[Source:  The New York Times Well Blog]

Like many parents of children with autism, Nicole Brown feared she might never find a dentist willing and able to care for her daughter, Camryn Cunningham, now a lanky 13-year-old who uses words sparingly.

Finishing a basic cleaning was a colossal challenge, because Camryn was bewildered by the lights in her face and the odd noises from instruments like the saliva suctioner — not to mention how utterly unfamiliar everything was to a girl accustomed to routine. Sometimes she’d panic and bolt from the office.

Then in May, Ms. Brown, 45, a juvenile supervision officer, found Dr. Amy Luedemann-Lazar, a pediatric dentist in this suburb of Houston.

Unlike previous dentists, Dr. Luedemann-Lazar didn’t suggest that Camryn would need to be sedated or immobilized. Instead, she suggested weekly visits to help her learn to be cooperative, step by step, with lots of breaks so she wouldn’t be overwhelmed. Bribery helped. If she sat calmly for 10 seconds, her reward was listening to a snippet of a Beyoncé song on her sister’s iPod.

This month, Camryn sat still in the chair, hands crossed on her lap, for no less than 25 minutes through an entire cleaning — her second ever — even as purple-gloved hands hovered near her face, holding a noisy tooth polisher.

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