourself saying, "oh everyone knows that a child cannot learn to speak after a certain age, or everyone thinks that my child is too old to change. Rethink this, because here at the Autism Treatment Center of America, we do not believe that.

Because we do not believe that, we then reach out and offer opportunities to children and adults of all ages and all abilities, to change, and with those opportunities, possibilities for growth are abundant.