I first met Cherry Arnold of Big Orange Films (www.bigorangefilms.com) sometime in March 2008, after a long series of emails. I had discovered through a mutual friend that she was interested in making a documentary on autism. My hope was to meet with her while she was in the planning stage of this project because I felt that I could offer her an opportunity to “see from the inside” the issues concerning parents of children with autism so that she could develop a compelling perspective for her documentary.

During the course of our first meeting I knew that many of the families we support would be interested in sharing their stories with someone like Ms. Arnold. As Clinical Director of the EIBI Program at Perspectives, I have met many parents who even a few years after their child's diagnosis, are very confused about what they can do to help their child. Anyone who searches “autism” on the Internet can attest to the dizzying array of opinions concerning what constitutes an effective intervention for a young child with the symptoms associated with ASD.

What is most troubling is that there is a significant amount of misinformation “out there” as to what constitutes effective treatment for this condition. It continues to baffle me that parents are often actively dissuaded by professionals that they should avoid what is commonly known as “ABA Therapy”, (Applied Behavior Analysis), when this method is recognized as the only intervention whose effectiveness has been validated by extensive peer reviewed scientific research over the last three decades. (In contrast to this trend, a local parent group, Families for Effective Autism Treatment of RI (www.featri.org) is instrumental in supporting effective autism treatment in Rhode Island; and supported this project by consulting with Ms. Arnold during her preliminary research.)

Maria Janes and her son Michael, from "Finding the Words"

While Ms. Arnold and I first met to assist her in her research for her documentary, at some point during our initial discussion (I guess where I expressed my frustration over this issue) she recognized that she could simultaneously begin to research her larger project while assisting us (Perspectives) in our mission to bring effective autism treatment to families in search of such help.

In retrospect, I was not planning to make such a film, although after viewing “Autism Every Day”, a film posted on www.autismspeaks.org that accurately depicts the extremely challenging lives of families who have autistic children, I had thought at the time-'yes, it is this difficult, but there is hope of something better'. I harbored some vague thoughts of reframing the picture offered in this film for some time and I knew that when I met Ms. Arnold that this was the opportunity to do something about it...

While I did not intend for such a film to be an “infomercial” for “ABA” or Perspectives, it could be (and probably will be) perceived as such. However, our intent was just to have the parents of children in our program tell their stories in their own words. I had hoped to show a little more video of actual treatment in the film, so that parents could see the evolution of a child's development during the course of intensive behavioral intervention, but Ms. Arnold wisely convinced me that it was the “story” that we needed to tell and it is parents who know the story best. The course of the film also was changed by recent economic and political realities in Rhode Island, and this too is a vital part of the story because continuing state support is critical to the future of effective treatment for children with autism. I hope that this film is useful in this regard, however, my primary hope is that it is helpful to parents seeking accurate information regarding their children's future.