My daughter, Madison, recently completed the Davis Autism Approach Program with Marcia Maust as her Facilitator. I can’t say enough good things about this program or Marcia.

Madison is eleven and has Asperger Syndrome. This program seems to fit her needs so well; it has definitely brought her to a better understanding of the world and her place in it. I continue to see her evolving in small, subtle ways. I am sure that the positive changes it has brought will help her to feel more confident and help her in her life’s journey.

Marcia has been a joy to work with and has connected to Madison in such a way that the program doesn’t feel like work. Madison has really enjoyed going through the program with Marcia. She loves the way they explore the concepts that she is learning and apply them to real life situations. It really ties everything together for her. I think the fact that Ron Davis can relate to Autism on such a personal level makes this program effective. It touches on deficits that I knew were there but couldn’t really name. It’s like building a puzzle and realizing that there are a few pieces missing; this program has helped us find some of those pieces and put them into place. I am thankful for this program and for Marcia; it has definitely been a very positive experience for our daughter and our family!

Madison’s Mom – Pennsylvania USA

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From the outset, Ron’s work in autism made sense of our observations of Shey. As unique as his insights were, his work sat in perfect harmony with our educational backgrounds.

It provided the missing puzzle pieces and provided a way out of the labyrinth. Since having worked through the Davis Autism Approach, Shey has blossomed, and as his confidence over life has developed, ours for his future has too.

Guy & Suzanne
Christchurch, New Zealand

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'He has more self-esteem; he is strong in conversations now.'

I had to make sure that, for his birthday, people came to visit him. This year (after finishing the Davis Autism Approach) he said, “don't worry, mum, I invited some people.” I was astonished: there were around 40 people at his party, and I hadn't invited one of them!!

Comment from his grandmum: “He used to walk with his back bent, as if he carried a heavy weight. Now he stands straight and proud. He looks at you into your eyes, with very clear eyes. He changed a lot!

Comment from mum of 17-year-old male – Nederland

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We are glad to write about the results we have experienced from the Davis Autism Approach.

My daughter, Savannah, age 10 now, was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome in kindergarten and our most recent assessment showed that she didn't fit into the autism spectrum at all anymore. Probably the best way to explain what the program has done for her is the before and after picture:

Before:            

Now: 

There is no doubt that the "seed of genius" is manifesting itself and she knows it! One of the kids at school was bragging about something and she replied, "Oh yeah... well I'm autistic and that's even better!" Needless to say he was speechless! However, the program did not only help Savannah fill in what was missing, it also made her aware of the gift that she has always had.

The teachers that had worked with my daughter prior to the program were amazed when they worked with her a few months after completing the program. Everyone was asking us what we had done and commented on how "comfortable and aware" Savannah has become.

She is still progressing, even after two years of completing the concepts. 

We are so grateful to Ron Davis and the program for helping our daughter participate fully in life. There is no question that she is going to make her mark in the world and help make it a better place. Thank you Ron!

Stacey - Canada

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What the Davis Autism Approach gave my Autistic son was the ability to choose to relate in our world or relate from his world.  Once we understood his Autistic world and our fear no longer existed we allowed him to experience his Autistic space without judgment, just celebration.

 Contented mum – NZ

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Jack age 10 - Day 9 Autism programme

"It's changing the way I think, it's just clearing me out and making me focus on my work, like I know the answers to things.  It's like building the house of knowledge and each step is like a new room of knowledge.  I can think a bit quicker and every bit counts."

Day 14:  “After every one of these models I make, I notice more detail about life."

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'These are the things I am looking for during the last years, I'm very happy with this!' 
50 year old male with Aspergers - Nederland

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This program has “made everything in my life good”.
Shey age 10 - NZ

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I have a girlfriend now … what could be better!
18 year old male – New Zealand

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Garrett: 14 years, Virginia USA
 
"Before the Davis Autism Approach, everything was blurry and hard to control, but after the program it was clear and easy to control myself, if not the rest of the world."

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Allie:15 years, West Virginia USA

"The autism program is cool and fun. You learn new skills like how to make new friends by using clay. Life would be a whole lot tougher if I had not gone through the program."
 
From Allie's mother:
 
You know I can't put into any one sentence how I feel. I am so grateful that Ron had the passion to devevlop the program for all of us.

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This program is the brainchild of and has been in the process of being developed for several years by Ron Davis, developer of Davis Dyslexia Correction®, a method of helping people with dyslexia to read. Ron, age 65, is uniquely qualified to develop and implement an autism program – he is brilliant and autistic.

As an infant, Ron was diagnosed as Kanner’s baby – autism was first identified and described by Dr. Leo Kanner. (Dr. Kanner is considered in psychiatric circles to be the father of child psychology and founded the Johns Hopkins Children’s Psychiatric Clinic in 1930. Dr. Kanner’s 1943 paper, “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact”, together with the work of Hans Asperger, identified the characteristics of autism spectrum disorders.)

At age 12, Ron did not speak and was labeled “mentally retarded and uneducable.” At age 17, Ron received another diagnosis of “genius” as he was tested to have an IQ of 170. Because of his incredible ability to visualize, Ron went onto have a successful career as an engineer, the beginning of several successful business ventures. Ron sees autism not as a disability but as a manifestation of great intelligence and remarkable perceptual abilities.

When Ron learned to speak in his teens, he shortly thereafter realized he was dyslexic. After several years of struggling with dyslexia, he figured out a way to correct the visual distortion associated with dyslexia, enabling him to read. He did so, in part, by changing the location in the vicinity of the head from which he visualized seeing the world. He calls this location the mind’s eye. This technique, along with others, became a foundation for the Davis® Dyslexia program that has been used by professionals around the world for the past 27 years.

Because dyslexics are visual thinkers, they become confused when viewing words that they can’t visualize. That confusion leads to perceptual distortions which Ron refers to as disorientation. By modeling the meaning of abstract words (such as “and” and “the”) in clay and through exercises with these models, students are able to visualize abstract concepts and eliminate the confusion that triggers disorientation.
Ron realized while dyslexia was a form of disorientation, autism was disorientation on a much larger scale. While people with dyslexia would become confused with what their eyes see and what they think they should see while reading, autism was complete immersion and living completely within a world of sensory distortion.

Ron deduced that a longer-term, more intensive program than his dyslexia program was needed to help people with autism. Ron says that he has few memories before the age of 12 because he did not have a developed sense of self and did not differentiate himself from the rest of the world. This sense of self, which most children develop during early childhood, was necessary to provide the cognitive framework which serves as a reference point from which to make sense of the outside world and store and retrieve memories. Ron uses the analogy of this basic framework as being like a computer operating system through which people run their lives. According to Ron, every action a person takes supports and reinforces this “operating system” that defines who they are as an individual. Once the identity concepts are in place and have had a chance to be more integrated into the individual, relationship concepts complete the program, enabling the individual to interact with others.

What Ron has brilliantly figured out, is how to put into place a new “operating system” that provides the cognitive framework to help make sense of and interact with the world, in combination with techniques to help correct sensory distortion and relaxation techniques to address the stress that comes from excessive sensory input flooding in, enabling the individual to maintain connection with the outside world. This approach provides powerful tools for individuals within the autism spectrum to take control of their autism. An individual with autism can use the gifts that come with autism to their advantage, as Ron has done with his ability to visualize engineering designs and my son, Will, has done within the realm of music - or to shift to a more neurotypical undistorted mode of perception to accomplish goals such as more efficiently learning academics, getting along in the world and interacting with others.

My son, Will, as I mentioned, just completed this program. Ray Davis spent a week working with Will in May of 2007 and three days in May of 2008. Will appears to have been a best case scenario for this program – some children have taken a year or more to complete the course and some are still in stages of completion – Will went through the program in record time. After the week with Ray, Will had several abstract concepts to complete on his own. Will was motivated to complete the concepts on his own and then began asking to see Ray to work on the final piece of the program.

Will was able to meet with Ray again in May of 2008 to complete the final concepts for relating to others. Now Will has the basic concepts underlying his identity and the concepts underlying relationships to others that he needs to interpret and interact with the world around him.

One of the things that we personally found remarkable about this program is that about 8 months into it, at age 15, Will had a breakthrough – he figured out how to visualize moving his thinking from the back of his head to the front of his head, and for what Will says is the first time, “switch off” his autism.

Will has said that when his autism is switched on he has musical ability and perfect pitch (Will just received a full scholarship to a local university’s summer jazz camp for talented teenagers to perform piano in ensembles). When Will switches his autism “off” he says he is more physically coordinated, better able to relate to others, and it is easier for him to learn from books and people lecturing, but is unable to tell one musical note from another. Will has also indicated that reading is much easier for him than ever before and he is doing a considerable amount of reading in areas of interest to him (he is currently reading a biography of Harry Truman and a book analyzing the music in Alfred Hitchcock’s films).

It is Ray’s suggestion that Will experiment with his new abilities when working on academics and when interacting with other people. We will watch and observe how Will makes use of his new operating system over the coming months, but already feel that the Davis Autism Approach has yielded unexpectedly significant results that have the potential to make a huge positive difference in Will’s future.

In its current implementation, the Davis Autism Approach appears to be most effective with individuals of all ages (including adults) who are high functioning, verbal, and able to interact with others. Also it involves a time commitment of one or more adults who would be trained to implement the program one-on-one with the child and to work with a qualified Davis Facilitator to monitor the program’s implementation.

Awesome Work by Cathy Dodge Smith, Ed.D., Davis Autism Approach Facilitator/Coach in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.

Working with clients using the Davis Autism Approach is the most awesome work I have ever done. It is like watching miracles unfold before my very eyes. During the first part of the program, individuation, I begin to see glimpses of the real person behind the autism mask, or noise, during brief periods of what we call orientation, and what most people would likely refer to as being totally present. In the beginning, such moments are brief and fleeting. One must be very alert to catch them and respond.

I had one little seven-year-old in my office who was not much interested in what I had in mind for our agenda. For over an hour, he wandered around, chatted incessantly, touched things, and was generally in his own world. Even though he did address me from time to time, or ask me questions occasionally, he was not much interested in my responses, often not even waiting for my reply. Finally, he stopped in mid-stream, came to my little table where I was waiting for him, and looked me in the eye and said clearly, “OK. What are we meant to be doing?” I told him what I wanted him to do, and he sat right down and did it. He was totally with me for about five minutes, and then got up and was “gone” again.

As individuation becomes more stable, the fleeting moments of orientation gradually expand, and the amount of time spent “gone” gradually is reduced. This is not something I am doing; it simply happens as the client becomes more comfortable being in an oriented state, and knows how to get there voluntarily.

The next segment of the program, identity development, allows the client to progress quickly (relatively speaking) through the stages of normal development that he has missed, in part or in whole, because of not being totally present in the real world. As we explore these concepts together, the real world becomes more and more known to the client.

I was once working with a young woman (26 years old) on the concept of “time”. When I talked about the earth rotating and us being on it,, she looked up with a beautiful expression on her face, and said the she suddenly felt “OK” and more balanced and connected being on this earth. She then told me that she gets goose bumps when she gets oriented, that things look so much clearer, not all fuzzy and shimmery.  Her mother told me that, a short time later, she had arranged to meet my client for dinner at a restaurant. “Usually she is at least ½ hour late and is often annoyed when I call her. This time she calls slightly before she’s due and tells me she’ll be there in 10 minutes. And she is!” This represented a huge change for this client, one that may enable her eventually to become employed. She has always lost any job she could find because she could never be on time. 

I had a similar experience with a young man as he completed work on the concept of “sequence”. He had never been able to follow even a simple sequence of steps, such as a written recipe, or a written note telling him how to go to the grocery store, buy one item, and get back home. The look on his face as he repeated the final mastery step for sequence was one of pure joy, delight, surprise, and peace.

Once identity development has been completed, the last segment of the Davis program is social integration. Once more, it is awesome to witness the awakening of awareness to how relationships work. One young lad told me he “really needed this”, because he had always been totally frustrated by the things he was expected to know, but never told. He discovered these are what are usually referred to as “unwritten rules” of social interaction. We spent delightful time together trying to think of such “unwritten rules”, and writing them down!  

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Allie: Happy, Included and Confident By Gale Long, Davis Autism Facilitator/Coach in Elkview, West Virginia, USA Facilitator Observations – February 2008

As I listened to Ronald Davis discuss the characteristics of autism in his very first training class in a small classroom in Burlingame, California, my mind instantly went to a bright young lady whose Dyslexia Correction Program was scheduled in a couple of weeks. At our first meeting, she guardedly entered my office for an assessment. The purpose of the meeting was to determine if she would be a good candidate for a Davis Dyslexia Correction Program. However, I began on that day to notice things about Allie that made me wonder if her struggles were beyond the scope of the Program.

As she entered the office, she hid behind her mother slightly and clung to her hand as though, if she let go, something terrible might happen. But her curiosity, was evident by the way she watched me through beautiful blue eyes and long lashes. As she began to become more relaxed in my presence, a giddiness took over her and she began to squeal and jump up and down. With obvious excitement, she shared some experiences with me, but I had so much difficulty understanding her speech that I had to pretend I knew what she had said.

I knew from our meeting that Allie would be able to overcome her difficulties with dyslexia, but the images of her unusual conduct and communication remained vivid in my mind. Now, as I listened and watched Ron Davis share in our Autism Approach training session, I was confident that I would love for Allie to be my first Davis Autism Approach student.Mother’s Observations – 2008

I recall thinking, as we completed the Davis Dyslexia Correction Program, that Allie now had the tools she needed to deal with her educational difficulties. I was just thrilled with the results of Allie’s week-long Davis Program and our follow-up activities. Even though I had hoped Allie would become a better reader, I was pleased that some of the speech issues were improving. I knew that Gale was receiving some training in dealing with Asperger Syndrome. I had thought about it and after researching it on-line I’d come to the conclusion that Allie probably had Asperger Syndrome. None of the other professionals I’d consulted had ever mentioned this possibility. When Gale told me she was learning about these issues, I hoped Allie could work with her. Gale approached me one afternoon and said, “Sabrina, has anyone every used the word ‘Asperger in connection with your daughter’s challenges?”

My heart leaped. I was so excited. My mother and I had been thinking about it for years. We originally had no hope that someone would be able to help Allie overcome the major issues in her life. We had been dealing with some of them for many years through therapy and medication. Allie had many of the symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome. Besides the speech issues, she struggled with rage and anger, was easily over stimulated by sounds, crowds, lights and smells. Her motor skills were underdeveloped making normal activities such as bike riding and walking difficult. Her obsessions and compulsions were issues that made daily activities difficult. Social cues were missing, making it hard for her to read facial expressions, body language and the rules of conversation. It was a tendency of Allie’s to be overly friendly. She had unusual sensitivities to light, foods and touch. Her sensory integration disorders caused a need for therapy for several years. As with most autistic individuals, she had difficulty with transitioning when changing activities, as well as difficulty making and keeping friends.

Could it be possible that a program built around clay concepts could be the solution for Allie’s struggles? We had spent 14 years looking for an answer and we weren’t going to turn down this opportunity. Of course we would allow Allie to do this program. It was destined that she would become Gale’s first Davis Autism Approach client. Let’s introduce you to Allie. She was not speaking at two-years-old. She was almost 20 months old before she began to walk. When she did, she would run into walls and tables. It was like she had no perception that they were there. At times, she would fall over backwards and hit her head. She had no fear of walking off a porch or into a swimming pool, so she had to be constantly watched.

At age 4, she was still not talking, was incontinent with bowels and bladder and had no concept of soiling herself. The awareness was absent. I recall an incident in Kinderdance where Allie was in a performance. She stood perfectly still in the dance line while watching the others perform. She did not like to interact with others, in spite of the desire to be liked and be a part of the group. We were in a state of constant stress during her elementary years. The school had no plan to help her. They did not know how to deal with her in the classroom. The students didn’t know how to interact with her. They would make fun of her and because she had no verbal skills, she would become physical with objects. Allie later described these experiences as “having a meltdown.” At one point, she said to the teacher “I have a pencil and I’m not afraid to use it.” When explaining to her mother why she said that, she said that she had heard it on TV. She was expelled for the incident. She went to a behavioral school in 4th grade for part of the school year. That school helped her learn how to interact with other children, to a degree. When entering middle school, Allie was faced with chaos, anxiety, wanting to fit in, feeling rejected, having no friends and being bullied. The professionals informed me that I needed to accept the fact that Allie would never be better. We were told that at this age, her reading would not improve any more. I was told to begin making accommodations for her. The future looked bleak both educationally and socially. But there were those who insisted that Allie was intelligent. At this point we became aware of Davis Dyslexia Correction. Fortunately, as Allie completed her Program, Davis was launching a program for autism. We were thrilled that Allie would be one of the first to take advantage of the Davis Autism Approach. Facilitator Observations – 2009: One Year After Completing Davis Autism Approach

I recently met with Allie for an after-school meal. As the students were dismissed from class, I noticed Allie calmly walking down the sidewalk chatting and laughing with a friend. What a difference! A little over a year ago, as I picked her up for our autism sessions, it was common to see the others bullying her or ignoring her in the playground. Many times, she had been crying. My heart ached for her as she struggled to fit into her world.Today, Allie has many friends who treat her as an equal. Allie just recently took part in an overnight trip and a day of rafting. In previous years, attending her summer care at the local YMCA, this opportunity was available, but Allie had never had a friend and didn’t have the skills to take part in an overnight experience. So this was huge – being able to overcome fears and inadequate social skills to actually enjoy a wonderful day with friends! Allie still struggles at times, but she has the tools and the ability to assess situations and respond appropriately. I have learned lessons from Allie as she has taught me to understand how difficult things are from the autistic perspective.

As we ended our dinner together, I asked Allie’s mother if she could tell me three words to describe Allie before her Autism Program. She replied: isolation, frustration and sadness. The three phrases that she uses to describe Allie now: hope, lightness in attitude and joy. I anxiously awaited Allie’s response to the same questions. She carefully thought about it and told me her three words: sadness, loneliness and misery. Today she says she feels happy, included and confident.As they begin the Davis Autism Approach, children have many and varied symptoms. This program addresses the needs of each student where she (or he) is and provides the appropriate skills and tools. These tools allow them to deal with difficult areas of life, but they also help them become fully involved with life and the world around them. With the Davis Autism Approach tools in hand, it becomes possible for the student to no longer be simply an observer of life – but a participant.

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