Autism Child Quotes

Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did - that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that - a parent's heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.

Autism, is part of my child, it's not everything he is. My child is so much more than a diagnosis.

I'll never get to hear her say, 'I love you, Mommy,' like other parents take for granted.

Presuming that a nonspeaking child has nothing to say is like presuming that an adult without a car has nowhere to go.

I Have a Dream... someday my son, Zyon and ALL individuals with disabilities will be seen as HUMAN beings. I Have a Dream... someday the human & civil rights of individuals with disabilities are honored and they are treated as equals. I Have a Dream... someday ALL parents who have children with disabilities see their child as a blessing and not a burden. I Have a Dream... someday there will be more jobs and opportunities for individuals with disabilities. I Have a Dream... someday there will be UNITY "within" the disabled community. I HAVE A DREAM!!!

The word “autism” still conveys a fixed and dreadful meaning to most people—they visualize a child mute, rocking, screaming, inaccessible, cut off from human contact. And we almost always speak of autistic children, never of autistic adults, as if such children never grew up, or were somehow mysteriously spirited off the planet, out of society.

It's hard to forget hurtful things, isn't it? Children with autism have good memories. So it's much harder for them to forget bad experiences than it is for us. So fill them with as many good experiences as possible.

When parents say, ‘I wish my child did not have autism,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.’ Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.

I see autism as having many different strands. All of these strands are beautiful. They are all the colours of the rainsbow intertwined intricately into the child. If you try and take away the autism by removing the strands you also take away parts of the child as they are attached to them. Thhey are what makes them who they are. However autism is only a part of them, not the whole. It does not define them. This is for my Tom.

If you are accepting of the belief that life can be good even with autism, then they will think so, too. You are the most important person in your child's life, and you can make them believe that anything is possible.

As a functional Aspergian adult, one thing troubles me deeply about those kids who end up behind the second door. Many descriptions of autism and Asperger’s describe people like me as “not wanting contact with others” or “preferring to play alone.” I can’t speak for other kids, but I’d like to be very clear about my own feelings: I did not ever want to be alone. And all those child psychologists who said “John prefers to play by himself” were dead wrong. I played by myself because I was a failure at playing with others. I was alone as a result of my own limitations, and being alone was one of the bitterest disappointments of my young life.

The future of my child is unknown but I have loved him, supported him, and taught him right from wrong. I will continue to do so...

Love every child without condition, listen with an open heart, get to know who they are, what they love, and follow more often than you lead.

But discouraging an enthusiasm can be just another way of dismantling a strategy that helps a child with autism feel better regulated—or, worse, removing a source of interest and joy.

A speech-language pathologist named Michelle Garcia Winner told me that many parents in her practice became aware of their own autistic traits only in the wake of their child’s diagnosis.

Labeling a child’s mind as diseased—whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism—may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child. Much gets corrected that might better have been left alone.

If we can't start by seeing an autistic child as inherently capable, interesting, and valuable, no amount of education or therapy we layer on top is going to matter.

Autism isn't your fault. Each child has the ability to grow. Those words saved me from a dark place.

The diagnosis of autism can sometimes help you better predict a child’s behaviors, but it tells you nothing about their specific way of thinking, their idiosyncrasies, their strengths, or their individual personality.

The easiest words for an autistic child to learn are nouns, because they directly relate to pictures. Highly verbal autistic children like I was can sometimes learn how to read with phonics. Written words were too abstract for me to remember, but I could laboriously remember the approximately fifty phonetic sounds and a few rules.

One day I dream that we can grow in a matured society where nobody would be 'normal or abnormal' but just human beings, accepting any other human being -- ready to grow together.

It is important to note that the stress we feel as parents is not generated by our adult child with autism, but rather from the failings of the systems in place that are supposedly there to help us. There are caring people in the systems, yet often the lack of options and foresight and inability to plan ahead or provide options for our loved ones are accepted as normal by the systems in place.

Education is like Christmas. We’re all just opening our gifts, one at a time. And it is a fact that each and every child has a bright shiny present with her name on it, waiting there underneath the tree. God wrapped it up, and he’ll let us know when it’s time to unwrap it. In the meantime, we must believe that our children are okay. Every last one of them. The straight-A ones and the ones with autism and the naughty ones and the chunky ones and the shy ones and the loud ones and the so-far-behind ones.

There are many things we don’t understand, and many ways to unlock the brain and maximize function. Don’t ever let anybody tell you it can’t be done.

Imagine that your child is born with wings.

Then the dreaded words, Your child has autism. These words echo in their heads like a freight train blasting through their hopes and dreams.

The child who lives with autism may look “normal,” but his behavior can be perplexing and downright unruly.

A diagnosis is not a prediction. It doesn’t tell you what’s possible. It doesn’t change you, your colleague, your child, or your friend. It just opens up tricks and tools to thrive.

Adults tend to be more understanding and accepting of differences than teenagers. The important thing is to find a group that your adult child is personally interested in being a part of, and then acting on the assumption that he has the right to be there and that he will fit right in.

People ask what the hardest thing is about having an autistic child, and for me the answer is easy. What mom doesn’t want to hear her baby tell her that he loves her or to feel his arms around her?

The word “autistic” is accurate. But so are other words that we no longer use to describe people: spinster (unmarried woman), hobo (migrant worker), cripple (person with a physical handicap), and so on. The fact that a person is unmarried or has sustained a mobility-reducing injury or birth defect certainly figures into their life experiences, but it does not define their character—unless they or we let it.

The longer I have been on the raw food path, the more I tend to come full circle and return to where my original ideas and inspiration of wanting to eat raw food come from - and that’s natural hygiene and its principles.

The ultimate goal of parents, educators, and professionals who interact with children with autism is to unlock their potential to become self-reliant, fully-integrated, contributing members of society. We have the power to unlock this potential by implementing an effectively structured intervention—that which takes the development of the whole child into account.

Education is supposed to help the child and parents: it mustn’t end up being a kind of holding cell. For this reason, our education must not be overly defined by the views of outsiders, or be unquestioningly compliant with the values and beliefs of specialists. Of paramount importance is that the special needs education be a suitable fit for each and every student.

Anger makes me uncomfortable. I avoid it. I suppress it. Most often my reaction to any form of anger is that I want it to stop. Perhaps because I didn’t learn how to express anger constructively as a child, only that it was undesirable. My literal Aspie brain didn’t perceive the difference between “expressing anger in destructive ways is bad” and “expressing anger is bad.

Diagnoses —such as ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, an autism spectrum disorder, reactive attachment disorder, the newly coined disruptive mood regulation disorder, or any other disorder—can be helpful in some ways. They “validate” that there’s something different about your kid, for example. But they can also be counterproductive in that they can cause caregivers to focus more on a child’s challenging behaviors rather than on the lagging skills and unsolved problems giving rise to those behaviors. Also, diagnoses suggest that the problem resides within the child and that it’s the child who needs to be fixed. The reality is that it takes two to tango. Let there be no doubt, there’s something different about your child. But you are part of the mix as well. How you understand and respond to the hand you’ve been dealt is essential to helping your child.

Go to every IEP with a plan of your own. Be the expert. Teachers and therapists know general information only. You, on the other-hand, know the specifics about your child – you are your child’s only real expert. Pop in unexpectedly to observe. Keep educators on their toes. Be kind and push gently. If needed, push hard.

Sometimes all a parent needs is to know the impossible is actually possible. Hope goes a long way when it comes to autism. Matt gives people hope.

It demands that we give voice to their thoughts and feelings, even when their voices are nonverbal.

With regards to sensitive periods, Montessori viewed them as windows of opportunity.

There is no shortcut to anyplace worth going.

Know your own child’s behaviors and look deeper to find their meaning. Be the expert for your child. Discover the wonderful.

A small step forward . . .every . . single . . .day. The sun is coming up and I am wondering, 'What wondrous thing shall I witness today?

Think of it as affirmative brainwashing. The more you articulate your child’s strengths and gifts, the more both of you grow to believe it.

Yes, raising a child with autism can be highly demanding, but please remember, just as you worry about your child, so your child worries about you.

Think of all the miserable people you know who can fluently verbally communicate with whomsoever they wish. It does not save them from being unhappy.

In order to communicate, we must have connection.

The only thing we have control over in this life is how we feel.

When we don’t believe something is possible, we don’t give or seek out opportunities for our children to grow.

Indeed, a sense of humour is possibly one of the most important attributes that the parents of a child with fragile X must possess.

Feel positive about your child’s current ability to communicate verbally.

Still, some parents and professionals view these interests as yet another undesirable symptom of autism, one that makes it even more difficult for the child to fit in. Often their instinct is to discourage the child, to redirect his attention and suggest interests that are more socially acceptable and conventional. But discouraging an enthusiasm can be just another way of dismantling a strategy that helps a child with autism feel better regulated—or, worse, removing a source of interest and joy. A more helpful approach is to do as Jessy Park’s parents did and use the enthusiasm as a way to expand the child’s outlook and improve the child’s life.

Anyone who has spent time with a verbal person with autism is familiar with this tendency to repeat words, phrases, or whole sentences, often ad infinitum. Indeed echolalia is one of autism’s defining characteristics. In children who can speak it is often among the first indications to parents that something is amiss in a child, when, instead of responding or initiating with the child’s own language, the child echoes words or phrases borrowed from others.

Every single child is gifted. And every single child has challenges. It's just that in the educational system, some gifts and challenges are harder to see...We can help our kids who struggle in school believe that they're okay. It's just that there's only one way to help them. And it's hard. We have to actually believe that our kids are okay. We can start believing by erasing the idea that education is a race. It's not. We unwrap our gifts at different times. In the meantime, we have to believe that every last one of our kids is okay. The straight-A ones and the ones with autism and the naughty ones and the chunky ones and the shy ones and the loud ones and the so-far-behind ones.

Children with disabilities might, to your eyes, look stuck in a perpetual childhood, but our thoughts and sensibilities evolve constantly. So, using vocabulary the child understands, please show them how they can live their lives to the full.

When others focus on what your child cannot do, see it as an opportunity to focus on who God is and what he can do through you and your child. Sometimes inability is the vehicle for experiencing the blessing of God's powerful presence and provision.

Allen had an aide who hovered within inches of his face and physically prompted him so frequently that her very proximity became a dysregulating factor. As time passed, Allen became more and more agitated—mostly because of the aide’s behavior. Some adults who work with children have the misguided concept that to be effective, it’s best to be in the child’s face, even to give positive support. But for a child with autism who has social anxiety and sensory challenges, that can be scary and intimidating. It can also impede progress.

Despite the constant lament that autism is just too costly, a significant or even 'crippling' economic burden for the social whole, the production of the time-rich but not time-efficient body of the autistic child has generated a multibillion dollar 'autism industrial complex.

We know that children with autism like order, that they are often very visual and that they can be quite literal. They deserve beautiful resources and symbols that make sense. If a picture does not explain visually, it is pointless and the child will stop looking to the pictures for information.

I now know that surrendering, allowing, and “BE-ing” is far more productive than grasping for control. I don't know why one child is born with autism and another isn't, or why some children have to fight cancer and some don't. I have lived long enough to know that life is not fair, never will be fair, and we shouldn’t expect it to be.

If you’re treading quicksand in the swamp of what-might- have-been, you can be sure that’s the message your child gets. You’re a rare person if being constantly reminded of your shortcomings spurs you to improve. For the rest of us, it’s a self-esteem squasher. Time to grab for that overhead vine and realize that only a pencil dot separates “bitter” and “better.

[The] excited, angry, upset, or calm choreography of fingers fluttering is simultaneously medicalized and moralized: re-encoded as '[an] odd or repetitive way of moving fingers.' The quiet play of a lone child in a busy playground is now seen as a pathological sign pointing not to personal choice or preference or even to social exclusion but to (medical/moral) deviance.

Part of the torture of autism is that the future is so impossibly unsure. Your child might become a fully functioning member of society and appear no different than anyone else, even if he does have to look at mouths instead of eyes and can't stand to give his own kids a bath. Or, he might be so violent that he requires institutionalization... Either way, you're expected to work your ass off for it.

Just as functioning isn't uniform, it isn't linear either. There is a commonly seen phenomenon in autistic children where they'll make big gains in elementary school then regress when they hit adolescence. Or a child will be labeled a late bloomer, seeming practically "normal" in their teen years, then seem to backslide dramatically when they go off to college or enter the adult world of work and independent living

There is no egg in egg plant, neither apple nor pine in pineapple. A guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? One goose, two geese. So one moose, two meese? If teachers taught, why haven’t preachers praught? We have noses that run and feet that smell. How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

The Asperger’s child at the gifted meeting is doing well in school, but the Asperger’s child at an autism meeting may be in a poor special ed program, bored, and getting into trouble because adults in his life hold lower expectations of his abilities. Unfortunately, in some cases, people are so hung up on the labels attached to students that they teach to these low expectations and aren’t even curious to learn if the child is actually more capable.

When you’re A child, grown-ups always tell you that ‘Stix and Stones Can break you’re bones, but words will never hurt you.’ They say it as if it’s a kind of spell that’s going to protect you. I’ve never seen the logic of it. Cuts and bruises quickly heal and disappear. You forget all about them. The psychological ones that people inflict with words go much deeper. Even now, I don’t like to think about those times too much, in case the scars begin to open up and hurt, making me feel useless all over again.

Your child, too, will one day be an adult. For them to live life with the same degree of independence as neurotypical offspring might be difficult, but one day your child-rearing, child-minding days will come to an end. Parents grow older until they can no longer look after their adult children. The period in which we are together as parents and child is finite. So please, while the child still is a child, and while you’re still around to do so, support them well. Laugh together and share your stories. You won’t be revisiting these years. Value them.

While many autistic people face great challenges as children, things become even harder once they reach adulthood. Suddenly, society expects you to be “an adult” and behave and function as such. It is such a shame that exactly at the point in their lives when they need it the most, the support they receive from organizations and resources often stops. Because I was diagnosed at 21, I never received any support as a child. After I received my diagnosis, my mother tried to find all kinds of resources, but she soon realized that I was too old for much of anything.

We may assume that the socialising aspect of play settings is beneficial to the child. This is an almost universally held belief, particularly in the case of girls. The child with ASD may disagree. It may be that for some children with ASD there really is no point or functional benefit in them attending a group play setting and that the distress caused outweighs any possible benefit gained. This notion is difficult for many parents to acknowledge as they believe that being alone cannot be good for the child; but for many children and adults with ASD, being alone is the best thing of all.

As soon as [Patricia Highsmith] had stopped work, she felt purposeless and quite at a loss about what to do with herself. 'There is no real life except in working,' she wrote in her notebook, 'that is to say in the imagination.' It was in this state that she observed that only one situation would drive her to commit murder - being part of a family unit. Most likely, she thought, she would strike out in anger at a small child, felling them in one blow. But children over the age of eight, she surmised, would probably take two blows to kill. The reality of socialising with anyone, no matter how close, she said, left her feeling fatigued.

While it is certainly true that bullies typically pick on children they perceive as weak, it is also true that there is a wide selection of weak children to choose from, so what is it about children with autism that tends to attract their wrath? One key factor is that children with autism tend not to roam in packs! For example, a child with autism may be able to tolerate the stress and required masking of the classroom for a few hours but might need the respite of recess to take a break and be away from other people for a bit. This alone time exposes them to greater risk. But is there anything about the behavior of the child with autism that attracts bullying?

On occasions the person may appear ill-mannered; for example, one young man with Asperger's Syndrome wanted to attract his mother;s attention while she was talking to a group of her friends, and loudly said, 'Hey, you!', apparently unaware of the more appropriate means of addressing his mother in public. The child, being impulsive and not aware of the consequences, says the first thing that comes into their mind. Strangers may consider the child to be rude, inconsiderate or spoilt, giving the parents a withering look and assuming the unusual social behavior is a result of parental incompetence. They may comment, 'Well, if I had him for two weeks he would be a different child.' The parents' reaction may be that they would gladly let them have the child, as they need a rest, and to prove a point.

In his classic textbook Science and Human Behavior, Skinner explained that while aversives may seem to promptly extinguish undesirable behavior, the behavior often returns with a vengeance after the punishment ceases, because the subject has not been taught more adaptive ways to behave. He also pointed out that punishment creates fear, guilt, and shame, resulting in less learning overall. (In other words, a child compelled to practice the piano with threats of spanking does not tend to become a virtuoso but instead learns to hate music.) Skinner also cautioned that the use of aversives has negative effects on the researcher, potentially turning the experimental situation into a sadistic power play. “In the long run,” he observed, “punishment, unlike reinforcement, works to the disadvantage of both the punished organism and the punishing agency.” But

those glasses aren't for the sun they're for darkness, exclaims Rue. Sometimes when we harvest through the night, they'll pass out a few pairs to those of us highest in the trees. Where the torchlight doesn't reach. One time, this boy Martin, he tried to keep his pair. Hid it in his pants. They killed him on the spot. They killed a boy for taking these/ I say Yes. and everyone knew he was no danger. Martin wasn't right in the head. I mean he still acted like a three year old. He just wanted the glasses to play with, says Rue. Hearing this makes me feel like District 12 is some sort of safe haven. Of course, people keel over from starvation all the time, but I can't imagine the peacekeepers murdering a simpleminded child. There's a little girl, one of greasy sae's gradkids, who wanders around the Hob. She's not quite right but she's treated as a sort of pet. People toss her scraps and things.

A story best told at speed. After finals, more exams, then the call to the bar, pupillage, a lucky invitation to prestigious chambers, some early success defending hopeless cases—how sensible it had seemed, to delay a child until her early thirties. And when those years came, they brought complex worthwhile cases, more success. Jack was also hesitant, arguing for holding back another year or two. Mid-thirties then, when he was teaching in Pittsburgh and she worked a fourteen-hour day, drifting deeper into family law as the idea of her own family receded, despite the visits of nephews and nieces. In the following years, the first rumors that she might be elected precociously to the bench and required to be on circuit. But the call didn’t come, not yet. And in her forties, there sprang up anxieties about elderly gravids and autism. Soon after, more young visitors to Gray’s Inn Square, noisy demanding great-nephews, great-nieces, reminded her how hard it would be to squeeze an infant into her kind of life. Then rueful thoughts of adoption, some tentative inquiries—and throughout the accelerating years that followed, occasional agonies of doubt, firm late-night decisions concerning surrogate mothers undone in the early-morning rush to work. And when at last, at nine thirty one morning at the Royal Courts of Justice, she was sworn in by the Lord Chief Justice and took her oath of allegiance and her Judicial Oath before two hundred of her bewigged colleagues, and she stood proudly before them in her robes, the subject of a witty speech, she knew the game was up; she belonged to the law as some women had once been brides of Christ.

Teaching moments. . . never let one pass you by. And confidence-building. Give him the tools and watch him take the reigns.

A popular Internet essay notes: “There is no egg in egg plant, neither apple nor pine in pineapple. A guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? One goose, two geese. So one moose, two meese? If teachers taught, why haven’t preachers praught? We have noses that run and feet that smell. How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

Lesson for today..... just because an autistic child seems intensely focused on numbers, facts and history, does NOT mean they don't feel for the people involved. Difficulty expressing emotion is not the same as an inability to empathize.

My son regressed. I have my own thoughts on that, just as all parents do. It doesn't mean that I would ever think of another parent as ignorant or stupid if they think differently about their own child. If we are to be a community, then we need to be heard as a community and not as warring factions. Support each other.

Getting its target audience to conclude that facts and truth are “unknowable” is the true objective of any disinformation campaign. Climate change deniers aren’t trying to convince people that surveys they commissioned are better than those agreed upon by the vast majority of scientists. Antigovernment conspiracy theorists aren’t really trying to convince people that some towns in the Midwest are governed under Sharia law, or that Jade Helm was an attempt by Obama to come for their guns. If someone actually believes the falsehood, that’s a bonus, but the primary objective is to get readers or viewers to throw their hands up and give up on “facts.” Do vaccines cause autism? Maybe. Was Senator Ted Cruz’s father involved with President Kennedy’s assassination? Anything’s possible. Is Hillary Clinton running a child-sex ring out of the basement of a DC pizza parlor? Who knows?

Place colorful stickers above your eyebrows when having a conversation with the child.

have become not just advocates, but emissaries. Being an autism parent today requires not only stamina, curiosity, creativity, patience, resilience, and diplomacy—but the courage to think expansively and to dream accordingly.

My autism is part of who I am, not all of who I am.

I know many folks who have business cards made up that state that their child has Autism and explain what it is. They feel that educating these judgmental, tisk-tisking, disrespectful types will help. My husband and I always joked that we were going to have our own cards made up that said, “My son has autism. He is not intentionally being naughty or rude, but you are!

When a child plays, he learns valuable skills that he will use as an adult.

Beloved children split in two. A child-with: part child, part autism. A part to love and a part to hate. A part to cultivate and a part to eliminate.. Such cultural orientation did not force [Karen] McCarron's .. hand in killing her child, but it nonetheless provides the necessary conditions .. to make this kind of violence possible and even—for those of us monitoring the headlines—normal.

After the antivaxxers’ claims that the MMR vaccine caused autism were debunked, they argued that the thimerosal in vaccines caused autism. After this was debunked, new claims surfaced that the cause was the vaccines being given too close together and too early, somehow shocking a child’s immune system and resulting in autism. This, too, was debunked. Science shows that even though the number of shots has risen over time, the actual load on the immune system has decreased because today’s vaccines are better engineered. Before 1991, the whooping-cough vaccine had three thousand different antigens. Today’s whooping-cough vaccine has no more than five particles—just as effective, but much easier on the immune system. After the “too many, too soon” myth was debunked, antivaxxers began claiming that the MMR vaccine was “triggering” autism in children who were somehow genetically predisposed to it. That, too, was debunked.

C18: A child is autistic or has Asperger's syndrome. Should we use one language only with the child? Children diagnosed with a specific autism spectrum disorder have a greater or lesser degree of impairment in language and communication skills, as well as repetitive or restrictive patterns of thought and behaviour, with delays in social and emotional development. Such children use language in restricted ways, expecting much consistency in language and communication, and are less likely to learn through language. However, such children may experience the social and cultural benefits of bilingualism when living in a dual language environment. For example, such children may understand and speak two languages of the local community at their own level. Like many parents of children with language impairment, bilingualism was frequently blamed by teachers and other professionals for the early signs of Asperger's, and a move to monolingualism was frequently regarded as an essential relief from the challenges. There is almost no research on autism and bilingualism or on Asperger's syndrome and bilingualism. However, a study by Susan Rubinyi of her son, who has Asperger's syndrome, provides insights. Someone with the challenge of Asperger's also has gifts and exceptional talents, including in language. Her son, Ben, became bilingual in English and French using the one parent–one language approach (OPOL). Susan Rubinyi sees definite advantages for a child who has challenges with flexibility and understanding the existence of different perspectives. Merely the fact that there are two different ways to describe the same object or concept in each language, enlarges the perception of the possible. Since a bilingual learns culture as well as language, the child sees alternative ways of approaching multiple areas of life (eating, recreation, transportation etc.) (p. 20). She argues that, because of bilingualism, her son's brain had a chance to partly rewire itself even before Asperger's syndrome became obvious. Also, the intense focus of Asperger's meant that Ben absorbed vocabulary at a very fast rate, with almost perfect native speaker intonation. Further Reading: Rubinyi, S. (2006) Natural Genius: The Gifts of Asperger's Syndrome . Philadelphia & London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

But young parents, educated middle-class ones anyway, are very jumpy these days, they get so much information from the media about all the things that could be wrong with their child - autism, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, allergies, obesity and so on - they’re in a constant state of panic, watching their offspring like hawks for warning signs.

This can be true, although interestingly, it is usually tainted breast milk that is blamed for either “poisoning” a child and causing them to develop autism (or for -supposedly- causing autistic genes to be switched on), as opposed to anything that might have been passed to the fetus via the placenta during gestation. Regardless,

Some really do want to prepare themselves, and in these cases, the preparedness is primarily emotional. They want to love that baby as much as possible, come hell or high water, and to make every possible preparation they can so that the baby can live in comfort, and receive the care it needs. Beginning to care for an autistic person even before he or she is born is one way of giving that child every chance in life once it is born, and to people with this philosophy, I say: “More power to you!” Can

One article I read suggests that the more attention a parent pays to their child, the more likely an autistic person will respond favorably to that parent. Thus a parent may dose an autistic with all sorts of quack cure-alls which may have no effect on autism at all, but the autistic person may be responding favorably to increased attention from the parent.

If every man, woman, and child on Earth is made in the image of God, it stands to reason then, that all of us possess some shade of God's appearance, intellect, and powers -autism representing one of these shades. Yet

If it's a boy, parents often elect to abort. The reasoning is that with autism being more prevalent in boys than in girls, one stands a fair chance of getting rid of a potentially autistic child if you abort the boy. The actual “figures” vary, depending on which source you look at, but some estimates say autism is four to five times more likely to present itself in boys than in girls. The

Recently, Temple Grandin's mother, Eustacia Cutler, wrote and article that tried to explain why some autistic men seem to have a sexual preoccupation with children and child pornography. It was an article that needn't have been written if no such preoccupation existed, or if it existed on a level equal with that of men in the rest of society, else why did she feel the need to write about autistic men, and not just “men”? Most

Mindset 1 embraces the idea that every child is more than autism. This mindset recognizes that while diagnostic labels serve purposes, they can also lead to errors in perception. There are predictable ways that humans try to make sense of each other, especially when behaviors are outside the norm. Parents, educators, and clinicians working with autistic children are not immune from these false narratives. Recognizing and fighting against them, as well as battling unconscious images we may have gleaned from media, leads to more accurate understanding of each child and to more successful interventions.

For teaching to be effective, you must be heard, and many children with autism hear better with a picture.

Autism should no longer be seen as a negative label,’ she says. ‘Autistic people are necessary for the development of our society. To show possibility and the ways we can make a different world with more understanding and opportunities.

will be used only in the EHCP assessment and in the initial setting up of support, or they may be called in if a child is struggling. They are likely to recommend what support they know the LA is realistically going to be able to afford; it might be very different to what support a child ideally needs.