A Mother’s Courage: Talking Back to Autism is a sweeping documentary endeavoring to show snippets of daily life in families containing one or more autistic children in the USA, Iceland, and a smattering of other European countries. Added to each “slice of life’ in each family is a portrayal of the available interventions and major research centers dealing with autism which are in the home country of that family, or otherwise accessible to that family.
However, there is “the rub”: a great deal of research is being done on autism, and lots of knowledge has been accumulated in recent years, but using it to produce a cure, or develop better interventions is a long way off, and a dubious hope at best.
Temple Grandin is featured as a sound-bite-giving expert utilizing both her personal experiences and professional capacity to elucidate some of the behaviors of autistic children and the way in which their neurological systems work.
A method of teaching and intervention which is perhaps unfamiliar to many Americans connected with autism in some way is explained and demonstrated during the course of this documentary. Soma Mukhopadhyay, who developed the Rapid Prompting Method in order to better facilitate her autistic son’s contact with and functioning in the world, is another featured expert in this picture. The fact that the DVD includes a list of websites dealing with both research and teaching methods for autism is potentially helpful for those who want more detailed knowledge than the broad overview given in the feature.