The story of Raun Kaufman in Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love, is one of the most heartwarming and inspiration movies I have ever seen! In contrast, many other "Made For TV Movies" often rely on fake-emotions and soap opera themes to interest the viewer. There is nothing artificial about this movie! The parents, who overcome the cold, apathetic, professional staffers who say, "Your son will never be able to function on his own. He's too young, bring him back when he's older. He's going to need institutionalization for the rest of his life," don't want to hear any of this and set out to "home-school" Raun by creating a nurturing positive environment out of their home, through everything they do, and everyone who comes in contact with their son for three straight years.
The controversial methods that they used involved mimicking Raun's autistic behaviors in an attempt for go into his world to enable Ruan to communicate with them. Through movements, sounds, games, puzzles, and positive reinforcement, literally 24x7, Raun not only develops into someone who showed no traces of autism by the time he was about six years old, but the end of the movie goes on to say that he graduated from an Ivy League School! His parents and he have established clinics around the world to help autistic children through the program that they and Rawn inspired, "Son-Rise." The movie's ending scene in the park has a line that you will remember for the rest of your life! The same is true with the beautiful song that begins the film, "Is There Room in Your World For Me?" There were controversies about Raun's case in real-life. After reading father, Barry Kaufman's books and millions of viewers saw this movie, many tried the methods and the specific home-treatments on which the film was based. People looked for "Miracle Cures" and did not see the remarkable improvement that people saw in the movie. Further reading on the case showed a top-doctor had examined Raun before his parents began their "home training" program, and found him to be a slow-learner, who had problems with language development, but was not "autistic." The issue that the medical experts say is that there is no "base-line" for determining autism verses cognitive slow development. Other specialists, to this day, share concern about mimicking the autistic behavior to reach autistic children. There is no-question that what the Kaufman's did with Raun was remarkable! However, doctors have said that Raun's case is extremely A-typical of only about 4% of people diagnosed with autism.
In summation, the program for the most part works, but the degrees of success will certainly vary from child to child. It takes an incredible amount of time, money, patience, love and positive reinforcement to do what the Kaufman's did for Raun. The only flaw is that this movie seems to send a message that "Since the treatments worked for Raun, they will work for all autistic kids." And sadly, this is not the case.
There are very painful moments in the film when Raun's parents see the terrible way that kids are treated in the facilities, when they visit them. Set in the early to mid-70's, the Kaufman's observe that staffers are rough with them, kids are tied down, given shock-treatments to "quiet them down." Truly heartbreaking and upsetting, as the children were just treated like objects instead of nurturing, lovable human beings. The insensitivity toward the way professional staffers viewed their son's case and the questionable "treatments" used were the main reasons why the Kaufmen's chose the positive reinforcement environment and family members within their own home as Raun's intensive, learning and therapy sessions. This movie will move you to tears every time!
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