Respectfully disagree w/needs to stay...

Sometimes things written 9 years ago are still relevant. I use these techniques every day with my son who, is 7 with pdd-nos, and I never read this article. My problem with your comment is that, yes, people with autism must be accepted into society - but some, like my son, have such anxiety that it paralyzes them and/or causes severe meltdowns. It is most decidedly a challenge for us and for so many others! I never want to change who he is as a person because he is a wonderful, loving, intelligent, quirky-like-his-parents child, we did however decide to medicate him to help alleviate these anxieties and reduce the number of meltdowns. It has allowed him to be the type of person that society can accept, whenever society gets to that point.

And we're the lucky ones! Don't forget about those families that have children with lower-functioning autism, many of these kids can't be toilet-trained, some smear their feces over everything in the house, some have to wear helmets so they can't repeatedly hit thier heads on the wall.

So please don't suggest that parenting a child with autism need not be a challenge, because there are millions of us who know otherwise.