Features
In new book, well-known psychologist argues that autism is grossly over-diagnosed
Book review by TOBY KLEIN GEENWALD Dr. Shoshana Levin Fox has authored a book that will hold you spellbound. Section I is titled “Children.” These first eight chapters are the stories of Jack, Sasha, Annie and others (all the children’s names used are pseudonyms) – children who came into the Feuerstein Institute after having been diagnosed as autistic. They exited with new hope, not only for themselves, but for their parents, who were usually devastated by their children’s diagnoses and needed their own emotional propping up.
The central theme of this book is that autism is grossly over-diagnosed. Levin Fox is a psychologist and play therapist who has worked with children for more than 30 years. In addition to lecturing and giving workshops in North America, Israel and Europe, she worked for 25 years in the prestigious Feuerstein Institute of Jerusalem, founded by the late Sorbonne-educated Professor Reuven Feuerstein.
Dr. Levin Fox lived for nearly twenty years in Canada. She completed an M.A. at Simon Fraser University and a Doctorate in Counselling Psychology at the University of British Columbia and worked for many years as a counsellor in the Special Services to Children program of the Vancouver Association of Neighbourhood Houses. Levin Fox was awarded a SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) post-doctoral fellowship, which enabled her to do research and practical work in the field of autism at the world-renowned Feuerstein Institute in Jerusalem. Coincidentally, for many years Hadassah WIZO Canada were the prime funders of the Feuerstein Institute’s programs related to autism.
I warmly recommend the book, not just for the moving stories of the children who were salvaged from what proved to be inaccurate assessments, and not only for the intriguing descriptions of the practices of the world-renowned Feuerstein Institute, which Dr. Levin Fox combined with the wonders of the DIRFloortime method. This book should be read for its critical message to parents who have received an autism diagnosis for their son or daughter: Believe in your child. Talk to your child. Keep looking till you find her the best and most appropriate help and hope. Don’t let the “experts” get you down, because a true expert will find the formula to lift you – and your child – up.
Most importantly, do not assume that an expert who gave you an assessment of autism, that may feel like an emotional-cognitive death sentence, is right, and even if the assessment is accurate, and the child is truly autistic, that does not mean there is no hope.
This book is not only for parents of children with autistic symptoms; there is a message here for all parents: Even when there is a diagnosis of less daunting conditions — such as learning disabilities, ADHD, or other emotional, cognitive or developmental challenges — keep shopping till you find the professional who will light the way through the tunnel.
The idea of plasticity of the brain, writes Levin Fox, entered mainstream medicine several generations after Prof. Feuerstein had intuited and created materials and methods based on that reality. “There were no sacred cows for the Professor,” she writes, and decries the fact that “the diagnosis of autism is used as a sacrosanct truism…I have found that the term ‘autism,’ as it appears commonly in the field, in actuality is being used to describe children who suffer from a vast range of communication difficulties, from extreme shyness to psychotic conditions and just about everything in between.”
It is not clear to her how research studies can be reliable, writes Levin Fox, “with the current diagnostic criteria of autism so elastic and with the use of the term so liberal.”
The children whose stories are recounted in this book all made significant, even dramatic, progress. Levin Fox writes that, “Not every child began to speak fluently, to learn at a normative level and to play happily with friends…However, it can be safely and honestly stated that, inspired and mentored by the Professor, my colleagues and I made a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of children originally thought to be autistic.” She sees them, as a team, as having saved many lives.
Feuerstein sought to find the child’s latent strengths, and what he called “islets of normalcy.” She explains how “islets of normalcy” are identified and worked with. They include, among other elements, eye contact, human relationships, symbolic play, curiosity, humor and more. “The notion of islets of normalcy helps both parent and practitioner recognize the non-symptomatic behavior [of autism symptoms], the sparks of life and the glimmers of normative functioning within a child’s autistiform presentation.”
There was five-year-old Jack, whose parents came to the Institute and Levin Fox discovered in him an engaging child with a rich imagination. His parents told her that, as he had verbal communication problems, they had taken him to be tested and had been told he was autistic.
Levin Fox emphasizes that helping the parents to understand their children’s challenges, and not to be fearful and depressed about them, is part of the battle.
At the Institute Jack thrived, and left the early diagnosis of autism far behind. The details of the process are in a fascinating ten-page chapter.
She writes about a little girl, Annie, who clearly had developmental difficulties, but, “Each of a child’s tangible, visible symptoms is a world in itself. Like the shoots of a green plant, symptoms have intricate roots.”
Levin Fox gave the parents tools to work with their daughter and continued to follow her progress. When she met her again at the age of six, she wrote, “The sweet, charming, warm, open and communicative child…bore no trace of the detached, imploded, silent, starving two-and-a-half-year-old of years ago.”
Then there was Davie, who had “a longer journey,” and teenaged Joe, who did not make progress to the same extent as some of the other children, but who years later was a happy, functioning adult living in a group setting with other mildly impaired adults. And Mikey, who began to improve significantly when his parents began to talk to him. He still had a long way to go, but Levin Fox writes, “I learned never to give up on a parent.”
There was Max, who had oral dyspraxia, and his lack of speech had been “misunderstood as an autistic avoidance of speech…his story…dramatically illustrates the tragedy of this kind of misdiagnosis.” She cautions that children’s hearing should always be tested; sometimes the non-responsive child is discovered to be simply hearing-impaired.
In Part II, “Theoretical Groundings,” Levin Fox gives the intense and thorough theoretical background to the success stories, which are plentiful. Six more case studies are interwoven in the text to help bring the theory alive.
This section also describes the fascinating roots of Feuerstein’s methods. He began by working with orphan children who had been traumatized after WWII, decided there were flaws in the standard diagnostic tests, and rather than focusing on performance, he focused on the child’s ability to develop learning processes.
“Current studies on brain plasticity…scientifically substantiates what [Feuerstein] proposed two generations ago – that brain cells are modifiable and respond to the stimuli of the environment.” She writes that for Feuerstein it was an “I told you so” moment.
“He understood that human beings can change…when the environment anticipates and promotes such change.” The children mentioned earlier “markedly diminished their autistic-like symptoms…We believed that the potential was there. We sought it. And when we could not see it, we worked hard to elicit it, and even to create new facts on the ground.” The staff saw themselves as warmly interactive mediators.
One of my favorite stories appears in Chapter 15, “A Paradigm Shift,” where Levin Fox describes in great detail the captivating case history of Ben, whom she first met when he was five-years-old. The end of the chapter, with the sub-heading, “Ben’s Epilogue,” describes a chance meeting between Levin Fox and Ben’s parents, many years later, at the luggage carousel in the arrival area of the airport. “Dr. Shoshana!” they called out, and his mother pulled out her cellphone. “The happy faces of Ben and his wife, holding their newborn son, smiled back at me,” writes Levin Fox. “For Ben, the paradigm-shift had indeed been life-saving.”
I found other words to describe the journeys and the miracles of the children portrayed in this book: life-affirming.
And hope.
“An Autism Casebook for Parents and Practitioners: The Child Behind the Symptoms” is published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis and available on Amazon. Read more about Dr. Shoshana Levin Fox’s work at: https://shoshanalevinfox.com/
Toby Klein Greenwald is an award-winning journalist, educational theater director, teacher and the editor-in-chief of WholeFamily.com.
Features
Susan Roadburg: The Road Less Travelled
By GERRY POSNER Robert Frost was not likely thinking of Susan Roadburg when he penned his famous line in the poem “The Road Less Travelled.” Yet, the line which says “Two roads diverged in the wood, and I took the road less travelled and that has made all the difference” certainly is a line which applies to the life and career of Sue Roadburg, once Susan Rumberg, daughter of the late Betty and Joe Rumberg. It was not a straight road for Sue, but it was a path with twists and turns.
A former resident of Montrose and later Oak Streets in the south end of Winnipeg, Sue finished her high school education at Grant Park High School. The plan was to get a BA and then enter either Nursing or Social Work. What stepped in her way was her first stop on the road – Eaton’s. Back then -the 1960s, Eaton’s had what was known as a junior council – one for males and one for females. Well, after a selection process, Sue was chosen by Eaton’s to be Grant Park’s junior councillor. She received a uniform and performed simple duties, including weekly meetings with senior Eaton’s executives, getting volunteers for the annual Eaton’s Santa Claus parades (Who could forget them?), ushering at Eaton’s sponsored rock concerts and sundry other tasks. From that time to many years forward, Sue and Eaton’s were a team. She even worked for them during her university years.
Clearly, the affection Sue had for her work at Eaton’s was reciprocated as, upon the resignation of the then youth fashion director, Sue was offered that job. Her plans for nursing or social work were derailed. Sue represented Eaton’s by making presentations at high schools; running “HI Set Clubs” for teens; coordinating shows for the University of Manitoba’s “ Freshie Week;” teaching the Seventeen Beauty Workshop; writing a monthly teen newsletter and monthly column for “Youth Beat” – which went to all Winnipeg high schools and selecting fashions for the weekly TV show, Teen Dance Party. You could say that Susan Rumberg was well into the teen world at that time. It was at this time when Susan became Sue as Eaton’s wanted her first and last names to have an unequal number of syllables. Maybe that is why Eaton’s closed up. But you can still call her Susan as many friends still do.
Then, an unusual turn of events led to Sue becoming what might be called the Miss Manners of Manitoba. Susan became connected by good fortune with a woman who ran courses on party manners throughout the US and indeed, for the president’s children. Through that relationship, Eaton’s in Winnipeg ran a course on the topic led by the then Susan Rumberg as she was the teacher of the course to hundreds of Winnipeg girls, ages 5-12. But soon Susan came to realize that she was ready to move on and settled in Montreal where she immediately learned French. The Bay became interested in her and she even upgraded her limited French speaking skills. Soon she had her doing staff training at the downtown store and she did it in both French and English. Not long after, she received an offer to become a buyer for the Bay – with crazy hours and lots of travel time. This was at a time when there were major issues in Quebec about separation, so the buying office moved to Toronto with the young Susan Rumberg – along with the whole department. Toronto brought marriage and three kids.
By this time, Sue was quite well known in the fashion world. She was approached by a student at Seneca College who was required to interview a buyer. At that time, Sue was the jeans buyer. This meeting led to another meeting and before Sue knew it, Seneca got wind of her very helpful role with their students and it was not long before Susan Roadburg was ensconced at Seneca teaching full time, eventually leading to teaching becoming the longest part of her career.
Sue’s teaching led to yet another twist in the road. As part of the course work a program was created for her to develop what was called a boutique “lab.” She taught and also was able to get her students involved in the translation of books into action. She would attend vendor appointments on Fridays with the merchandise managers and buyers. She also helped the advertising manager put on a huge fashion show at the big hall at Seneca Collage. The accounts payable manager paid all the invoices and presented financial statements, relating to what had been learned in Retail Math. (She also taught that subject.) A new class took over each semester. Sue developed an infrastructure for the class much like those of the large companies that her students aspired to work for upon graduation. In short, textbook theories were brought to life through this boutique experience, a kind of ‘hands-on” approach.
Sue just finished her teaching career a few years ago. She is still connected to the industry through FGI (Fashion Group International), an organization for executives in the fashion industry. She is even the nominating chair for the board of the only Canadian chapter located in Toronto. And Sue was recently recognized by FGI with what is known as The Visionary Award by FGI. This is what might be called reaching the top of the mountain in her field.
Sue’s road is less travelled to Winnipeg these days, but she still has some ties there. Her brother Ross Rumberg is buried there. There are still friends from her past. Her memories are strongly connected to her Winnipeg days. What Sue might also say is that Rumberg to Roadburg was the first of the many roads she travelled, but she is still charting out new paths.
Features
Donald Trump and the 2024 Jewish Vote
By HENRY SREBRNIK How did American Jews vote in the November 5, 2024 presidential election? There’s no simple answer. American Jews are a hard-to-define religious and ethnic group spread across multiple American Census categories, possessing last names from at least a dozen different languages and clustered in places that are often overwhelmingly non-Jewish. It takes a team of demographers and sociologists to determine a plausible American Jewish population figure.
So deciding who qualifies as a Jewish voter is not that easy. Must they feel a sense of belonging to the Jewish people, however defined? Or can they be “simply” Jewish, perhaps with a non-Jewish partner and children not being brought up as Jews? (After all, we have Jews by birth who are “anti-Zionists” and supporters of Palestinian efforts to destroy Israel.) That’s why figures vary widely.
American Jews number less than 2.5 per cent of the total U.S. population. To be sure, Jews vote in much greater percentages (approximately 80 per cent) than the rest of the American public (about 66 per cent). But the Jewish role in American politics goes well beyond the ballot box. In 2016, the Jerusalem Post reported on a study showing that Jews donate 50 per cent of all funding to the Democratic Party and 25 percent of all funding to the Republican Party. For the 2024 election, Forbes revealed that the top 15 donors to the Kamala Harris campaign were all people who identified as Jewish.
For about a century, American Jews, however defined, have been a reliable piece of the Democratic Party base, usually delivering two-thirds or more of their votes to the party’s presidential nominee. Over the last half century, going back to the 1968 election, Jews have favored the Democratic candidate by about 71 to 29 per cent. But in 2024, change was in the air, despite the absurd claims by some people that Donald Trump was an “antisemite.”
It turns out this proved largely baseless, according to the “2024 Jewish Vote Analysis,” a report released on November 20, 2024 by WPA Intelligence, a conservative political consultancy and analytics firm. In examining available exit polling, city and county data, and precinct data, it suggested that Trump’s strongest gains were among “those who live the most Jewish lives and reside in the most Jewish communities.”
Looking at Jewish neighbourhoods and towns, “the trends are stark and unmistakable,” WPA Intelligence stated. “Because Judaism is in some ways a communal religion and observant Judaism requires localized infrastructure, Jews who live in Jewish areas tend to be more religious and engaged. And in these neighborhoods, we see large shifts towards Trump.” Some of the most dramatic swings in the Jewish vote happened in New York. It also identified shifts in heavily Jewish areas of California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey,and Pennsylvania. (California, New Jersey, and New York are where more than 45 per cent of American Jews live.)
“The trend is apparent from Trump’s near-unanimous support among Chassidic and Yeshivish Jews; to his rapid consolidation of the Modern Orthodox vote; to incremental gains even in more liberal Jewish areas such as Oak Park and Upper Manhattan,” the report added. “So, too, is it diverse ethnically and geographically, occurring coast to coast and overrepresenting Persian and ex-Soviet Jewish communities.”
Trump received the “overwhelming” majority of votes in New York City precincts with a Jewish population of at least 25 per cent. His 2024 performance in New York marked a substantial improvement over the 2020 and 2016 elections.
Trump also enjoyed greater success in heavily Jewish enclaves of deep-blue Democratic cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, according to data compiled by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and the Los Angeles Times, respectively.
These gains have been confirmed by the Jewish website Tablet. “Who Won the Jewish Vote?” by Armin Rosen, published on November 14, 2024, includes very detailed comparisons of precinct-level numbers from the 2020 and 2024 elections. It indicated that Trump did improve his performance in a range of Jewish neighborhoods across America. “From the yeshivas of Lakewood, New Jersey, to the bagel shops of New York’s Upper West Side; from Persian Los Angeles to Venezuelan Miami; from the Detroit suburbs to the Chabadnik shchuna in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, Jewish areas voted in higher percentages for the Republican candidate than they did in 2020.”
Nearly every neighborhood in New York with a notable density of Jewish-specific businesses and institutions, be they Hasidic, Litvish, Syrian, Russian, Bukharan, Conservative, Reform or modern Orthodox, voted heavily Republican or saw a rise in Trump’s performance.
In Brooklyn, the Midwood precincts containing Yeshiva of Flatbush voted 62 per cent for Trump. In Brighton Beach, Brooklyn’s main post-Soviet Jewish enclave, Trump’s support was consistently in the 75-90 per cent range. In Crown Heights, headquarters of the Chabad Hasidic movement, Trump got 62 per cent of the vote this time around, likely on the strength of higher turnout among Chabadniks. Back in 2016, when Trump ran against Hillary Clinton, he won 69 per cent of the vote in all of Assembly District 48, which encompasses Borough Park and Midwood (both largely Jewish communities). This year, he won 85 per cent of the vote in the district.
In the Bronx, Trump received 30 per cent of the vote in the precinct containing the Riverdale Jewish Center, and 38 per cent in the precinct with the neighborhood’s Chabad house. In Manhattan, a few of the borough’s lightest-blue Democratic precincts have the Yeshiva University campus at their center, and Trump managed to receive 37 per cent of the vote there. The Upper West Side, a traditional liberal Jewish political and cultural bastion, remained dark blue. But even there it was possible to see a shift.
Ranging a bit further afield, at least one plausible study, a poll taken by the Teach Coalition, an advocacy group founded by the Jewish Orthodox Union, found overall Jewish support for Trump in the New York suburbs at 40 per cent. Nassau County, where Jews make up close to 20 per cent of the population, saw Trump win it by five per cent, while Joe Biden took it by 10 in 2020.
The returns from other major American Jewish population centers tell a similar story, according to Tablet. Over 600,000 Jews live in New Jersey. The modern Orthodox stronghold of Teaneck gave Trump 35 per cent. In fact, he won 70 per cent of the vote in districts where most of the town’s synagogues are located. In Lakewood, where nearly every strain of Orthodox Judaism is represented, “Some of the precinct results are eye-watering,” reports Tablet. There, Kamala Harris got just 11.2 per cent. In one Lakewood precinct, District 27, Trump won all the votes, 366–0, and in another, District 36, he won 560 votes, losing only a single vote.
Trump carried Passaic County, home to a sizable Orthodox Jewish constituency. Jews make up about 25 percent of the county’s population and it has been a Democratic stronghold for decades. Biden took it with 57.5 per cent to Trump’s 41 per cent four years ago. In 2024, Trump won it with 50 per cent to Harris’s 46.5 percent. That’s a 16-point overall swing in Trump’s favor.
Voting data indicates that there was a significant shift among Jewish voters in in the crucial state of Pennsylvania. It was one of the few states without a large Orthodox Jewish population where Trump did especially well with Jewish voters. Harris did win Pennsylvania Jewish voters by seven percentage points, 48-41, according to a survey conducted by the Honan Strategy Group for the Teach Coalition. However, 53 per cent of Jewish voters said they would have pulled the lever for her had Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro been her running mate, while support for Trump would have dropped to 38 per cent. Jewish community leaders claimed that Shapiro was subjected to an ugly, antisemitic campaign that led to him being passed over for the slot.
The Miami area is home to over 500,000 Jews. Aventura is one of the community’s bellwethers, and Trump gained 59.7 per cent this year. An almost identical shift happened in the Miami Beach community of Surfside, where Trump took 61 per cent. Bal Harbour, another Jewish enclave, saw Trump gain 72 per cent.
In Palm Beach County, there are about 175,000 Jews out of a population of 1.5 million, or about 12 per cent. Harris won this county by 0.74 per cent, while Biden won it by 13 per cent in 2020. Trump’s vote climbed nearly seven per cent while hers dropped an equal amount off Biden’s number. Almost exactly the same type of shift happened in Broward County, where Biden got 64 per cent in 2020; the vote shifted 14 per cent toward Trump this year. Jews make up about 10 per cent of the Broward population.
In Los Angeles, where 560,000 Jews live, an article by Louis Keene, “How a Jewish Neighbourhood in Liberal Los Angeles Became a Stronghold for Trump,” published December 10 in the Forward newspaper, provides a detailed picture of the Jewish electorate. The political shift in Pico-Robertson, an Orthodox neighborhood in LA’s Westside, reflects voters “with a change of heart and changing demographics.”
Formerly majority Democratic, in 2024 for the first time, parts of Pico-Robertson turned red. Its two largest precincts swung for Trump, who received about 51 per cent of the votes compared to 44 per cent for Harris. Rabbi Elazar Muskin, who leads Young Israel of Century City, one of the oldest and largest synagogues in the neighbourhood, estimated that up to 90 per cent of his congregation voted for Trump, largely because of Israel.
As Yeshivish and Mizrahi Jews — those of Middle Eastern or North African heritage — have established a greater presence in Pico-Robertson, the area has become increasingly defined by a conservative culture and electorate. There is also a booming Persian population, as well as emergent Chabad and other Hasidic Jews.
A poll of Orthodox voters by Nishma Research in September found 93 per cent of Haredi voters supporting Trump; while data on the Persian Jewish community’s politics is harder to come by, community leaders said the numbers are similar.
Elsewhere in LA, the presence of a Chabad house or a synagogue was a reliable predictor of Trump support. For instance, Trump got 40 per cent of the vote in the North Hollywood precinct where Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic and Em Habanim Sephardic are located.
Los Angeles in turn mirrors the general trend in the rest of the country. Michigan is home to 116,000 Jews. West Bloomfield, centre of the Detroit-area Jewish community, went 43.7 per cent for Trump. Illinois’ 319,000 Jews live mainly in Chicago. Trump picked up votes in the Far North Side wards where Orthodox Jewish voters live, especially in the 50th Ward, where his vote increased to 46.85 per cent from 33.77 per cent in 2020.
Of course the Republican vote did not just come from the very religious. Trump also clearly gained among those most committed to Jewish identity, regardless of affiliation or observance, who were driven by concerns over left-wing antisemitism after the October 7 massacre.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his first term in office. While courting Jewish voters, Trump reminded Jews about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume the efforts to strengthen them. Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and he also moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
We must lay to rest the nonsense about Trump being antisemitic, lest we are to believe that the more Jewish you are, the more likely it was that you voted for an enemy of the Jewish people. Americans, including Jews, returned the arguably most pro-Israel president since the founding of the modern Jewish state to the White House.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
Blockchain’s Potential in Canadian Supply Chains
Blockchain technology has been gaining significant traction in various industries, and one area where it shows great promise is in supply chain management. In Canada, companies are beginning to realize the benefits of adopting blockchain to improve transparency, security, and efficiency in their operations. By providing a decentralized and immutable ledger, blockchain allows supply chain participants to track goods in real time, ensuring authenticity and reducing fraud.
In Canada, industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, and retail are exploring how blockchain can address long-standing issues like inefficiency, data breaches, and lack of transparency. For example, a food producer in Canada could use blockchain to track the journey of its products from the farm to the store, ensuring that consumers receive fresh, safe, and verified products. With blockchain’s ability to provide a secure and transparent record of every step in the supply chain, businesses can reduce costs and enhance trust with consumers.
One of the key challenges in implementing blockchain across various sectors is integrating real-world data with the decentralized network. This is where Chainlink comes in. Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that enables smart contracts to securely connect with external data sources, APIs, and payment systems. By utilizing Chainlink’s services, Canadian companies can create more reliable and automated processes within their supply chains. For example, real-time data about inventory or product quality can be directly integrated into blockchain applications, further enhancing transparency and reducing errors.
To leverage Chainlink’s capabilities, Canadian businesses can use platforms like MoonPay to buy Chainlink easily and securely. This integration of blockchain technology and payment solutions offers a smooth entry into the world of decentralized networks for Canadian companies looking to innovate.
In conclusion, blockchain has the potential to revolutionize Canadian supply chains by providing a more secure, transparent, and efficient way to track goods and manage processes. With the support of services like Chainlink and platforms such as MoonPay to simplify transactions, businesses can take full advantage of the benefits of blockchain technology, driving growth and innovation across industries.
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