THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM
Autism news and resources: from autistic people, professionals, and parents
Going slow and watching for patterns are your two best tools for staying safe with people. People have patterns of behavior, and if you take your time getting to know them, they will fall into their patterns. Watch for red flags and decide ahead of time what you will accept and what is unacceptable.
Photo of Dr. Biesman from theAAPN.org [Image description: Woman w/beige skin, long curly dark hair, & brown eyes, smiling widely, directly at the camera.] Dr. Jonine Biesman specializes in working with neurodiverse children and adolescents, as well as with their parents and larger family system. She is a training leader and interventionist in DIR/Floortime. We talked with Dr. Biesman about best practices for parents who need help understanding and parenting kids with aggressive or self-injurious behaviors, about presuming competence in children who need communication support, and about the potentially dangerous costs of parent-enforced compliance. Here’s what she had to say: [Best practices] doesn’t just apply to autism. With any child, whatever age, whatever person, who’s having a hard time, the first step really is understanding. What is that behavior really representing, what is it a manifestation of, and what’s really being communicated. As soon as anyone’s needs are better met,…
We were recently invited to attend the Floortime Coalition of California’s Fourth Annual DIR/Floortime® Conference: From Research to Practice, in Lafayette, California, and thought our community members might be interested in what the conference speakers had to say. (We are sharing rather than endorsing DIR-specific information.) For those unfamiliar with The DIR® Model, or Developmental, Individual-Differences, Relationship-based Model: it is “an interdisciplinary framework for assessment and intervention developed by Drs. Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder. It is used to guide parents and professionals in designing a program tailored to each child’s unique strengths and challenges and support developmental progress.” We live-tweeted most of the conference speakers’ talks, and collated those tweets into Storify posts for easier reading. We’ve pulled out a quote from each speaker to give a sense of their presentation. There is so much potentially useful information in these talks about rethinking parents’ roles, parent/child & therapist/client relationships,…
Sarah Macleod quarksandquirks.wordpress.com findingmygrounduu.wordpress.com aspergersathome.com “I love you,” I’d say. “I love you, too,” he’d reply, often snuggling into me speaking the sentiment with his body as much with his words. It’s been over two years since we’ve shared that exchange. Two years — perhaps three — since I’ve heard Bryce, my son with Aspergers, now 10, tell me he loves me. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. If I said that it was just words and that I don’t care about the words, my nose would grow like mad. Truth is, I know he loves me, but I ache to hear him say it again. On a recent night around the dinner table during a visit with my mother, the subject of love arose. Bryce pronounced, “I don’t love anyone.” Now, my mom is hip to the blunt mannerisms of my Aspie son, so she didn’t…
Lindsey Nebeker nakedbrainink.com One of my blog readers who is on the autism spectrum brought up a concern regarding recent bedroom issues. This person is finding that the process of achieving orgasm has become increasingly difficult: “[Since learning more about my ASD diagnosis] I’ve been noticing a growing awareness in what is going on around me and what my body is feeling … and it is becoming sort of distracting during sex, mainly orgasm. As I began to feel my self start to climax I suddenly became very focused on the noises and things in the room such as the fan running, and how the moving air felt on my skin. Then I suddenly became overwhelmed with my body itself, to the point that it took away the orgasm. I focused intensely on how the sheets felt against my skin, how my partner’s skin felt on mine, how my hands…
Holly Robinson Peete www.hollyrod.org Over the years many parents have reached out to me for emotional support after their child was diagnosed with autism. I particularly remember getting Jenny McCarthy’s phone call shortly after her son’s diagnosis. Like most moms and dads, she needed to connect with somebody who knew first hand the swift gut-kick of this difficult diagnosis, somebody who had been in the trenches for seven years already. We cried. We cussed. We even managed to laugh. We spoke for eight hours. She was naturally frustrated with the lack of answers about autism. I was there for her as I’d be for any parent, and I told her she was blessed to get such an early diagnosis. Her passion was palpable and I could tell she was going to grab autism by the horns, making it her mission and focus. I knew she’d help spread autism awareness like…
Lindsey Nebeker nakedbrainink.com A slight uncomfortable laughter was shared among the crowd of mothers sitting in a circle as one mother said quietly, “I’m really trying to avoid bringing up the topic of sex to my son. I hope that day doesn’t come up soon.” This was during a recent speaking engagement I gave to a parent support group. I arranged for all of us to sit around in a circle since the group was small enough to pull that off. I often find that with circle-style seating, the conversation becomes more open-ended, and I hear more from my audience. And the conversation can get very interesting — such as when it turns into a conversation about autism and sex. I was tempted to chuckle at the level of discomfort these mothers had in linking the words “autism” and “sex,” but kept to myself and gave a quiet smile. I…