Tag: compassion

1-3v9i7lwakxnckqdqb8fsmq-8743516
Disability

The Stories We Don’t Tell: My Mom On Raising An Autistic Child And Why She’ll Never Write About Me

Posted on by

Sarah Kurchak and her Mother Jane Kurchak  [image: Cheerfully geeky selfie of the author, a white Canadian woman wearing glasses and also goggles on top of her head; and her mother, a white woman also wearing glasses plus a pinstriped blue collared shirt, tie, and white jacket.] Sarah Kurchak www.riskyfuel.com When I’m feeling particularly frustrated with my career, I offer to ghostwrite a memoir for my mom. It’s a slightly bitter, semi-serious joke. I’m mostly taking a shot at the fact that the memoirs that non-autistic parents write about raising their autistic children have a much better shot at getting published and selling than anything that I, as an autistic person, could ever hope to write about autism. But there’s also a little part of me that just wants that payday. (I can’t extend this offer to my dad, because he’s a fellow autist and no one seems particularly interested in…

33292438450_0eb8838e3c-6039294
Disability

Helping Autistic Children Understand Death and Dying

Posted on by

Maxfield Sparrow unstrangemind.com Photo © Benedic Belen | Flickr/Creative Commons [Image: Black-and-white photo of an Asian woman comforting a small crying child who is wearing a tiara, and has their hands over their face.] The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism asked Autistic adults to fill out a survey about death and dying to create a resource for people who need to explain death to Autistic children. The response was tremendous—in less than a week the survey had 50 responses, mostly from Autistic adults. What follows is a summary and analysis of the responses. We hope it is useful to you, your child, your family, your clients, and your students. Please note that some of the responses discuss difficult material, including suicide, and suicidal ideation/threats. Bullet Point Summary Autistic adults were surveyed about death and dying. Most learned about death through observation of people, animals, and plants. Learning about death was…

Disability

Being the Change We Want

Posted on by

(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…

Disability

Good Cop

Posted on by

Carol Greenburg  aspieadvocate-ascd.blogspot.com   I could have kicked myself for not getting the name of the wonderful New York City police officer who pulled me over the other night. I’m a safe driver for the most part, but Asperger’s sometimes interferes with my perceptions whether I’m standing still or navigating a dark road. It was rainy, I was distracted, and if I can’t even read body language … Well, I was as I so often am, stumped.    Even at my best it’s sometimes unclear to me why people honk their horns at me,  so when the cop driving behind me started waving his hands I didn’t know if  wanted me to get out of his way or whether he was trying to pull me over. Turns out it was the latter. I know this because he used his loudspeaker to announce to all of SoHo that I was to put my car…

Disability

Why I Can’t Breathe Tonight

Posted on by

Anonymous Special Needs Professional Recently I read a post on The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism blog by a parent named Pia Prenevost. It was called An Open Letter to Special Needs Professionals. The title made me feel a bit guarded at first (as a special needs professional), because my experience with Ye Olde Internets is that “an open letter” usually warns that a negative letter, a warning to the recipient of the “Oh, no, you di’n’t” variety, is coming. But that was incorrect, because in reality the author had written a lovely, heartfelt post about the vulnerability a parent of a child with special needs feels. I encourage you to read it, it’s beautiful. Here’s an excerpt: “I am broken-hearted. And it doesn’t matter if it is the first day or a century later. It doesn’t matter where in the “grief cycle” I might be. It doesn’t matter if…