Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism Named “Book of the Year”

We couldn’t be more grateful, humbled, or thrilled about the first wave of reviews for the new Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism Book! Steve Silberman, investigative reporter for Wired and other national magazines, declared Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism his Book of the Year (!): Covering a wide range of nuts-and-bolts subjects — from strategizing toilet training and and planning fun family outings, to helping your kid cope with bullying, to identifying the issues that a skilled speech-language therapist can work on with your child, to spotting and avoiding “autism cults,” to navigating byzantine special-needs bureaucracies and providing your child with appropriate assistive technology, to fighting for your kid’s right to an individualized education — the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism is bracingly free of dogma, heavy-handed agendas, and pseudoscientific woo. What distinguishes it from, say, the fine guide for parents recently made freely downloadable by the National Autism Center, is…

Creating a Special Needs Binder

Jennifer Johnson As a parent of a child with both significant medical problems as well as a diagnosis of autism, I have tried to learn things and develop systems along the way to help me in terms of accessing care for my child and getting quality care.  One of the tools that I developed for myself (and then later learned was available online in other forms) is a medical/special needs binder.  I take it to all appointments for my son — the pediatrician, speech therapist, school psychologist, etc. Special Needs Binder: Why and How Whether your child has medical problems on top of ASD or not, you will unfortunately spend a lot of time in the offices of doctors, psychologists, school officials, etc. Each of them is likely to ask you many of the same questions again, and some will ask you the same things multiple times. My son has…