Posted By A Son-Rise Message Board Participant on October 05, 1999 at 17:52:25:
Hi all of you wonderful Son-Rise folks,
I had the strangest meeting today with a professor at a UTA, local university. I'm not sure how to proceed with this, if at all, and I'd like your thoughts. Last week, I left a volunteer recruitment flyer with the Dean of Science at that university asking for them to approve it for posting. It's been approved without problem for over a year by the Dean of Social Work but when it came up for reapproval, I thought moving over to psychology made more sense. When I returned to pick it up today, the professor they sent me to asked me to delete the line about "college credit is possible" because they would not approve one-on-one work as credit at this time but might consider it further down the road. No problem, most of my best volunteers don't do it for credit anyway. Then he asked me to talk to the professor in charge of setting up internships to share the program with him since they were considering adding more of these types of things. Of course, I was happy to do this. He took me to meet this man who was all smiles until the other professor left. Then, he suddenly started acting really hostile towards me. It was so bizarre. If I had to draw a cartoon of the perfect ABA-monster, this would have been the guy. It became obvious right way that he would not listen to what I had to say so I decided to calmly sit back and listen to what he had to say and answer any of his questions. He went on and on about research, behavior mod and that he wouldn't recommend chiropractery (don't know what this had to do with anything) He then told me the only way he'd listen to what I had to say was if he could arrange for a panel of experts from various autism programs to join me. I eagerly agreed and started to offer suggestions of good folks in the area but then he launched into a tirade about how could I expect students to learn to work with autistic kids from watching a movie. I tried to explain that the flyer only mentioned the movie as a reference and that Son-Rise offered extensive training. He cut me off by saying he didn't care about what kind of training Son-Rise offered, he's been working with autistic kids since 1972 (yea, right) then yak yak on and on, I kind of lost my focus on what he was saying at this point and started to get emotional but kept quiet. When he finally took a breath, I simply said that I could respect his views but that I thought it was very sad that he could not even consider learning about other methods for the sake of the future psychologists he was teaching given that all research on effective autism treatments was so new. Then he barked on about he had no room for "classic" treatments since they were a dime a dozen. What he meant by that I have no idea. Since I was becoming very emotional at this point and saw no need to continue, I excused myself babbling something about being sorry I was getting so emotional but if he could just see my son and all of the other children who've been helped, he may not think of them as just statistics. As I left, he sweetly said "I hope I haven't left a bad taste in your mouth for our school." Right, it certainly changed my mind about considering this school for the masters in psychology I'm thinking about getting.
Anyway, I was proud of myself for staying respectful and silent through most of his tirade but a bit unhappy with myself for not staying professional and getting weepy. As I dialogued myself on the way home, I realized that my weepiness was frustration that people like this are teaching the future psychologists parents will have to deal with when their kids are being diagnosed. Since this was the first big naysayer I've had direct contact with since Curty began making progress with Son-Rise, I think it may have rekindled some old memories about the psychologist and psychiatrist who held Mike and I hostage for an hour belittling us for flowing with our son and thereby "damaging him." Guess I still need to release that old memory :). Actually, this man is nothing to me and has no effect at all on Curty's program. I don't need his support and would rather not have any volunteers who dealt directly with him so I'm happy I got to meet him before they decided to offer credit for my program. I could just drop it very easily especially since the first professor already said he'd approve the flyer. However, I'm wondering if I should follow up this meeting with some sort of letter or something. I know I cannot make him change his mind and do not wish to even begin arguing with him but would like to plant a positive seed so that if one of his students asks about alternative programs he doesn't nip the interest in the bud.
I'd appreciate any thoughts you guys have on this. Would you forget about him or would you try to plant a positive seed? If so, how? Thanks! Gaylen
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