Wow. What an emotional and heartwarming movie. I could write a reaction to each of the individuals showcased. However, Jack resonated with me the most. I work with a client currently who is close to identical to jack - behavioral wise. The belief that because a child cannot verbally speak, he/she doesn't understand is one that is unfortunately still around in the autism community. Jacks' parents engaged in every sort of therapy to increase his quality of life and my client's mother has done the same, most recently MERT therapy. It's important to know a lot of those therapies aren't empirically researched. I looked up the Rapid Method Prompting which actually isn't recommended by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association due to the prompt dependency. Seeing Jack's behavior as communication is the goal and it was nice to see his family come to that conclusion. It was heartwarming to see the inclusion Jack had at his school - something I feel very strongly about. The communication is something I wish for my client. I do believe social workers should be required in graduate school to have a course on working with neurodiverse populations. I had a guest speaker in my clinical class last year who brought awareness to the similarities between working with neurotypical and neurodiverse populations. Unfortunately, there is such a gap in mental health treatment for neurodiverse populations due to therapists seeing that diagnosis and not feeling competent in working with them.
I love the point you made Catherine, "the belief that because a child cannot verbally speak, he/she doesn't understand is one that is unfortunately still around in the autism community." I also feel this is true in any community. I was seen by a specialist because i would not speak until I was 4 years old and they thought something was wrong, but the doctor cleared me and reassured my family that I DID in fact understood I just chose to be non-verbal. I have speculations to that, now in retrospect, but the association of being nonverbal and intelligence is still there.