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A recent article in Forbes magazine focuses on Jacob’s Ladder Center, a “neurodevelopmental learning center” in Roswell, Georgia. Reading about this center, I’ve wondered what is different about its approach, and what might be the main components of an education for autistic children.

Amy O’Dell is the founder and director of Jacob’s Ladder, and also the mother of 14-year-old Jacob, who (according to the center’s webpage) exhibited “sensory play” and “self-stimulatory behaviors that are typical with an Autism diagnosis.” Jacob also had other health issues, including immune system disorders, kidney complications and a serious heart defect that required surgery in 2000. O’Dell used what she calls a “neurodeveopmental approach” to help her son’s brain “build and strengthen neural pathways”; she combined intensive sensory and gross-motor therapy. Jacob can now speak “eloquently,” likes physical activities such as wrestling and football, and can read far above his grade level. In 1999, she founded Jacob’s Ladder, which now provides therapy for 5 to 20 kids full-time, and another 40 part-time. An evaluation is $900. The fee for the school is $2,950 a month and its staff of 25 consists of “largely unlicensed aides trained by O’Dell.”

According to the Forbes article, Jacob’s Ladder Center is based on the theory that “the brain is, to a degree not appreciated by doctors a few decades ago, “plastic”; it can adapt to neurological deficits.” Research by Michael Merzenich, a UC, San Francisco professor, is cited. Other providers of educational therapies for autistic children have used similar arguments about the “plasticity” of the brain to make a case for early intervention. The neurologist of a student at Jacob’s Ladder notes that the center provides “repetitive behavior treatment with early intervention … a nice combination of other people’s views.”

I have not seen the center and am curious as to how its approach might differ from other educational methods and programs for autism. As I’ve noted, my own son has learned best using Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), delivered with an emphasis on fun and flexibility and a lot of structure, and with a willingness among therapists to integrate ideas other therapies (speech; OT; Floortime-like techniques to develop play skills) and to consider my son’s sensory and communicative needs, and that look at him not as a diagnosis, or a label, but as……himself.

That’s been the right place to start with his education.

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