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…
Tag: TPGA
Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism is available in print today! We couldn’t be more proud. It has been an amazing year and a half since we began this adventure. We’re so pleased that the great work of our contributors is now available to any person searching for reliable, experienced, positive information about autism. For all today’s smiles and pride, the truth is Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism’s inspiration was our persistent frustration with the negative autism stereotypes and misinformation we faced in parenting our children with autism, or advocating with/amplifying the signal of the amazing Autistic communities. As stated in our Mission, this book is the resource we wish we’d had when autism first became part of our lives: a one-stop source for carefully curated, evidence-based information from autism parents, autistics, and autism professionals. We want to thank all of the amazing contributors to this website, and those authors in…
The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism has been humming along for over a year now, and we’ve shared more than 200 great interviews, stories and how-to’s here. We’ve watched the TPGA Facebook page grow with active, vibrant discussions, and we love seeing many different perspectives pop-up in those comments. It’s encouraging, knowing these pages have provided a positive, supportive and safe environment for discussion and questions. We are seeing a community come to life here, and it’s exciting. Editing is under way on the book, The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, with a plan to publish later this fall. In an effort to get the best resources into the print version, we are putting out one last call to our readers and contributors: Share the wealth of knowledge you have collected. If you have an online resource, book, service, government agency or other great person, place, or thing that we…
Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.thinkingautismguide.com Shannon, Aurelia, Robert, Julia Just one week ago, I spoke at the BlogHer11 Special Needs Minicon, joining moderator Julia Roberts from Support for Special Needs, speakers Aurelia Cotta and Robert Rummel-Hudson, and a room full of special needs community firebrands. I felt like the room was set alight by the rousing series of talks and full-room conversations about what knits the special needs parenting community together, and how we can best kick ass on our kids’ behalf. TPGA editors Jennifer Byde Myers and Liz Ditz made notable contributions to the discussion, as did TPGA contributors Laura Shumaker and Jen Bush, and TPGA friends Jen Lee Reeves and Ellen Seidman, and so, so many others (thank you!). You can check out the official transcript to get a sense of the session, but please know that said transcription is somewhat garbled and very much not verbatim. The…
During IMFAR, HealthCentral’s Jeremy Shane inteviewed TPGA editor Shannon Des Roches Rosa about the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. Shannon talks about why we created TPGA, how our site and forthcoming book provide the “crash course” parents of kids with new autism diagnoses need (and which doesn’t currently exist), as well as the importance of finding positive role models, community, and information as soon as possible after an autism diagnosis. Jeremy also interviewed Shannon about Accepting Your Child’s Diagnosis, and on iPads & Learning Devices for Teaching Kids With Autism.
We are so pleased to announce an addition to the editorial team at The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism; Carol A. Greenburg will join our efforts here as an additional resource and editor. We are honored to have her rich experience and important perspective as part of our team. We’re thrilled she was able to add TPGA to her very active life, and our community is lucky to have such a great advocate. Please join us in welcoming Carol. **** Carol Greenburg, executive director of Brooklyn Special Needs Consulting, is a special education consultant and lay advocate in private practice serving the five boroughs of NYC and beyond. Her unique perspective as an adult with Aspergers Syndrome and as the mother of a severely language-delayed autistic child, informs all of her work. In September, she was appointed the East Coast Regional Director of Autism Women’s Network (www.autismwomensnetwork.com) A frequent speaker at…
The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism (TPGA) started with a brainstorm in a California parking lot May 27, 2010. We published our first post 9 days later, on June 6: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism (TPGA) is the book and website we wish had been available when our children with autism were first diagnosed. We want to help people with autism and their families make sense of the bewildering array of available autism treatments and options, and determine which are worth their time, money, and energy. Think of us as a little bit of Snopes for the autism community — trusted, accurate, and friendly. Our essays will cover informed approaches to autism and autism treatments, as well as the personal experiences of people with autism and their families. Our attitude is cautionary yet loving — we’re honest, but we’re not interested in negativity. We — the TPGA editors —…
Some of you have asked how you can help us promote The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. Here are three simple actions: Follow our Twitter stream at @thinkingautism and retweet our posts. We publish a new essay every weekday, between midnight and 3 AM PST. Join the conversation: comment on our posts! We’ve had some great discussions, and look forward to more. Visit our Facebook page. You can also install “like” code for our Facebook page on your blog, as we have in this blog’s right-hand sidebar. Email us and we’ll send you the code. Thanks so much, Shannon, Liz, Jen, & Emily Editors, The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism
It’s time for us to start working on a cover for our book. We’ve looked through our own photographs, and we may still have one we like, but we thought we’d open up the possibility of finding something great from our readers. We are looking for a photograph, or image (drawn, painted etc.) of a path. We’re hoping to find something that resembles the image Jean Winegardner conjures in this essay. some quotes from the essay: “It is made up of dirt and rocks and it winds through and up a mountain pass.” “Some days, when we trip and fall, we see a beautiful flower under a rock that we wouldn’t have seen had we not stumbled.” “Sometimes the path is dark and scary. And sometimes its beauty takes our breath away.” If we select your image, it will be used on the cover of our book! Please see our…