Noteworthy Interviews

 This blog post is partly informational, but mostly for my own records.  Much of our fall was consumed with news-teams, cameras, and reporters.  My children have been part of various studies at the UC Davis MIND Institute over the years.  They have benefitted tremendously from some of these studies.  A particularly interesting and important project that Noah was part of when he was in infant, called the Infant Start Project, has recently released its findings, which received national attention.  As a result, hundreds of articles were published, as well as a number of news interviews.  It was a small study, so I received a handful of phone calls, and did quite a few interviews here at the home.  The two biggest television interviews we participated in were for the Dr. Oz show (which still has yet to aire...if it ever does), and a 14 minute piece for the America Tonight show on Al Jazeera America (unfortunately this one was on cable and only available for viewing for about a week afterwards).  We were also featured in an article for the local Sacramento Bee, found here, as well as a news piece on local Fox 40 found here.

I also interviewed with several news journals including CNN, WebMD, and Time Magazine.
The reason for all the media attention, Noah was showing signs of Autism at 9 months old.  When Noah was 10 months, I began a 12 week parent training program where Dr. Rogers and Dr. Vismara trained taught me various skills to work intently on with Noah.  He was showing marked progress by 15 months, and no signs of autism by 18 months.  I considered it a tender mercy and wonderful blessing.  We moved to DC shortly after.  As it turns out, 6 out of 7 other infants who participated in the study had the same results as Noah.  They are now symptom free and typically developing 3-4 year olds.  This study has given many hope for the future of Autism research.  My participation in all the interviews was primarily to assist the MIND institute in public awareness, so that they can receive the funding they need for more research, to further investigate their hopeful findings.  An added benefit: My kids of course enjoyed all the cameras and seeing themselves on TV!