In Case of Emergency

Jennifer Byde Myers jennyalice.com iEmergency+ application Create your own lock-screen with important information. I just got the paperwork from Jack’s school to set all of our records straight for the next school year. I know… already, summer is flying by. I scanned through the printed information I filled out from last year and got stopped at that emergency contact section again. It is a list that really defines the borders of my close-knit community. In an emergency, who can care for your child with special needs? Most of the time life goes along just swimmingly, but things happen; cars break down on the way to pick-up, I broke my leg once, we live in earthquake country. I have a collection of people that I know can take care of my child and keep him safe. It’s a short list, and I wouldn’t ask many on that list to even babysit…

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Someone Who Moves Like You

Julia Bascom juststimming.wordpress.com Buckle up kids, because this gets long and personal. So, a long time (~seven months) ago, in a galaxy far, far away (rural New Hampshire) there lived a sad little girl (or KICKASS ADULT) named Julia who just so happened to have a friend named C. C and Julia had spent the past several months talking too much altogether about the TV series Glee, and C had begun to push for Julia to add a second show to her plate. Some brightly-colored sitcom about derelicts going to a community college. And Julia was skeptical, but C was persistent, for she knew that if Julia liked the first two minutes, Julia would have a new favorite show. See, C knew something that Julia did not. C knew that Abed Nadir existed. Now, there are a couple of things you, gentle reader, must know about Julia in order to…

To Young Autistic Males: You Are Awesome

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…

Turning Lives Around Through Supported Living

Diane Lightfoot www.unitedresponse.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-work/supported-living United Response was set up in 1973 to provide a service based on supported living principles to a handful of adults with learning disabilities in a house in West Sussex. At the time, most such adults usually found themselves placed in institutions, isolated from the rest of society, with few rights and fewer opportunities to live a full and active life. Forty years after that first house was set up, United Response now supports over 2,000 individuals in almost 300 locations across [The United Kingdom], but supported living is still at the core of our work. The majority of our support is officially “supported living” where we support people living in their own homes, with their own rights as tenants or owners, but where we support people in homes that are registered as residential care, we run these along the same principles; enabling people to have control…

Remember One of Our Own: George Hodgins

Zoe Gross illusionofcompetence.blogspot.com Zoe and her father Rob light candles in honor of George Hodgins. Photo © 2012 Steve Silberman Zoe is an autistic self-advocate. She recently organized and led a vigil to remember and honor George Hodgins. She read the words below at the ceremony, which was attended by self-advocates and their supporters — many of whom had been part of George’s life. Many of whom spoke out themselves. —- Last Tuesday, George Hodgins was shot and killed by his mother, who then killed herself. George lived here in Sunnyvale and he was 22 years old. I didn’t know George, but I can’t stop thinking about him. Maybe it’s because we have a lot in common — we lived near each other, we were the same age, we’re both autistic, although we led very different lives. I would like to have met George, but I can only mourn him.…

“Don’t let your children grow up in a world where society devalues their lives.”

Lydia Brown  autistichoya.blogspot.com To the parents of Autistic children: We need you. Sometimes in public discourse, Autistic adults and non-Autistic parents disagree over very important issues that affect each of us personally. Sometimes this disagreement is spectacularly explosive. But there is no way for the autism and Autistic communities to move forward without creating some type of group cohesiveness. Yes, that means that we will have to enter into painful dialogue and discourse, and yes, that means we will have to accept the validity and legitimacy of the ideas and feelings of people with whom we may disagree. It does not mean that we have to set aside all of our differences, because that would make us self-deceivers. But it does mean that we have an obligation to each other and to ourselves to recognize what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “inescapable mutuality.” Every Autistic child, youth, and adult…

Take Offense, Create Change

Rob Gross I read a post recently in which the author imagines creating a “grand new conference consisting of members of the disability community of all stripes” including disabled people, their parents, professionals, writers and journalists.” He continues, “This mythical conference of ours would have only one rule. No one would be allowed to be offended” (emphasis added). The author states that by following this rule, “no one [would be] silenced…dismissed… [or] called out for the way they make their argument.” In response to this post, many parents of disabled children commented on how refreshing this would be. However, numerous Autistic adults took strong exception to this, as did some parents. Why? What could possibly be wrong with allowing people to speak their minds without restriction? Two weeks ago, one parent did just that. On her Orange County Register blog, Jo Ashline, the mother of an Autistic child, said that…

Being the Change We Want

(Or, A Good Dose of Humility Never Hurts) Kim Wombles www.kwomblescountering.blogspot.com I’ll have been involved in the online autism community for three years this March. I’d say the community has changed, but I’m thinking it’s more that I changed over the years. People still bicker about the same kinds of things (some of the people are the same ones who’ve been at it for years), and the divides seem to be more entrenched than ever before, if you go looking in those places. I try to avoid that, now. Sometimes, when I make the round of blogs, of bloggers posting their deepest feelings, only to be roundly attacked by others, I want to respond, to get into the middle of things. Most of the time, though, now, I don’t. I shrug and move on. I ask myself first what possible good could come out of my investment. It isn’t that…

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Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism at BlogHer11

Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.thinkingautismguide.com Shannon, Aurelia, Robert, Julia Just one week ago, I spoke at the BlogHer11 Special Needs Minicon, joining moderator Julia Roberts from Support for Special Needs, speakers Aurelia Cotta and Robert Rummel-Hudson, and a room full of special needs community firebrands. I felt like the room was set alight by the rousing series of talks and full-room conversations about what knits the special needs parenting community together, and how we can best kick ass on our kids’ behalf. TPGA editors Jennifer Byde Myers and Liz Ditz made notable contributions to the discussion, as did TPGA contributors Laura Shumaker and Jen Bush, and TPGA friends Jen Lee Reeves and Ellen Seidman, and so, so many others (thank you!). You can check out the official transcript to get a sense of the session, but please know that said transcription is somewhat garbled and very much not verbatim. The…

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Help Urban Autism Preschoolers Get a Playground

TPGA friend Leo surveys the bare yard that is the play area for preschoolers with autism at John Muir Elementary School in San Francisco For many kids with autism, playgrounds — no matter how the kids use them, and often despite physical disabilities — are something they can use without needing 1:1 direction and support. The teacher of the autism preschool class at John Muir School in San Francisco says that’s certainly true of her eight students — the problem is, they don’t have a playground. They have a bare patch of asphalt, with circles painted on it. And they are not allowed to play on the gorgeous new elementary playground adjacent to their yard. The class parents have already worked with the class teacher to determine the best, most appropriate, and accessible play options for the autism preschoolers. The problem is, the school doesn’t have the money for the…