Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.Squidalicious.com Autism parent Amy Lutz did her damnedest to verbally maul the Neurodiversity movement last week, at Slate.com. I’m still trying to understand her rationale, because why would she publicly attack disabled people for the crime of appearing less disabled than her own child? Especially the very advocates who are fighting to ensure a better future for all autistic people — including her son? I’m used to seeing questionable writing at The Huffington Post, but was surprised to see Lutz’s baldly biased reporting in the Slate.com Medical Examiner section. She only cited sources — outraged parents like herself, mostly — who also believe “…that those who argue the Neurodiversity position do so out of ignorance.” A statement which is not merely offensive but untrue: those who support Neurodiversity tend do so because Neurodiversity is their reality, and the neurodiverse their community. Autistic adults are not the…
Tag: Kristina Chew
Were you affected by Hurricane Sandy? How are you doing? If you were not affected personally, do you know someone who was? If they are autistic, have you checked in on them? Do you know of additional ways for non-locals to help out besides donating to the Red Cross? Update 11/3: The sites Sailing Autistic Seas and Love That Max have put together lists of resources for our communities, please share widely (some are family-focused, others are all-ages, if you know of anything they’ve missed, please let them or us know. -SR) Sailing Autistic Seas: Hurricane Sandy Resources Love That Max: Disaster Relief for Families of Kids With Special Needs Here are three on-the-ground reports from autistics and autism families. If you know of other stories or want to add your own, please do so in the comments. Carol Greenburg @AspieAdvocate tweeted her traumatizing but necessary trip into Manhattan from…
Kristina Chew autism.typepad.com Kristina blogs about parenting her teenage son Charlie at the URL above. This post was one of Kristina’s recent daily dispatches. We just got through one of those begins-with-whacking-the-corner-of-the-iPad on the bedroom wall storms, though several degrees less bad than the one Charlie had the night before he went back to school, almost exactly a month ago. He called and called for his iPad after things were over but (powdery with plaster dust from the wall), the iPad remains on the brown chair: As we told Charlie, he needs to sleep first then he can have it. It is past 2am and I want to take one fast glance at some things pertaining to Herodotus but I just wanted to say something I’ve had on my mind for years: I really get all-out annoyed when people make references to head-banging and head-bangers and head-smack-on-desk and that sort…
We held a dialogue series last week between self-advocates Zoe, blogger at Illusion of Competence, and Ari Ne’eman, President and co-founder of The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network; and parent Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler’s Monster and blogger at Fighting Monsters With Rubber Swords. The series continued this week with Melody Latimer, director of The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network’s Dallas-Ft. Worth chapter and blogger at ASParenting, Kassiane of Radical Neurodivergence Speaking, who prefers the term “advocate,” self-advocate Amanda Forest Vivian, blogger at I’m Somewhere Else, and autism parent Kristina Chew, who blogs at We Go With Him and Care2.com. You can read the entire series at thinkingautismguide.blogspot.com/search/label/dialogue Our thanks, once more, to everyone who had participated in the Dialogues. We’ll wrap up with a reminder of why we hosted this series in the first place: Because it needs to happen. Because being a parent of a disabled child is not the same experience…
We held a dialogue series last week between self-advocates Zoe, blogger at Illusion of Competence, and Ari Ne’eman, President and co-founder of The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network; and parent Robert Rummel-Hudson, author of Schuyler’s Monster and blogger at Fighting Monsters With Rubber Swords. The series continued this week with Melody Latimer, director of The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network’s Dallas-Ft. Worth chapter and blogger at ASParenting, Kassiane of Radical Neurodivergence Speaking, who prefers the term “advocate,” and self-advocate Amanda Forest Vivian, blogger at I’m Somewhere Else. You can read the entire series at thinkingautismguide.blogspot.com/search/label/dialogue. Today’s post is by autism parent Kristina Chew, who blogs at We Go With Him and Care2.com. -The Editors —- What A Parent Can Learn From This Dialogue As I started teaching my first class (8am, Elementary Latin) of the 2011-2012 school year, the thought occurred to me: The freshmen students in the first few rows are just a…
Kristina Chew autism.typepad.com www.care2.com/causes/author/autismvox photo (c) 2011 Kristina Chew It is the eternal conundrum. The same day your child has a mammoth, sweaty evening behavior storm was the day he biked the most ever in one week (172 miles), said some nice longer phrases in response to his dad’s questions about ‘where are we going,’ pedaled two miles in a downpour while he and Jim were on the bike path, told us in the middle of a car ride that he needed ‘bathroom.’ Some separate the ‘bad’ from the ‘good’ things their child does, as if to say the former are ‘not the child but the autism.’ We’ve become rather inclined to say that what Charlie does, is what Charlie does. The real Charlie is a messy and complex mix, accomplishing lovely feats and then all wound up in storming. Perhaps the effort to do all those great things —…
Kristina Chew autism.typepad.com Prior to my son Charlie’s diagnosis of autism in July of 1999, I knew even less about special education than I did about autism. I literally didn’t know anyone — family members or friends — who had ever been in special ed. I had less than zero idea if any of the public schools I had attended back in the 1970s and 1980s in California had special ed classes. I’m sure they did; to say that I was ignorant is an understatement. Now I realize that my lack of experience and knowledge about special education back then speaks to a general attitude about special ed, a sense that it’s great that our society provides it, but best not talk to about it; that special ed is for “those kids” who don’t do well in school, or have behavior problems, and so forth. So here is a bit…
Kristina Chew autism.typepad.com My son Charlie has been in both public and private placements. He is 13 years old now; he started attending school — a special education preschool classroom in the St. Paul Public School District — when he was just around 2 years old. Looking back, he’s been through most every kind of placement, from special education classrooms located in a public elementary or middle school, to a small private school only for autistic children, to a large public center for some 200 children with autism and other disabilities. Again and again, we have found ourselves looking for a school for Charlie. Too often, we have thought we have found “it” — a school, a school district where the right program and supports and staff seem to be in place, and then things started to seem not so good, and then to fall apart. At no point have…