Reach Your Child's Potential with Professional Insights
Whew! I made it past another April. As an autistic I have a love/hate relationship with April – the AUTISM month. I love that increasingly more people over time have become aware of autism. I hate that Autism Awareness month contributes daily to many negative stereotypes of autism, most of it by people meaning to [...]
“Fireflies”, a Jubilee Project short film, is lighting up autism awareness in a simple way, with over 126 thousand views on YouTube in a few short months. Launched in December, 2012, “Fireflies” is an emotionally powerful short story about love and friendship with no borders. Fireflies showcases a young boy and his desire to understand [...]
As an autistic I would like to encourage all the people who think and say autistics are in their own world to reconsider. Please know, that contrary to popular belief, autistics are not in their own world. We All Share the Same World The fact is that we all share the same world. My experience [...]
The majority of the individuals I am blessed to work with are adolescents. One of our main goals is to promote self-advocacy. Whenever I have the opportunity to facilitate workshops where the topics include autism and Asperger’s, I usually ask my panel of experts for input. Recently, I posed the question, “What do you want the [...]
So many ideas in the larger autism community often become a debate. As an autistic this black-or-white, choose-your-side sort of thinking is very neurologically friendly to me. I like clear choices. But I also believe we are often unwittingly duped into believing we need to choose a side only because an idea is presented as [...]
Holiday gatherings have led to some of the most humungous meltdowns we’ve experienced with my youngest son Jake, who is diagnosed on the severe end of the autism spectrum. I can’t say I haven’t joined him a time or two either! Once the tears have cleared and the peace restored, reflection really helps for creating [...]
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandi Too often we are quick to point the finger blaming others. “Why can’t those people understand my situation? Can’t they try walking in my shoes?” We as parents of special needs children tend to be less tolerant of our church families [...]
I often refer to Chris’ first grade experience as our “lost year.” Brand new to an autism diagnosis, we didn’t know what we could do to help our son, what resources were available, and found ourselves in an antagonistic and horribly unproductive relationship with his school staff. The School’s Initial Response Chris’ autism is relatively [...]
Should we teach children to use physical force to fight bullies when comebacks have failed? Would you be okay with your child using physical force if he needed to protect himself from harm? Are you aware that fighting back does not always stop bullies? What will you do if the school suspends your child for [...]
Parents of a child who has special needs will almost surely hear at one time or another, “Now you know your child will never [fill in blank.]” These gloom and doom forecasts are meant to be helpful, I know. They are meant to prepare us for REALITY. I used to get upset not knowing how [...]
