How the right accommodations helped one autistic student instantly go “from being a misunderstood, odd child with behavior problems to being a supported autistic child.”
Tag: acceptance
Gen Eric I know you, but I don’t know you. I’m not you, but we have more in common than you may think. For one thing, we are both Autistic. For another, we’re both male; though you may identify as mostly male, or partly male, or a combination of male and female, or neither whatsoever and that’s awesome either way. Just like your autism, that’s part of what makes you you, and you are awesome. There’s something you need to understand from the outset. A lot of what’s happened in your life, a lot of difficulties you’ve encountered and things that others may have objected to, they aren’t your fault. All this time you were running on a radically different OS than your peers, and no one ever told you. You were expected to be just like the others and, when you couldn’t do that, you were told it was…
Brenda Rothman mamabegood.blogspot.com In my recent post about my autistic son not being accommodated at Disney World, some people responded with a vehement defense of Disney. It’s almost as if they themselves felt attacked. The same thing happened in the comments of Lydia Brown’s post about Autism Speaks. Neither Disney nor Autism Speaks will suffer from our criticisms. People will still visit and enjoy Disney. People will still donate, work for, and receive services from Autism Speaks. But those corporations, their goals, employees, and supporters can harm others. The readers who respond defensively aren’t really defending the corporations. Maybe they’re defending the kind employees they’ve met, like the Disney cast member who went out of her way to help their child, to make him happier, more comfortable, make their experience easier. Or the Autism Speaks parent volunteer who has an adorable autistic child, who loves her child more than life,…
Emma Apple emmaapple.com The month of Autism Awareness and Acceptance — April — is more than a month past, but the campaigns continue. There’s Autism Acceptance Year, all those Facebook “Every Day is Autism Awareness Day at Our House” images that go around (which I love!), and there’s the ongoing efforts of self-advocates, parents, and allies who want you to be aware and — more importantly — accepting and understanding of what autism is and what it means for autistic individuals and their families. So, aside from Blue Hijab Day, here’s my contribution this year for Autism Acceptance. Five Ways to Accept Autistic Kids Be Patient. This really goes for kids of any variety. They have as much right as you to be out in the world and to take part fully in a world that will soon be theirs. Kids in general — but often especially kids with special…
Because we consider April Autism Acceptance Month, Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism will feature “Slice of Life” conversations with Autistics of all ages — kids through adults — for each of the month’s remaining 29 days. We will profile a different autistic person every day, answering the same set of questions — in a similar spirit to (although for copyright purposes otherwise unlike) the Proust questionnaire capping each issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Why? We’d like to help our non-autistic readers get to know autistics as people who have interesting, complicated lives, and who are as diverse and varied as any other random population united by a label. We are the people in each others’ neighborhoods, and the more we know about each other, the more visible we and our children are, the more common Autism Acceptance will be. That is our hope. We’d also like to encourage you to…
Sunday Stillwell Adventures in Extreme Parenthood This week hundreds of thousands will stand up and ask our family, friends, and coworkers to Spread The Word To End The Word. This means I am asking you to stop using the words “retard” and “retarded” because when you do, even if you’re joking, even if you don’t mean it as a slur, even if you’re talking about yourself what you are doing is disrespecting people with intellectual disabilities… people like my sons, Sam and Noah. Would you call my sons retards? Would you say that the ways they stim or perseverate on things is retarded? Of course you wouldn’t, but I have heard it said to them by kids on the playground who think the way Sam jumps up and down and flaps his hands looks strange, or because Noah likes to make loud screeching noises and run in circles. So I…
Jo Ashline joashline.com themomblog.ocregister.com/author/jashline I took the long way, but I think I’ve finally arrived First, I wrote I Told Autism to SUCK IT. Yeah. I Said It. Then it was My Point Still Stands: Autism Can Take a Flying Leap. Then From Proud Mom to Bigot. Then Us vs. Them. Finally though, I think I get it. I think. Maybe it’s because I’m just a few short days away from my period … I don’t freaking know but in any case I’m over here bawling my eyes out because one week later I think I finally get it. I’m passionate. I’m truthful. I write truthfully with passion. And I wrote something that others found offensive and I came back and said…”Who gives a damn? This is MY SPACE, SO F$%% off.” Except. The universe doesn’t just belong to me. It belongs to everyone. And what I put out…
Jack Gallagher www.jackgallagher.info I have been a professional comedian for 30 years. My resume includes appearances on the Tonight Show, Cheers, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, an ABC sitcom and appearances as an opening act for such diverse performers as Tony Bennett and Warren Zevon. However, my most important role is that of a father to an autistic child. In addition to the aforementioned credits, I have also written four one-man plays. The latest is entitled “A Different Kind Of Cool” and chronicles the relationship I have with my son Liam. While I have been lucky enough to have all of my plays receive positive reviews, ADKOC has garnered the most attention of anything I’ve written or performed. I’ve heard from people all across the country as well as Australia, Sweden, and Finland. To say it has hit a nerve with people who has seen or heard of it is…
Chris R. autismspoke.blogspot.com I can see it very clearly. I’m pushing a shopping cart through a store. In the cart rides Matthew, my four year old son with autism. He’s making the sounds he makes… Sometimes when he’s happy, the sounds he makes are loud. You might say they are screams, but happy screams. When he is happy and loud, we do what we can to keep him somewhere below an F-16 on full afterburner. It’s not that I’m worried he’ll ruin ten seconds of someone’s shopping trip … it’s that I worry what I’ll do if someone says anything cross, or gives me a look that can’t be taken in any other way. You see, I’m always in full-blown autism dad alert mode … just waiting for some parent with “perfect” kids to trip on the wire and have the autism awareness grenade that is me explode and rip…
Kerry Magro KerryMagro.com Kerry was recently featured in a story that ran in the Orlando Sentinel and the L.A. Times which shared his transition to college life and the skills he gained there as he became a self-advocate. He has since graduated from Seton Hall. -The Editors Hello, my name is Kerry Magro and I have autism. I just recently learned about The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism from a truly outstanding individual, Laura Shumaker, who is a remarkable advocate for those of us who are on the spectrum. Once I looked at the website, and read some of the essays, I knew I was hooked. Regardless of what I took from the essays, I wanted to help in any way I possibly could. This gave me the idea of posting one of my own personal works about coming out about being on the spectrum. Below you will find…