Have you ever gotten sick from a particular food, then felt ill
anytime you saw or smelled that food again? Well, I had a similar
experience Tuesday, but not to food. A guest, Beth Lisick who [as a
part of her book about various "self help" books] of the Rachel Ray
Show touted the childrearing approach of the "1-2-3 Magic" program. I
actually had quite a visceral reaction with my heart racing.

In the Fall of 2005, the local school district had a Behavioral
Management course for parents of special needs children. About half of
us had children on the Autism Spectrum. The foundation of this course
was 1-2-3 Magic.

The premise of 1-2-3 Magic is if your child does something that you
don't want, you say, "That's1." If they do it again, you say,
"That's 2." If the child does it again, you say, "That's 3. Take 5 and
go to your room." where the child is supposed to spend 5 minutes
thinking about what they've done, then apologize. To most kids with
Autism, a time out (which this is) is a reward. So, 1-2-3 Magic
teaches them that when they don't want to be around people (or
participate in class {since they used a variation of this in school}),
they can just scream, throw something, etc. and they get the reward of
being alone.

The school district's Behavioral Management course included the video
of 1-2-3 Magic that showed dramatizations of 1-2-3 Magic in use. One
of the dramatizations involved using this method to ignore a threat of
suicide. When your child threatens to kill themselves, yes, it might
be an empty threat, but to assume that a child is not serious about
killing themselves is catastrophically dangerous!

To be fair, I've met a couple of parents that think the 1-2-3 Magic
program works. However, the larger majority of parents that I've
talked to tend to laugh and/or roll their eyes when 1-2-3 Magic is
mentioned. The most common statement that I hear is "My kid(s) just
counted." BTW, our daughter did that too. By the end of 1-2-3 Magic,
our daughter's behavior was totally out of control (including 3hr
tantrums), and I believed that she would never get any better. Of all
the possible books/philosophies of childrearing, it is just
astonishing to me that Lisick picked 1-2-3 Magic.

Thankfully, in April 2006, we discovered the Son-Rise Program and our
lives have been altered for the better&and our daughter is amazing!!!

In Lisick's book, reading the 1-2-3 Magic section of this book on the
web, the author's intrigue with 1-2-3 Magic seems to be born of her
admiration of the charm of Dr. Phelan whom she talks about having
sparkling eyes. She also points out one of the main componets is
"controling obnoxious behavior". Ironically, also in Lisick's book,
she delves into the philosophies of Deepak Chopra. This is ironic
because passing judgement that someone is being "obnoxious" is almost
as far as you can get from the philosophies of Deepak Chopra.

I recommend reading "What You Can Do Right Now to Help Your Child with
Autism" http://www.tenthingsautism.com/ by Jonathan Levy. It doesn't
cover all of Son-Rise, rather ten specific techniques. A number of
parents who have read Levy's book, have stated that the approach works
well with their typically developing children also.
---Nicole