The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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October 2, 2008

Bringing autism to light

WALKdo aims to educate

By Robb Murray

MANKATO — Tara Buhl sits down at a downtown coffee shop to talk about her children, and not more than 30 seconds into things, her reason for being here becomes crystal clear.

She’s one of the hundreds of people who will be walking in Sunday’s WALKdo — a new autism awareness fundraiser on the Red Jacket Trail in Mankato — because her two children have autism, and she’s come to tell her story to a reporter.

But when she tells the reporter her younger son has mostly recovered from autism, the reporter is dumbstruck and wonders how that’s possible. And the ignorance in the air shows exactly why she’s pushing so hard for people to get educated on autism, what it is, what it isn’t, and why Minnesota seems to a national leader in the number of people with the disorder.

Buhl, a psychiatrist who works at the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center, has experienced many people who know little about autism, including doctors. Some of those doctors even ignored her when she insisted, when the child was 1, that something was wrong with him.

As a mother, she’d known in her gut that something was wrong. As a doctor, she knew in her mind that her child wasn’t developing properly. Finally, when her son reached 21⁄2 years, the doctors concurred.

The incidence of autism in Minnesota, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is about 1 in 81 children born. In the entire U.S., it’s 1 in 150. There is no smoking gun to explain why Minnesota is higher, but the abundance of farm land where pesticides are used may be a factor. The mercury used in vaccinations may be another factor, although that factor isn’t limited to Minnesota.

When Oliver, the family’s second child, was born, he was diagnosed much sooner than their older son. Using Advanced Behavior Analysis and other ways of helping autistic children make sense of their world, Oliver is now in a regular kindergarten class and progressing normally.

Advanced Behavior Analysis is the kind of therapy she wants parents with autistic kids to learn about. But Buhl admits that getting the medical community to buy into it has been difficult.

“As a doctor, I thought it was bull crap,” she said, recalling the first time she read about it. “I didn’t even read it.”

Today, Buhl just wants people to be educated about autism, and she wants support for parents raising autistic children.

Money raised from WALKdo will be used to fund a visit by Michelle Garcia Winner, a nationally recognized figure in the autism world.

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