06/06/2015
Ron Davis is launching his NOIT this weekend in Canada. Its a bit far to go :-) , but luckily we can access this here in Adelaide too. Message if you'd like more information.
A Note from Ronald D. Davis
Before I introduce you to my ideas I should provide a historical overview of how I came to my perspective. My mother told me that, as an infant, in 1942, I was called a Kanner’s baby. Doctor Leo Kanner coined the term autism in 1943. I think this is why I was never actually labeled autistic; I’m older than the use of the word, but not older than the research done by Dr. Kanner.
My mother told me that as an infant, any physical touch from her would set me off. Even when she was trying to nurse me I would try to scream and suckle at the same time. She was so afraid that I would choke that she had to find a way of feeding me without touching me. Being my mother must have made her life a hundred times more difficult than that of other women. But in spite of everything, she loved me.
My father on the other hand was just the opposite. When he came home from WWII, he was surprised and ashamed to find that he was the father of a mentally deficient child. He never found a way to effectively deal with his own feelings, let alone how to deal with me. There is evidence of 27 broken bones in my body from the beatings he gave me out of his ignorance, frustration, shame, and hatred. I don’t have actual memory of most of the beatings, or of being an autistic child; but I do have a sense of it.
Way before I started working with autism or had any understanding of it, I referred to myself as having come from a void. My sense of the void was not as existing as an individual, but as existing as both nothing and everything at the same time. There was no sense of being an individual, so there was no “me”. There was no sense of identity. Without a “me”, there was no basis for memory or knowledge.
Somehow—by pure luck or by the grace of God—around the age of nine I began to individuate and develop out of the state of oblivion—out of the void. In hindsight, I can see there was about an eleven-year delay in my early development. Also, in hindsight, I can see there were three phases that I had to go through to become a human being.
First, I had to individuate, I had to stop being everything and nothing and become just one thing, my body. Second, I had to develop an identity for the thing I had become. And third, I had to adapt to the world of being human and become socially integrated.
So there are three phases our “seed” must go through in the process of becoming human— individuation—identity development—and social integration.
I think all “normal” humans, in the first few years of life, go through this same sequence naturally. Although identity development and social integration are never totally completed, there has to be enough to allow the individual to exist as a human being. I also think that some individuals either fail to start or sufficiently complete one or more of these three phases, and therein we can find autism.
If you are “normal”, you’ve already done it—you did it naturally, and you did it totally by chance. If you happen to be autistic, you haven’t completed it yet. The Davis Autism Approach is a guide for making it happen. It will provide you with a different understanding of autism and it will provide you with a strategy for helping your loved ones participate more fully in life and find their place in human society.
I would like to say that my experience of being a “Kanner’s baby” provided insights into finding a “solution” to autism, but I can’t. It did provide a different foundation for looking at the condition. My history provided some understanding of what must be done, but nothing about how to do it. However, it did provide me with something that may have been even more important. It provided me with an undeniable purpose for being alive.
Once my identity began to develop and my memory began, my primary desire in life was to become a real human being. I could see that others were something that I wasn’t. My primary task, from the beginning, was to find a way that would allow me to be “normal,” or at least appear to be. If I could find my own way through this chaos and if I could provide a “map” for others of my kind to follow, then there would be value in my existence. The Davis Autism Approach is my best effort at providing that map.
In spite of the success of the Davis Autism Approach, there was a sub-set of individuals with autism I still could not help. Those most severely affected with autism do not possess the receptive and expressive language to begin the foundational pieces of the program that lead to individuation. Those methods rely on the individual being able to follow instructions, which most cannot. So I developed a way to help them with the process using a repetitive sound which they listened to with a headset. Unfortunately, many would still not tolerate a headset. I got bitten a lot in those early years of my work trying to get headsets on kids unwilling to wear them. I figured it was my karma, because apparently I bit quite a few people when I was young. I needed a better system.
With my engineering background I set about creating a device that would do the same job the headset did without being a headset. First I needed a way to stick it to the individual. That part was easy in theory – we used a sticky gel patch. Next, I needed a way to produce the sound. So I started working with Chris Phoenix, who is gifted with computer mother boards and stuff like that. Over time, we figured out how to have the sound delivered like in the headset – every 8 seconds at the right frequency using pieso electric cells. Then we figured out a way to be able to control the volume. I have a box of prototypes that didn’t make it for one reason or another. But, finally, in April of 2011, it was ready to be tried on an actual person with non-verbal autism.
That person was Tyler Oswald. I will have the pleasure of meeting him for the first time while I am in Oakville in June for the International Launch of the NOIT. My son, Ray Davis, a gifted Davis Autism Approach Facilitator/Coach, was in Oakville and heard about Tyler. Ray happened to be traveling with one of the most recent prototypes. It looked like something from a junk yard! I asked him to try to get Tyler to wear the NOIT. It took a few days for him to accept it. The results were spectacular. He had previously only spoken about 10 words and most of those were not recognizable to anyone but his Mother. Within weeks he was using people’s names, common nouns, and expressing wants and needs. He also spent significantly less time throwing toy horses against the wall, playing repetitively with helicopters and lining things up. He was becoming part of the world around him.
Based on Tyler’s success, we began international field trials with facilitators and non-verbal autistic individuals all over the world. What we found in that first year was that the NOIT did what it was supposed to do – helped the user to individuate and begin to experience their surroundings. As we expected, this caused the users to improve social skills, focus and attention, and language. We also saw a significant decrease in time spent in useless repetitive behaviors and self-harm.
It has been 4 years since the NOIT started being used on individuals with non-verbal autism. Over the past 3 years, we have refined the design, making it more user-friendly and durable. We have improved production and quality control. We now have more than 175 NOITs in use around the world. We are ready to let the world know about NOIT and what it can do for people who are like I used to be.
The NOIT is the culmination of my life’s work. Please join me in getting this tool to those who need it.
Please attend the International Launch of the NOIT, at Otello's Conference Ctr, Oakville Ontario, Wednesday, June 10th, 6:30 pm.
Email Beth Shier at [email protected] to attend
--- Ronald D. Davis
