Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.squidalicious.com As the 2008 holiday season sputtered out and the last relatives left our house, I exhaled, then smiled. I’d really enjoyed all the feasting and fun, from the morning moment the kids’ cousins started frolicking underfoot, until the last precious late-night conversation wound down. But there is no way in […]
Here at the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, we’re about (a) having fun with our families (b) evidence-based approaches to autism (d) innovative fund-raising and (c) social media. So naturally we are participating in The Autism Science Foundation’s campaign, Recipe4Hope. There are a lot of needs in the autism community, but we believe that funding
Lynn Hudoba www.autismarmymom.com We are grateful to Lynn for publishing this essay — hers is a difficult position, and she is brave to share her experiences so that others can learn from them. A reminder: while The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism commenting policy encourages civil disagreement, personal attacks will be deleted. -Editors If you’ve
Our editorial team spent much of the Thanksgiving break poring over the inspiring, helpful, & cathartic stories we’ve published on this site — and making hard decisions about which ones to include in the TPGA book. (Twitterheads might have noticed Liz’s weekend retweets of our more than 100 essays.) We’re well on our way to
Shannon Des Roches Rosa with Robert Rummel-Hudson www.squidalicious.com www.schuylersmonsterblog.com My son Leo’s life was transformed when a five-dollar raffle ticket turned into a brand-new iPad. I’m not exaggerating. Before the iPad, Leo’s autism made him dependent on others for entertainment, play, learning, and communication. With the iPad, Leo electrifies the air around him with independence
Lisa Domican www.graceapp.com There was no single thunderbolt moment when I understood my son, Liam, was not like other children. No “I knew where I was when John Lennon was shot, or Man landed on the Moon.” Instead it came over a number of weeks in one difficult summer, when little things started to add
Caitlin Wray www.welcome-to-normal.com Odds are at some point in your role as your child’s advocate, you will need to write a letter to the powers that be. A masterfully crafted letter can be an incredibly powerful weapon in an advocate’s arsenal, but it’s often not an intuitive process; there are unwritten rules and unspoken expectations
Emma Apple www.BlueHijabDay.com I could write a rather mundane thousand words about what Blue Hijab Day is and that our mission is to create widespread autism awareness in the Muslim community. I could tell you, it was just a last minute idea which took off on World Autism Awareness Day 2010. All of that would
Reviewed by Jennifer Minnelli, M.S., CCC-SLP Coloring Outside Autism’s Lines: 50+ Activities, Adventures, and Celebrations for Families with Children with Autism by Susan Walton I have finally found the book the School Psychologist was supposed to hand me when they gave us my child’s murky neurological diagnosis of Borderline Asperger’s and Sensory Processing Disorder. Susan
Alysia K. Butler trydefyinggravity.wordpress.com We had our first snow of the season this morning. When the kids saw it out the window they were beyond excited. I went out to warm up the car and brought in a giant snowball so they could all touch it. That started the mad dash around the house for
