Dear Dr. Archer,
The book, "Hope For The Violently Aggressive Child" deserves your input. It certainly seems to lead to alternative methods of healing and understanding. With an autism epidemic upon us, we as parents need to keep up with all the changes and research.
I want to personally thank Dr. Ankenman for sending me the link to help spread it to the autism community and beyond. There is hope for people dealing with the issues he is addressing.
When I was 6 years old we had new neighbors with a daughter my age. She had a little brother a few years younger who was mentally retarded. Even though he could dress himself and do some ADL's on his own, whenever he didn't feel comfortable with his surroundings he became very violent. He even chased me several times with a garden hoe.
He's permanently living in a mental hospital in California now. I haven't seen him since he was about 9 years old; he never came home after an incident. However, as he got older, he got used to me being around their home.
Sherry
Dear Sherry,
I checked out Dr. Ankenman's website that promotes and explains his book, "Hope For The Violently Aggressive Child" and his IASO (Immature Adrenaline Systems Overreactivity) treatment to help prevent violence and meltdowns.
As it's stated on the website, this is the first formal sharing of this information, so I cannot respond either positively or negatively, as I do not have any first hand experience with his work.
I do see that he has been treating developmentally disabled children for 30 years, and has devised an inexpensive therapy using alpha and beta blockers to calm children by targeting adrenaline-based overreactions.
I will be keeping an eye how this progresses. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
Dr. Archer
