My Path to Autism Acceptance

Linda at Outrunning the Storm outrunningthestorm.wordpress.com My son, Charlie fell apart last fall when kindergarten started. So did I. It was one of the darkest times in my life. But, I can say today — and I don’t say this lightly — that I am so very glad for everything that happened last year. All of it. You see, last fall I felt like my child was broken. I knew I was broken and I had no idea what to do about any of it. Most days Charlie wasn’t fit to leave the house. I stopped talking to people. What could I say? I live in fear of my five year old child’s violence? I couldn’t. I didn’t. Instead I went to my blog. Under the guise of anonymity, I went to my blog and I wrote and I wrote and then I started reading. Everyday, I read every single…

On “Quiet Hands”

Julia Bascom juststimming.wordpress.com Explaining my reaction to this: means I need to explain my history with this: 1. When I was a little girl, they held my hands down in tacky glue while I cried. 2. I’m a lot bigger than them now. Walking down a hall to a meeting, my hand flies out to feel the texture on the wall as I pass by. “Quiet hands,” I whisper. My hand falls to my side. 3. When I was six years old, people who were much bigger than me with loud echoing voices held my hands down in textures that hurt worse than my broken wrist while I cried and begged and pleaded and screamed. 4. In a classroom of language-impaired kids, the most common phrase is a metaphor. “Quiet hands!” A student pushes at a piece of paper, flaps their hands, stacks their fingers against their palm, pokes at…