Autism Parent 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.

I know of nobody who is purely autistic, or purely neurotypical. Even God has some autistic moments, which is why the planets spin.

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

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 Internet," [Judy] Singer said, "is a prosthetic device for people who can't socialize without it." For anyone challenged by language and social rules, a communication system that does not operate in real time is a godsend.

I've met so many parents of the kids who are on the low end of the autism spectrum, kids who are diametrically opposed to Jacob, with his Asperger's. They tell me I'm lucky to have a son who's verbal, who is blisteringly intelligent, who can take apart the broken microwave and have it working again an hour later. They think there is no greater hell than having a son who is locked in his own world, unaware that there's a wider one to explore. But try having a son who is locked in his own world and still wants to make a connection. A son who tries to be like everyone else but truly doesn't know how.

I do not think God makes bad things happen just so that people can grow spiritually. Bad parents do that, my mother said. Bad parents make things hard and painful for their children and then say it was to help them grow. Growing and living are hard enough already; children do not need things to be harder. I think this is true even for normal children. I have watched little children learning to walk; they all struggle and fall down many times. Their faces show that it is not easy. It would be stupid to tie bricks on them to make it harder. If that is true for learning to walk, then I think it is true for other growing and learning as well. God is suppose to be the good parent, the Father. So I think God would not make things harder than they are. I do not think I am autistic because God thought my parents needed a challenge or I needed a challenge. I think it is like if I were a baby and a rock fell on me and broke my leg. Whatever caused it was an accident. God did not prevent the accident, but He did not cause it, either.... I think my autism is an accident, but what I do with it is me.

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.

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.” - Bell Hooks

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.

Aware adults with autism and their parents are often angry about autism. They may ask why nature or God created such horrible conditions as autism, manic depression, and schizophrenia. However, if the genes that caused these conditions were eliminated there might be a terrible price to pay. It is possible that persons with bits of these traits are more creative, or possibly even geniuses. If science eliminated these genes, maybe the whole world would be taken over by accountants.

We are not “differently abled”—we are disabled, robbed of empowerment and agency in a world that is not built for us. “Differently abled,” “handi-capable,” and similar euphemisms were created in the 1980s by the abled parents of disabled children, who wished to minimize their children’s marginalized status. These terms were popularized further by politicians[76] who similarly felt uncomfortable acknowledging disabled people’s actual experiences of oppression.

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.

In these days, doctors know little about autism. They blame it on distant parents who don't communicate enough with their children

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.

The trouble", said Gene, "is that the things that Rosie loves you for are exactly the things that make her think you're too... different, to be a father. She may be a risk taker with relationships, but no woman's a risk taker with her kids. In the end, it will come down to persuading her you're... average enough to be a father.

Autistic thinking is always detailed and specific. Teachers and parents need to help both children and adults with autism take all the little details they have in their head and put them into categories to form concepts and promote generalization.

Almost every neurodiverse person I’ve spoken to has been deemed “lazy” numerous times by exasperated parents, teachers, and friends.

My journey will hopefully help others. Laughter is the best medicine. Be strong.

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

Autism is just the surface. What is inside each of us is what matters, autistic or not.

To summarize this chapter, parents and teachers need to “stretch” individuals on the autism spectrum. They need to be stretched just outside their comfort zone for them to develop.

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.

I am against the rush to medicalize our children and young people to present as the opposite sex when they are confused or when other conditions such as autism are misattributed as trans.

when I was a teenager I was planning out how to live in the woods as a hermit, to avoid permanent institutionalization. And when I realized that wouldn’t work, I was planning my own death.

I go to all the appointments. All the meetings. I sit with the team of inclusion teachers, occupational therapists, doctors, social workers, remedial teachers, and the cab driver that gets him from appointment to appointment, and I push for everything that can be done for my autistic boy. But I will never have a plan that will fix him. Noah is not something to be fixed. And our life will never be normal. And people always say, oh well what’s normal, there’s no such thing really, and I say — sure there is…there’s a spectrum… and there’s lots and lots of possibilities within that spectrum, and trust me buddy, ducks on the moon ain’t one of them….but …. In this abnormal life, I get to live with a pirate, and a bird fancier, and an ogre, and a hedgehog, and many many superheroes, and aliens and monsters — and an angel. I get to go to infinity and beyond.

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.

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.

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.

It is true that Jeremy could see "naked girls dancing" in strip clubs in San Diego, but parents reading this will appreciate that, since our loved ones on the spectrum tend to have obsessive tendencies, I was not about to tell Jeremy that. Obsessions with French fries I can deal with. Let him think he has to travel to Las Vegas to see naked girls dancing.

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

One common denominator was that each person profiled was encouraged and 'stretched' just outside their comfort zone by at least one adult in their life.

You have a healthy baby boy! The words ring like church bells in the ears of new parents.

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

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.

In order to communicate, we must have connection.

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

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.

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.

The problem is not my suitability as a partner, it's my suitability as a father.

He didn’t need to be ‘fixed.’ He needed to be understood.

This is also true of disability. Being autistic is not the norm, but it isn’t wrong. The lives that autistic people build for themselves may not be conventional, but they aren’t inferior.

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.

Most people love with a guarded heart, only if certain things happen or don’t happen, only to a point. If the person we love hurts us, betrays us, abandons us, disappoints us, if the person becomes hard to love, we often stop loving. We protect our delicate hearts. We close off, retreat, withhold, disconnect, and withdraw. We might even hate. Most people love conditionally. Most people are never asked to love with a whole and open heart. They only love partway. They get by. Autism was my gift to you. My autism didn’t let me hug and kiss you, it didn’t allow me to look into your eyes, it didn’t let me say aloud the words you so desperately wanted to hear with your ears. But you loved me anyway. You’re thinking, Of course I did. Anyone would have. This isn’t true. Loving me with a full and accepting heart, loving all of me, required you to grow. Despite your heartache and disappointment, your fears and frustration and sorrow, despite all I couldn’t show you in return, you loved me. You loved me unconditionally. You haven’t experienced this kind of love with Dad or your parents or your sister or anyone else before. But now, you know what unconditional love is. I know my death has hurt you, and you’ve needed time alone to heal. You’re ready now. You’ll still miss me. I miss you, too. But you’re ready. Take what you’ve learned and love someone again. Find someone to love and love without condition. This is why we’re all here.

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.

People often said to me what I couldn't do things when I was younger such as sports, writing, mathematics, geography, science etc - I pathway can always be tailored can change and that change itself is possible what did I excel in well art was one of those things of have gone BACK to to move FORWARD and have taken up poetry and creativity something that occupies my mind in way that creates happy thoughts, happy feelings, and happiness all round really. To invest in your strengths and understand but not over-define yourself by your deficits is something that has worked for me over the years and this year in particular (the ethos was always there instilled that I am human being first like anyone else by my parents and family but it has been tenderly and quite rightly reaffirmed by a friend also) it has made me a more balanced person whom has healthy acknowledgment of my autism who but also wants to be known as a person first - see me first, see that I have a personality first. I say this not in anger or bitterness but as a healthy optimistic realisation and as a message of hope for people out there.

Don’t pity me or try to cure or change me. If you could live in my head for just one day, you might weep at how much beauty I perceive in the world with my exquisite senses. I would not trade one small bit of that beauty, as overwhelming and powerful as it can be, for ‘normalcy.’”2

Georgia, high-functioning autism is like the marsh, where the salt water and fresh water combine to form a vastly unique and fragile ecosystem. It's a really fine line between "quirky" and "problematic." A gap between "talented" and "not quite right." Somewhere between "cute" and "hmmmm.

I would either head to the playground alone or sit beside her and read—which she said “looked weird.” Though she couldn’t know, those words hurt more than anything else. Feeling that we have let down our parents is a pain anyone can understand. But feeling that one’s innate self is a letdown just slays you.

For me, living on the coast of Georgia, high-functioning autism is like the marsh, where the salt water and fresh water combine to form a vastly unique and fragile ecosystem. It's a really fine line between "quirky" and "problematic." A gap between "talented" and "not quite right." Somewhere between "cute" and "hmmmm.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that if we are good at one thing, we will be good at some totally unrelated thing. Don’t make it sound like any autistic person has a certain level of skills across the board. Autistic people’s skills are described consistently since the 1940’s as being very uneven. There’s a reason for that.

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.

Like most of the English faculty, she had dealt with suicidal and homicidal students, students with eating disorders who fainted in class, students with depression, cancer, learning disabilities, dead or dying parents, autism, schizophrenia, gender identity issues, romantic heartbreak, and various syndromes involving the inability to sit quietly and read.

While the psychiatric establishment was debating theories of toxic parenting and childhood psychosis, however, Asperger’s lost tribe was putting its autistic intelligence to work by building the foundations of a society better suited to its needs and interests. Like Henry Cavendish, they refused to accept their circumstances as given. By coming up with ways of socializing on their own terms, they sketched out a blueprint for the modern networked world.

I feel intensely. I smell mold and bad food before others. I hear fluorescent lights. Clothing hurts, noises invade, colors take my breath away. My daily reality is governed by too much sensation and not enough sensation. Patterns are soothing because they create order in what feels like chaos. Sometimes I shut down and I lose language. Other times I get overloaded and act it out in ways that get me in trouble. My world is intense, rich, real, sometimes painful and definitely different. Understand

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.

I hope that this book will be my way of helping to clear the fog of mystery surrounding autism. And in passing on my personal story I hope to include with it the best and most valuable of what I have learned along the way both as a mother and in my two decades working as a paediatrician. I also hope it will encourage healthcare professionals to be advocates for families who patiently and willingly endure battles every day for the sake of their children. My book describes a wide range of resources and therapies that can help families of children with special needs and autism

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.

Consider Ricky, a teenage boy with autism who was a talented pianist. Ricky once volunteered to entertain the residents of an assisted-living center. He had never visited such a facility, but his parents told him what a lovely, caring gesture it would be. They also informed him that some of the elderly people he would see had terminal illnesses and other challenges, so surely his music would help to lift their spirits. On the day of his performance, a few dozen residents gathered in a recreation room to listen. Before he sat down to play, Ricky introduced himself, said how happy he was to be there, and added this: “I’m very sorry that some of you are going to die soon.

In the first sixteen years of my life, my parents took me to at least a dozen so called professionals. Not one of them ever came close to figuring out wheat was wrong with me. In their defense, I will concede that Asperger's did not yet exist as a diagnosis, but autism did, and no one ever mentioned I might have any kind of autistic spectrum disorder. Autism was viewed by many as a much more extreme condition - one where kids never talked and could not take care of themselves. Rather than take a close sympathetic look at me, it proved easier and less controversial for the professionals to say I was just lazy, or angry, or defiant. But none of those words led to a solution to my problem.

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.

The parents in these groups were often caricatured as poorly informed, anti-science “denialists,” but they were generally better acquainted with the state of autism research than the outsiders presuming to judge them. They obsessively tracked the latest developments in the field on electronic mailing lists and websites. They virtually transformed their homes into labs, keeping meticulous records of their children’s responses to the most promising alternative treatments. They believed that the fate of their children’s health was too important to the alleged experts who had betrayed and misled families like theirs for decades. Motivated by the determination to relieve their children’s suffering, they became amateur researchers themselves, like the solitary man who calculated the density of the earth in his backyard with the help of his global network of correspondents.

If a woman does not comply, then she is the problem, the ‘feminist killjoy’, the Old Dragon, the Battleaxe, the Termagant, the Nippy Sweety, the Uppity Cow, the Bitch. I’ve come to understand all that, and also to understand that ableism works in the same way, that as an autistic person I am not supposed to make assertions that cause non-autistic people–parents of autistic children, autistic professionals–to feel bad about themselves. If, as an autistic person, I make a non-autistic person feel bad about themselves in relation to autism, it must be because I am a defective person, lacking both an adult understanding of my own condition and empathy for the individuals who are trying so patiently to cope with the consequences of it. I see this very argument–if I must dignify it with that word–used on social media again and again, whenever an autistic person seeks to advocate for autistic people as a group.

The enemy is not the blunt adult perseverating on applied behavioral analysis (ABA) research, the enemy is not the parent wearing a puzzle piece t-shirt (but please don’t), the enemy is the system that makes it so exhausting for families to get in-home supports, it is the bias that creates inequity in IEPs, it is the administrative burden that makes county services or social security a multi-year battle. If we fight these systems from the perspective of the community as a whole then we can create a better outcome for everyone. So it’s time—I challenge everyone reading this, both parents and advocates, to put down our swords and hold ourselves accountable for what has happened in the past, but also move forward with forgiveness and humbleness. There is no shame in realizing that you were previously speaking from a less informed place, there is no shame in accepting that we have room to learn and grow still.

MY PROCESS I got bullied quite a bit as a kid, so I learned how to take a punch and how to put up a good fight. God used that. I am not afraid of spiritual “violence” or of facing spiritual fights. My Dad was drafted during Vietnam and I grew up an Army brat, moving around frequently. God used that. I am very spiritually mobile, adaptable, and flexible. My parents used to hand me a Bible and make me go look up what I did wrong. God used that, as well. I knew the Word before I knew the Lord, so studying Scripture is not intimidating to me. I was admitted into a learning enrichment program in junior high. They taught me critical thinking skills, logic, and Greek Mythology. God used that, too. In seventh grade I was in school band and choir. God used that. At 14, before I even got saved, a youth pastor at my parents’ church taught me to play guitar. God used that. My best buddies in school were a druggie, a Jewish kid, and an Irish soccer player. God used that. I broke my back my senior year and had to take theatre instead of wrestling. God used that. I used to sleep on the couch outside of the Dean’s office between classes. God used that. My parents sent me to a Christian college for a semester in hopes of getting me saved. God used that. I majored in art, advertising, astronomy, pre-med, and finally English. God used all of that. I made a woman I loved get an abortion. God used (and redeemed) that. I got my teaching certification. I got plugged into a group of sincere Christian young adults. I took courses for ministry credentials. I worked as an autism therapist. I taught emotionally disabled kids. And God used each of those things. I married a pastor’s daughter. God really used that. Are you getting the picture? San Antonio led me to Houston, Houston led me to El Paso, El Paso led me to Fort Leonard Wood, Fort Leonard Wood led me back to San Antonio, which led me to Austin, then to Kentucky, then to Belton, then to Maryland, to Pennsylvania, to Dallas, to Alabama, which led me to Fort Worth. With thousands of smaller journeys in between. The reason that I am able to do the things that I do today is because of the process that God walked me through yesterday. Our lives are cumulative. No day stands alone. Each builds upon the foundation of the last—just like a stairway, each layer bringing us closer to Him. God uses each experience, each lesson, each relationship, even our traumas and tragedies as steps in the process of becoming the people He made us to be. They are steps in the process of achieving the destinies that He has encoded into the weave of each of our lives. We are journeymen, finding the way home. What is the value of the journey? If the journey makes us who we are, then the journey is priceless.

In the twentieth century, homosexuality was said to be caused by overbearing mothers and passive fathers; schizophrenia reflected the parents' unconscious wish that their child did not exist; and autism was the result of “refrigerator mothers,” whose coldness doomed their children to a fortress of silence. We've now realized that such complex and overdetermined conditions are not the result of parental attitude or behavior.

An Autistic meltdown is not: A tantrum. A tantrum is an act of manipulation. It is a physical and emotional “show” to put on to try and get someone to agree to your demands or desires by making them feel uneasy, confronted, confused, embarrassed or threatened by acting overdramatic. A tantrum is controllable; therefore it is not an Autistic meltdown. Acting selfishly. This is not a meltdown either. You can’t watch someone having an Autistic meltdown and think to yourself, Stop being so selfish! They can’t “stop” being anything. Acting out or attention-seeking behaviour. Again, not a meltdown but can be seen in both adults and children. Autistic children and adults can be susceptible to Autistic meltdowns for their entire life. So the whole only-Autistic-kids-can-have-meltdowns thing is not true. You can’t parent or punish Autistic meltdowns out of an Autistic person.

Autism is usually defined not by its underlying mechanisms but by impaired social communication and repetitive behavior. One of the first things parents discover is that autistic children rarely solicit or reciprocate eye contact with caregivers, unlike normal infants. This difference becomes apparent by two to six months of age.61 There is nothing wrong with the eye movements in affected children; they simply look elsewhere.

Attachment theory can too easily segue into mother-blaming, so I want you to understand that this lack of a sense of safety doesn't have to be the caregiver's (read 'mother's') fault; a parent and a baby are two different people, and sometimes, with the best will in the world, two people can be a bad fit for each other. Misrecognition is very often mutual.

She would never have qualified for a diagnosis of Asperger’s, the term that was associated with verbal skill and “high functioning” autism. But many people whom doctors characterize as “high functioning” have just as many, if not more severe, social impairments as people we might think of as “low functioning.” In addition, bright and verbal people with Asperger’s, who perhaps have undergraduate or graduate degrees, might expect—or their parents might expect—that they will find employment that demands far more social ability than they possess. In those cases, it’s difficult to set one’s sights lower. The same is true for the parents of so-called low functioning adults who set their sights higher.

Parenting is more personal while herding is leading the path to do things together as a family. To describe both in a simple way, having a meaningful conversation with each of our children is parenting while eating out together as a family is herding. Doing both creates happy memories that we want our children to keep and not scars that won’t heal forever.

In line with this, generally, based on experience, a child with ASD may exhibit a “photographic memory”. That is why we are always mindful of how we behave and speak at home. Like for instance, “mirroring” works for Bunso. He shows back what we show him so we always do our best to be loving and caring so that he will do the same to us. In short, when we deal with Bunso, we reap what we sow. He is like a sponge, what you teach him, he absorbs and he does. Literally, Bunso is a representation of all the people inside our home.

There was one time when Papa asked him, 'Bunso, why do you love me?' We were surprised when he answered, 'I love you because I love you.' I guess it means that for Bunso, love needs no explanations, no buts, no ifs. For him, love is love, plain and simple. For him, both the quantity and quality of time that we give him are acts of love and he does his very best to reciprocate by being the most sweet and affectionate little boy that he is right now.

Children who begin early to capitalize on their strengths are laying an important foundation for future success.

In the past, the number of children diagnosed was lower. The change is mostly likely due to an improved definition and a better understanding of autism; greater access to resources for parents of autistic children, leading more to seek diagnosis; and wider access to medical care.

again when I’ve met with families over the past twenty years. I’ve noticed that in a lot of cases, a kid with autism has at least one parent who exhibits a mild form of autistic behavior.

But the person who has done more than any other to popularize the myth is the model/actor/TV host Jenny McCarthy, who, in her many high-profile interviews on the topic, repeatedly characterized her son’s autism as a cataclysm that invaded an otherwise perfect life. When a doctor gave her the diagnosis, McCarthy reports, “I died in that moment.” She has continued to spread misinformation for well over a decade, telling PBS’s Frontline in 2015, “If you ask 99.9 percent of parents who have children with autism if we’d rather have the measles versus autism, we’d sign up for the measles.

We remain hidden, tucked away behind corporations aiming to change us, pushing supplements and instant cures into the hands of desperate parents looking to make our lives better. We're hidden behind psychiatrists who will diagnose us with anything and everything else, because they know that people have a negative view of autism. We're hidden behind an education system that dehumanizes us and makes us sure everyone else treats us like we are less than human. We're hidden behind the mask that we create ourselves to try and blend in, to not be caught.

Disability isn’t a choice, but neurodevelopmental disabilities are often treated as though they are.

Autism is not a behavioral diagnosis. Autism is a neurodevelopmental diagnosis. Behaviorist practices focus solely on changing outward behaviors.

What's strange is that small changes upset me immensely and always have done. A tree trimmed outside my house, the reorganization of a supermarket aisle, a new haircut, an updated app format. I cried for hours when they "new and improved" the recipe for the mashed potato I eat every Monday night. But the big stuff? The deaths, the tragedies, the life-changing shifts that rock everyone else to their core? That's when I'm cool, calm and collected. It's why I had to give three speeches at my own parents' funeral, and also--I'm assuming--why I heard my great-uncle Joseph call me an "empty robot" under his breath when I sat back down again. I don't understand it, but there's just something in me that knows how to stand still when the earth shatters.

I think what she was having a problem with was the label; she didn’t want to label him. For whatever reason, people don’t like to label things. I sort of look at it as he is who he is, it doesn’t really matter what we call it. The label gets him services that he needs.

We also have a problem because sometimes we wanted to do stuff with other people, and they are not as accommodating. We wind up not going, and it looks like we chose not to go, but really we couldn’t go because there were all these factors that needed to be in place for us to go on vacation with them. We couldn’t [get them in place], and they didn’t want to bend a little bit, so we couldn’t do it. When family members have expectations that are unrealistic, parents can be placed in an awkward position of having to adapt to these expectations or explain that the expectations are unrealistic.

As parents, we need to believe in our kids beyond measure. And then believe in them even more. When you have a child who is developing differently, your hope over the years will waver. But you can’t stop believing in them. Because no one will fight harder for your child than you will.

My life as a parent was a battleground for various belief systems,” she writes,[43] “all of which had one thing in common: an inability to come to terms with human variability.” Singer and her family were disabled in a way that no one knew how to name, so she created a name for them: they were neurodiverse, and they suffered because the world demanded they be neurotypical. These terms would be popularized by journalist Harvey Blume and widely adopted by disability advocates a few years later. The label neurodiverse includes everyone from people with ADHD, to Down Syndrome, to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, to Borderline Personality Disorder.

There is so much that autistic women and girls can give to each other, including love, laughter, joy, kind smiles, critical thought, understanding, and true safety. Instead of striving to conform to a neurotypical norm, these friendships can let our young women be who they are on their own terms. Navigating the complicated social rules of girls and women is so very difficult. Doing it with a friend or two who truly understand and like you for who you are makes it, if not easier, at least less painful.

It’s common for us to be mistreated by parents and caregivers, bullied by classmates, or seen as “easy prey” by abusers.

For many Autistic kids, learning to obscure your pain often becomes a primary survival strategy; for masked Autistics, this isn’t taught within ABA therapy, but as part of regular life. I didn’t go through ABA, but friends’ parents did yell at me for squirming awkwardly in my seat.

You can't stop or fix everything for your child. You won't always make the choices that are right for them. But there's power in trying, and in the love that fuelds those efforts. There's power in the act of being on their side.

Sometimes I work so hard to keep myself calm all day, just to come home and let out all my feelings at once.

Up to two hundred genes can be implicated in autism, and some evidence suggests that you need several to manifest the syndrome. Sometimes, epistatic, or modifier, genes influence the expression of primary genes; sometimes environmental factors influence the expression of these genes. The closer the relationship between genotype and phenotype, the easier it is to discern. In autism, some people with a share genotype don't share a phenotype, and some with a shared phenotype don't share a genotype.

The trauma of Down's syndrome is that it is present prenatally and can therefore undermine the early stages of bonding. The challenge of autism is that it sets in or is detected in the toddler years, and so transfigures the child to whom parents have already bonded. The shock of schizophrenia is that it manifests in late adolescence or early adulthood, and parents must accept that the child they have known and loved for more than a decade may be irrevocably lost, even as that child looks much the same as ever.

The cliche about autism is that the syndrome impedes the ability to love, and I began this research interested in how much a parent could contrive to love a child who could not return the affection. Autistic children often seem to inhabit a world on which external cues have limited impact; they may seem to be neither comforted by nor engaged with their parents are not motivated to gratify them.

Flawed scientific studies reported a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism. This information, combined with confusion about vaccines, has made some parents afraid to get their kids vaccinated. This fear persists despite five extensive scientific studies that failed to find a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Most people don't remember the dangers of measles, so the fear of autism looms larger than their fear of measles. In a way, vaccines are a victim of their own success — they prevent disease, so people lose their fear of the disease and stop vaccinating.

A 16-year-old was brought to me by her parents. I would like to call her Eva. Her gait was teetering, she was tall, very slim and finely built. She sat down and unwaveringly looked at her parents; she did not make any contact with me. She had noticeably vigorous hair and during examination it transpired that she had a very tense abdomen which hurt with pressure. Her parents reported that she had walked at ten months but hadn't crawled. Speech development occurred very quickly, and she could straight away speak perfectly in full sentences. Eva had trouble with toilet training. For a long time she suffered from extreme constipation. When asked about Eva's eating behaviour, her parents initially said that it was good.

It’s one thing to know in theory how skills work. It’s another thing to put them into practice with nobody guiding you or prompting you along the way. Worse, I was losing skills, including speech, at an alarming rate. The more skills I had to manage on my own, the less energy I had to put into other skills, and the more behind I got. This had been going on since early adolescence, but it really picked up the pace when I moved out on my

It seems that between one-third and one-sixth of autistic people lose major skills in adolescence. Of those, about half will gain the skills back eventually, and half won’t.

There are a lot of things I am not likely to ever learn how to do. Or if I learn how to do them, my movement disorders will prevent me from applying that knowledge. So if I’m going to put in the extreme effort it takes for me to learn and sustain a skill, it had better be a skill that makes me happier (like crocheting), not just a skill that makes things easier on everyone else (like making my bed).

While most children with ASD establish warm, loving relationships and secure bonds with parents, siblings, and understanding adults, most, if not all, individuals with ASD experience difficulty relating to peers of approximately the same age. Some children

have rewarding and successful relationships with their peers and others.

Just because I can explain how matrilineal descent works, doesn’t mean I can figure out what to order from a restaurant menu. Just because I can be really articulate and give a television interview doesn’t mean I am able to speak up when I’m emotionally distressed or threatened. I

I learned that people won’t believe me when I say I need help, and so I stopped asking. I found passive or covert ways of getting help, which ultimately led to poor self-advocacy. I learned helplessness.

I was the hardest working person, getting nowhere, who I knew. The older I got, the more I was able to hide. I was driven into my own world.

But then again, if parents are deliberately choosing to kill their potentially autistic children, then maybe they are not good enough to people to be parenting autistic children anyway. The

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

You will learn that living with ASD can have many challenges, but also great rewards that are uniquely yours to cherish.

SMELL (OLFACTORY): Our nose contains sensory receptors which send information to the olfactory bulb located in the mid-brain. The interesting fact about smells is that a smell can take a direct “shortcut” to the part of the brain that is responsible for emotional memory—the limbic system.

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

As with any profession, someone may look wonderful on paper, but may behave totally differently when presented with challenges.

Dr. Jeffrey Filer, dean of the Harvard Medical School,57 is concerned that a small subset of scientists get research published that is not reproducible. He cites the widely cited paper that got into the Lancet in 1998 claiming a link between measles vaccines and autism. It was not retracted until 2010. In the meantime, scared parents exposed their unvaccinated children and others to greater risk. And the false story was still being propagated by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign. There is a straight line between fraud in science and the proliferation of political lies swallowed whole by gullible millions in the 2016 election.

Goals are important, but what is more important is the connection that you build through mindful interaction with your child.

Patterson died in 2014 but Mazmanian is now carrying on his friend's work. His long-term goal is to develop a bacterium that people can swallow to control some of the more difficult symptoms of autism. That might be B-frag: it certainly worked well in the mice, and happens to be the most heavily depleted microbe in the guts of people with autism. Parents with autistic children, who read about his work, regularly email him about where to get the bacterium. Many such parents are already giving probiotics to their kids to help with their gut problems, and some claim to have seen improvements in behaviour. Mazmannia now wants hard clinical evidence to accompany these anecdotes. He is optimisitic.

If you are sincerely looking for God, you are sure to find him because he will never abandon anyone who wants a relationship with him. In fact, your difficulties can help you look more intently for God so that you can see him- right by your side.

diagnosis, undertake a process of Parent Training and/or therapy Mediated by parents to promote proper ways to interact with

One of the biggest scams going in government today is one presented and perpetuated by our school systems on the populace. I can say this because, having done my teacher training in various school districts, and having advocated for autistic students since my teacher training days, I have witnessed this scam being pulled on unsuspecting kids -and their parents and caregivers- many times. What

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.

And while it is true that those who have been hurt by others form groups of their own, because these individuals are not natural leaders, and are not by nature vindictive or manipulative, they tend to become wallflowers, or they disappear from the net after a while. Parents

When the human heart starts tightening under pressure, God's heart releases love and grace. There is more than enough in God's economy.

When you keep eternity in mind, you can grow from the trials of you experience, knowing that your difficult circumstances will end with this earthly life.

While grief is a natural part of any special needs parent's journey, it may be processed somewhat differently for the family affected by a diagnosis with a wide range of outcomes, such as autism. Every child with or without a disability is unique. And no special-needs diagnosis affects any two children the same way.

Parents have come to believe the following conditions are “normal” (as in, many people have them and there’s nothing that can be done) when, in fact, they are not: Colic Eczema Asthma Diabetes Allergies (food/environmental) ADHD Autism Learning disabilities Picky eating

Despite what parents have been told by doctors and the mainstream media, there is science to suggest that vaccines are linked to ADHD[1], autism, asthma, and a number of other serious chronic conditions. In no way have these questions been settled, and in no way has a vaccine-autism link been debunked, as is often stated.

Hearing those four little words, 'Your child has autism,' can hit parents like a Mack Truck, leaving them scared, confused,and overwhelmed. Once that happens, how can anyone possibly be expected to take care of their special needs child when they can barely take care of themselves? That's why I wrote the book: to let parents know they're going to be okay - and that they can do a good job raising their child and still have a successful life.

For parents of an autistic child this is a daunting experience, and often you feel as if you are at the mercy of charlatans promoting the latest miracle cure—you just don’t know what’s legitimate, what’s hype, and what deserves your time, money and hopes for your child.

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.

My parents think I need to see a psychologist. I told them I’m not going to see yet another shrink who isn’t going to help me.

some could name things in their environment, others could count or say the alphabet, still others could recite whole books, word for word, from memory. However, they rarely used their speech to communicate with others. The

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.

Understanding the intricacies involved in raising someone with a physical or mental challenge for those who have never experienced it is like trying to understand anything foreign; impossible, though definitely worth doing anyway.

Congress will also look into the possible link that certain medical problems, such as Down syndrome, Autism, and others have that causes such violence to occur from these kinds of people. The Health Administration will research the possible reasons for this violence, what can be done about it, and how it might be prevented in the future. If it starts in the womb, we will take care of such problems. If it occurs due to nurture, the parents and their mental health will be examined. It might be best if children were raised by the community, so that’s something we’ll examine. We will leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of gun violence. We’ll take a couple of questions,” “Speaker Rooney, what’s being done to curb the speculation online that this whole thing was a set-up to take away guns from the American people?

I think of how my husband and I plan a new vacation to take our kids on. My husband and I have it all planned out. We know the way, the cost, the activities and the outcome. But our children know none of this. They must trust us that we know what we are doing. As the parents we know the roads we will take to get there, we know where we are taking them and yet our children must trust we will bring them home safely and with good memories. Think of this autism journey in the same way. Our heavenly Father knows the way, the cost, the activities and the outcome. He even knows that we will get through this journey safely and with some happy memories!

There are two judgments we face as a Christian. In the first judgment we will be asked if we accepted Christ as our Lord and Savior. This judgment will allow us to enter the gates of heaven or send us directly to hell. The second judgment comes to judge our works. What did we do with our time on earth? Things done that were meaningless will burn up like wood, hay and straw when put to the fire. Things that were done of value will stand the test of fire. Gold, silver and costly stones will stand the test of fire. I believe working with our kids and all that it entails is gold, silver and costly stones. When our works are put before us in heaven, the time that we have spent cooking meals from scratch, tutoring our children, spending our money on their needs, the struggles that it took to get them to take the supplements their bodies needed, spending sleepless nights reading and researching to help them will all stand the test of the fire that is yet to come.

The Feminine Boy Project turned into a cash cow for the university, attracting six-figure grants from the NIMH and the Playboy Foundation until 1986. Children wore wrist counters to monitor whenever they were tempted to play with the “wrong” toys, and parents were enlisted to surveil their children’s closets, steer boys away from the kitchen, and keep girls out of the garage.

petting.” This powerful finding has been rediscovered over and over, most recently in the early 1990s in Romania, where thousands of warehoused infants went without touch for sometimes years at a time. PET studies (similar to SPECT studies) of a number of these deprived infants have shown marked overall decreased activity across the whole brain. Bonding is a two-way street. A naturally unresponsive baby may inadvertently receive less love from its parents. The mother and father, misreading their baby’s naturally reserved behavior, may feel hurt and rejected and therefore less encouraged to lavish care and affection on their child. A classic example of this problem is illustrated by autistic children. Psychiatrists used to label the mothers of autistic children “cold” they believed the mother’s lack of responsiveness caused the autism. In recent times, however, it has been shown in numerous research studies that autism is biological and preceded any

The vaccination problem highlights how religious exemptions can spur claims for nonreligious exemptions, and a breakdown in the purposes of the law in the first place. Parents who unfortunately bought into the autism hype around vaccinations and saw that religious parents were obtaining exemptions demanded the same for themselves.

Coaching offers customized, one-on-one support to assist individuals in reaching their goals. The process involves goal setting, identifying obstacles, brainstorming solutions and creating a workable action plan.

SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Reasonable and Time-oriented.

Denham Resources is a California-based recruiting, staffing and human resources consulting firm. It produces videos on how to answer interview questions. Skits feature “good,” “bad,” and “ugly” responses. The latter are quite exaggerated and clearly illustrate poor verbal and nonverbal communication. The videos can be found by searching Denham Resources Interview Videos on YouTube.

Children with autism are as individual as everyone else – indeed they are probably much more so, as their individuality is less held in check by social constraints.

Langdon Down also recalled seeing “many examples of children who had spoken well and with understanding, but who lost speech at the period of the second dentition, and had also suspension of mental growth”—a description that anticipated modern parents’ accounts of their autistic children’s abrupt loss of skills by a century. Unlike

I have learned to accept the fact that I will make mistakes at nearly every turn, but that those mistakes can be softened if I am honest about who I am to my girls.

Intellectual Patience is the delicate kind of patience which is guided by fine-tuned observations that lead the way to the anticipated scientific results without ever reverting to any regulatory measures. Its absence as a necessary social nourishment of a good-natured tolerance in the society marks a demonic urgency that feeds into a diseased arrangement. Autism -for example- is a symptom of Socialism; the ideology that lacks any intellectual patience and hastily throttles its subjects into interactional homogeneity. This is why planning, plotting and scheming are not considered as criteria of patience, but rather, of action - because they are generated thoughts. The only single mandate that overwrites this is that of God; and even The Lord Himself makes the parents as delegates of His authority over their own children until the child starts making her/his own choices. [Judicial activism] after all takes away the right to make choices from the people - to whom it were granted in the first place by The Lord.

While some siblings accept, and even embrace, their destiny as members of the 'team,' others are (mostly privately) outraged, having experienced the obverse of the soothing stereotype in their own families. A graphic designer whose autistic brother tried to strangle her when they were children, and who struggled for years to get her parents to recognize the danger he presented, is acutely aware of the discrepancy between the illusion and the reality of damaged families: I'm trying to eradicate the Hallmark Hall of Fame Special myth - 'how I learned the meaning of life by having a disabled sibling.' The cover of Newsweek on autism had a beautiful blond good boy. People just want to look at the pretty kids on Jerry Lewis, the sanitized version, not the ugly cases like my brother. The severely disabled aren't telegenic.

Conversely, many autistic self-advocates see being a part of a community — whether it is living with friends, parents, a home-care worker, a roommate, or simply by oneself — as being part of the social fabric. It means our fate and our health are tied to others and we can’t be relegated to seclusion.

think,” he said slowly, “Ryan may be autistic.” I think Ryan may be autistic. All Cat and I could do was stare at him. My stomach knotted up and all of a sudden I could barely breathe. The blood drained from Cat’s cheeks, and the room closed in around us. Ryan stood by our side, his expression glazed and unfocused. We knew he couldn’t talk—we’d even grown concerned enough to talk to his pediatrician—but we’d convinced ourselves that it wasn’t anything serious. He’ll grow out of it, we’d been told. He’ll be fine. But this? They were, I still think, among the most frightening words a parent can hear. We both knew about autism—who hadn’t seen Rain Man? Or read about autism in news magazines or seen shows about it on television? I stared at Ryan. Was that our son? Our child? Our baby? No, I immediately thought, the doctor was wrong. Ryan wasn’t autistic. He couldn’t be. He was fine. I’m not going to believe it. I can’t believe it. But . . . Deep down, I knew there was something wrong with him. Both Cat and I had known he wasn’t right for months. But we had never imagined it could be this serious.

It is often useful to ask another person to come along to meetings at the school as it can be difficult to listen to what is being said as well as to think of the questions you might want to ask. Another person can remind you of what you wanted to get from the meeting. Lucia Santi, head teacher at The Grove, an autism school in Wood Green, north London, and parent of an autistic ten-year-old girl: ‘I’ve lived with autism every day for ten years and worked with it for 20 years.

Parents name a school they want their child to go to – they don’t have to live within the catchment area

some decisions are made on the back of the likelihood of a parent going to appeal and what their case is – so giving the impression you know your legal rights from the off will help in these situations.

, the mainstream world seemed like a constant sensory assault. The notion that the cure for the most disabling aspects of autism will never be found in a pill, but in supportive communities, is one that parents have been coming to on their own for generations.

You'd have to ask Leyla if you want to know more. She's a psychologist. One of a dozen on board. We don't just want our passengers to survive—we want them to be OK. We're dealing with a lot of trauma. So if you ever need to talk..." "I'll pass." "Bad experiences?" "Sort of." "What happened?" I shrug. "It took a long time to diagnose me." "From what I understand, autistic girls often don't run into trouble until a later age." I bark out a laugh. Oh, I ran into trouble, all right. I barely said a word between the ages of four and six. I hit three of my preschool and grade school teachers. In a class photo taken when I was seven, my face is covered in scratches from when I latched onto a particularly bad stim. Therapists and teachers labelled me as bipolar, as psychotic, as having oppositional defiant disorder, as intellectually disabled, and as just straight-up difficult, the same way Els did. One said all I needed was structure and a gluten-free diet. When I was nine, a therapist suggested I might be autistic, at which point I had already started to learn what set me off and how to mimic people; within two years, I was coping well enough to almost-but-not-quite blend in with my classmates. It's funny when people like Els have no idea anything is off about me, given that my parents spend half my childhood worrying I'd end up institutionalized. At the time, I thought the diagnosis was delayed because I was bad at being autistic, just like I was bad at everything else; it took me years to realize that since I wasn't only Black, but a Black girl, it's like the DSM shrank to a handful of options, and many psychologists were loath to even consider them.

Siblings who experience this kind of violence, or who witness parents being attacked, run the risk of developing anxiety and depression. Siblings who are on the receiving end of aggressive behaviour and who are heavily involved in care are the ones who have the most difficulties long term,

It’s important not to let the aggressive behaviour escalate, and to seek help from professionals before things get too bad. In some rare cases the violence can get extreme. Parents could call the NAS to see what behavioural support programmes there are locally.

All children are perfect just as they are.

When I look at the world today, from the physician's point of view, from the health point of view, what do we see? We see a society, not just in North America, but as globalization extends its reach around the world, we see increasing levels of certain illnesses, certain mental illnesses like ADHD, which didn't use to exist in certain countries and now, all of a sudden, they have a problem with it. Auto-immune diseases like inflammatory bowel disease that didn't use to exist in certain societies, now exist in these societies. If you look at North America, if you look at multiple sclerosis in the 1930s or 40s, the gender ratio was about 1 woman to every man. Now that ratio is about 3 and a half women for every man. If you look at something like asthma which is rising amongst kids... a study in the United States last year showed that the more episodes of racism a black American woman experiences, the greater the risk for asthma. We've known for a long time that the more stress the parents have, the greater the risk of the child having asthma. In North America millions of kids are on medication now, for depression, anxiety, ADHD, and more and more kids are being medicated all the time. If you look at something like autism spectrum disorder, it is now being diagnosed 40 times as often as it was 30 or 40 years ago. Anxiety is the fastest growing diagnose in North America amongst young people. The usual medical explanations for any of these phenomena just doesn't hold. Because medicine, for the most part, sees all of these problems as simply biological issues. Multiple sclerosis being a disease of the nervous system. Inflammatory bowel disease being a malaise of the gut. ADHD, depression, anxiety, addiction.. these are problems of the brain. And, for the most part, we like to rely on genetic explanations, that it is genes that are causing these things, or, if it is not genes, we don't know what is causing it. Of course, if you just look at that one little fact that I told you about the ratio of women and men in multiple sclerosis.. you know right away it can't be genetic. Because genes don't change in a population over 7 years and if they did, why would they change more for one gender than the other? Nor it can be the climate nor the diet because that also hasn't changed more for one gender than the other. Something else is going on. For ADHD and the fact that many more kids are being diagnosed.. that can't be genetic, cause genes don't change in a population over 10 years or 5 years or 15 years.

I urge you to read books, articles, blogs, poetry, and whatever else you can get your hands on authored by actual Autistic women. These people, these Autistic women, are the experts in growing up Autistic. A hundred degrees on the wall from top universities may make you an expert in the field of a disorder, but they will never make you an expert on being Autistic.

We exist, full stop, no qualifiers needed.

When a parent finds it difficult to connect with their autistic child and receives no, low or unexpected feedback, they may modify their style of interacting with the child and become more directive[ci][cii][ciii] or hyper-stimulating[civ]. In such a scenario, the parent’s vocal pitch may rise and their prosody alter, their facial expression may become exaggerated, they may enter further and more frequently into their child’s personal space and may become more physical, energetic and vocal in their interactions with the child. For an autistic infant experiencing sensory trauma, such modifications in parental interaction style, inspired by the parent’s desire to connect, may paradoxically make it even more difficult, if not impossible, for the infant to connect with their parent.

Many neurodiverse people suffer from Autistic inertia.[24] The same heightened focus that makes us so good at studying our special interests for hours also makes it challenging for us to get off the couch and attend to the overflowing trash. To an external, neurotypical observer, it doesn’t look like we’re struggling. It just looks like we’re being “lazy.” Almost every neurodiverse person I’ve spoken to has been deemed “lazy” numerous times by exasperated parents, teachers, and friends. People see us sitting frozen, incapable of taking action, and assume it’s because we don’t care or lack willpower.[25] Then they admonish us for being apathetic and unreliable, which leaves us feeling even more paralyzed by anxiety.

A common source of disappointment and frustration for parents is the letdown that happens soon after diagnosis. Parents seek diagnostic evaluations both to better understand their child and also to have that child be eligile for services. Many, if not most, parents are not aware that it can take months to find and secure these resources and to get an actual appointment. Additionally, the cost of these services is often far greater than anticipated. One parent, who participated in in-depth interviews by researchers interested in the partnership between parents and providers, had this to say, "It felt like you were being taken to the edge of a cliff. You've been given the diagnosis, you got shoved off the end, and then it was, 'Oh by the way, we haven't got the parachute. You'll need to get that for yourself.' You feel like you finally got there, and you're quite happy, you're ready to fly - but then all the sudden you don't have the rest of the equipment you need to fly with.

My seven-year-old was diagnosed with PDD (similar to autism) at the age of four. He has always had behavior issues (screaming, tantrums, hitting his siblings, hurting himself), and I’ve tried everything I could to change this—including taking parenting classes, because I thought I was doing something wrong. In December 2011, my husband and I were introduced to the Whole30. Within just a few days, he was like a brand-new child! He woke up one morning with a smile on his face, was very compliant, and would even sit down and do his homework without whining and crying about it. We are so happy with the results of our whole family that we have continued to eat clean foods, and we rave about this program to anyone who will listen.

Unfortunately, for some children, “gray” thinking doesn’t develop readily. These are the kids who sometimes end up with diagnoses on the autism spectrum, but regardless of diagnosis they’re best thought of as black-and-white thinkers living in a gray world. They often have significant difficulty approaching the world in a flexible, adaptable way and become extremely frustrated when events don’t proceed in the manner they had originally conceived. More specifically, these children often have a strong preference for predictability and routines, and struggle when events are unpredictable, uncertain, and ambiguous. These are the kids who run into trouble when they need to adjust or reconfigure their expectations, the ones who tend to overfocus on facts and details and who often have trouble recognizing the obvious or “seeing the big picture.” For example, a child may insist on

Parents will have no shortage of individuals dissuading them from seeking evaluation; professionals should think carefully before adding themselves to that group, because evaluation has very little risk, and in cases where a delay exists, the child will have everything to gain. Practitioners should also inoculate parents against caring family members who nonetheless may try to dissuade them from seeking an evaluation, and provide them with ways to explain to family the importance of the evaluation and the benefit of treatment for the child, using the arguments above about the low risks and potential high benefits of evaluation.

child with ADHD may not seem to listen when spoken to or follow directions, may be reluctant to engage in tasks that are boring or effortful, may be distracted easily, fidget, leave his or her seat when sitting is expected, have difficulty waiting his or her turn, interrupt others, and talk excessively.

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.

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.

Kevin Stassu, the parent of an autistic son and the Director of the First Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University, said something once that has struck with me: ‘I would not change my son for the world, so I will change the world for my son.

Since I begin writing and reporting about autism, I have met with people who weren’t afforded the same chances. Their educators doubted their need for accommodations. Their parents mourned their condition and subscribed to toxic tropes. They couldn’t find work because employers were unaccepting. But none of that reflects who they are; it’s a reflection of a world that penalizes them for not playing by its rules. This book is a message from autistic people to help their parents, friends, teachers, doctors, and researchers see a side about autism that they may not have previously considered. It’s also my love letter to autistic people, I will see that we’ve been forced to navigate the world where all the road signs are written in another language.

For example, a parent might say, “The trash is getting pretty full.” For the parent, a large part of this communication is the emotional load—the suggestion of disapproval that it’s full, the implied idea that something should be done about it, and a hint of urgency because it’s being spoken aloud and action should take place soon.

Limited Social Smiling: Typically developing infants smile in response to social stimuli, such as seeing a parent’s face. Infants with autism might not engage in this reciprocal smiling.

Your child is neurodivergent. Nothing will ever change that (no, nothing). So, stop Googling it, stop asking your Facebook groups' opinions, stop trying fad diets and yoga stretches. What you can change is the way you perceive disability. These are the cards that you and your child have been dealt, so play them.

This may be incredibly difficult for some people to grasp, but your child's diagnosis is not about you. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing people wearing stereotypical puzzle-piece T-shirts and captioning their Facebook statuses with 'God gives the hardest battles to the strongest people.' Lord almighty; shut up. I understand that it's difficult; parenting as a whole is difficult. But if you're struggling as a bystander, imagine how your child is feeling. Be a voice for your child, but do not be your child's voice.

Show them compassion, show them love, show them understanding. Protect them from the evils of the world, but don't hide them from it. Teach them to love and to be loved. Teach them to value and be valued. Teach them all that they are. Remind yourself and them that who they are is exactly who they're supposed to be. It's not the child who needs to change, it's the world.

After receiving a diagnosis, the minimal resources that we may be linked to (if we're lucky) are for the benefit of parents, carers and those who are third-party viewers, rather than for neurodivergent people. We're given books that have been created by doctors and psychologists and neurologists who may have studied our brains for a number of years and can spit out information until the cows come home. But, assuming they are neurotypical, they have never and will never experience or understand what it feels like to have our minds. We're given clinical books and clinical videos, and are taught as soon as the new label is attached to us that it's a cold, medical, distant thing, like our brains are no longer ours. And, when we try to rid ourselves of these views and do our own research in an attempt to find things that feel closer to home and less analytical and impersonal, we are led to articles, sob stories, and posts that highlight the disappointment, fear and sorrow that surround all aspects of us, making us feel further invalidated, segregated and alienated.

However, it's not fair that the only options we currently have for children like me is to either have their parents give over their lives to homeschooling, or to suffer in an environment where every ounce of them is riduculed, ripped apart or forced to changed.

Our society has taught us that if we act in a way that is different to the social norm, we are considered low functioning, stupid, dumb, childish, loony. And the thing is, perhaps those fears are valid. No one wants to see their child ridiculed. But why are we then determined to change the child, rather than the world around them? Why do we validate the wrong just because it's normalised, and ostracise the right just because it's not?

Watching as your child grows taller and learns new skills is bittersweet, but when autism comes into the picture, this transformation can get pretty scary.

Or shameful. Cooper is Cooper, and his beautiful parts by far outweigh his hard parts. That’s what we need to remember. So, we talk as a family about autism. We share. We live out loud.

Autism didn’t change my love—it deepened it.

Representation matters. Our stories matter. Black families deserve to be seen in every conversation about autism.

The hardest part of parenting through autism isn’t the diagnosis—it’s the silence that follows when support doesn’t come.

There is no single spectrum. Every child colors their world in their own way—and every hue is worthy of love.

Development of brain growth, timing, and coordination in childhood are critical to proper function throughout life. If there is developmental delay in brain function in childhood, such as ADHD, autism, Tourette’s Syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety, tics, dyslexia, learning or processing disorders, or even more subtle symptoms, it is best to aggressively rehabilitate function before adulthood. Unfortunately, the current model of health care tells parents to wait for the child to grow out of it. However, many children do not grow out of it and miss key windows of time for ideal brain development. Unrelated to developmental delays, early symptoms of brain degeneration such as poor mental endurance, poor memory, and inability to learn new things are also serious issues when timing matters. The longer a person waits to manage their brain degeneration or developmental delay the less potential they have to make a difference. Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS

I first met this young client when he was eight years old. He was very shy with a calm disposition. He had been diagnosed with a sensory processing disorder and his parents had hired a special tutor. His mother and father were already clients of mine, and his mother was very conscientious with his diet. She was most concerned about his extreme fatigue, how difficult it was to get him up in the morning, and how difficult it was for him to fall asleep. He was also falling asleep at school. In addition, she was concerned he was having difficulty remembering his schoolwork. With sensory processing disorder, children may have difficulty concentrating, planning and organizing, and responding appropriately to external stimuli. It is considered to be a learning disorder that fits into the autism spectrum of disorders. To target his diet and nutritional supplementation, I recommended a comprehensive blood panel, an adrenal profile, a food sensitivity panel, and an organic acids profile to determine vitamin, mineral, and energy deficiency status. His blood panel indicated low thyroid function, iron deficiency, and autoimmune thyroid. His adrenal profile indicated adrenal fatigue. His organic acids test indicated low B vitamins and zinc, low detoxification capacity, and low levels of energy nutrients, particularly magnesium. He was also low in omega-3 fatty acids and sensitive to gluten, dairy, eggs, and corn. Armed with all of that information, he and I worked together to develop a diet based on his test results. I like to involve children in the designing of their diet. That way they get to include the foods they like, learn how to make healthy substitutions for foods they love but can no longer eat, and learn how to improve their overall food choices. He also learned he needed to include protein at all meals, have snacks throughout the day, and what constitutes a healthy snack. I recommended he start with a gut restoration protocol along with iron support; food sensitivities often go hand in hand with leaky gut issues. This would also impact brain function. In the second phase of his program, I added inositol and serotonin support for sleep, thyroid support, DHA, glutathione support (to help regulate autoimmunity), a vitamin and mineral complex, fish oils, B-12, licorice extract for his adrenals, and dopamine and acetylcholine support to improve his concentration, energy, and memory. Within a month, his parents reported that he was falling asleep easily and would wake up with energy in the morning. His concentration improved, as did his ability to remember what he had learned at school. He started to play sports in the afternoon and took the initiative to let his mom know what foods not to include in his diet. He is still on his program three years later, and the improvements

The Triad of Impairments   People with autism have difficulties in three areas, known as “the triad of impairments”:   social interaction – difficulty in relating to others; social communication – difficulty in understanding, acquiring and using verbal and non-verbal communication; rigidity in thinking – difficulty in being flexible and generalizing learning.   Autism affects individuals to varying degrees and as we have said this is reflected in the term “Autism Spectrum Disorder”. The difficulties in each area of the triad of impairments may be expressed in different behaviors, e.g. the difficulty in social interaction may be expressed in terms of aloof behavior, where the child will have little to do with others, or as over-familiar behavior, such as touching strangers in the street.

Difficulties include:   having narrow interests and obsessions; having to have things a certain way – e.g. all the doors need to be shut; having to do things a certain way; finding it hard to predict and anticipate; poor generalization of learning.

Difficulties with social communication include:   difficulties understanding language; difficulties producing speech; unusual patterns of speech; repeating words or phrases; referring to self by name; not understanding the point of communicating; not pointing out things of interest to others; not understanding tone of voice, facial expressions, body posture, gesture, body distance, and volume of speech; not being able to read the signs that tell you whether to continue talking or to stop; the tendency to take language literally, which makes it difficult to understand jokes, sarcasm and figures of speech.

Difficulties around social interaction include:   not understanding the unwritten social rules, e.g. around friendship; appearing to be insensitive because they have not recognized how someone is feeling (or don’t understand how they should react); not understanding other people’s intentions; not being able to predict other people’s feelings and reactions; becoming aloof, distant, or uninterested in other people as a result; not seeking comfort from other people; behaving strangely or inappropriately – because of not understanding what is appropriate in different social situations.

In her book Asperger Syndrome and Adolescence: Practical Solutions for School Success, Brenda Smith Myles identifies six areas of difficulty for adolescents with Asperger’s: • Lack of understanding that nonverbal cues express meaning and attitudes. Teens miss out on many social opportunities because they don’t understand that a smile and glances from another person could mean they like him, or that teachers give a “look” that is a warning and should be interpreted as meaning to calm down and get to work. • Problems with using language to initiate or maintain a conversation. AS teens will often start a conversation with a comment that seems irrelevant, or may walk up to a group of teens and want to join in, but does not because he doesn’t know how or when to join in. • Tendency to interpret words or phrases concretely. AS teens often only understand the literal meanings of words and phrases and not expressions such as “You’re pulling my leg” and “Pull yourself together.” Or, as in the example from Luke Jackson’s book quoted earlier, they will do exactly as told and will not understand the implied statement, which leads teachers to think the teen is a smart aleck. • Difficulty understanding that other people’s perspective in conversation need to be considered. This can lead to one-sided monologues, because the AS student is talking about his area of interest and is not monitoring whether or not the listener is interested. • Failure to understand the unspoken rules of the hidden curriculum or a set of rules everyone knows, but that has not been specifically taught. Things that are important to teens, such as how to dress, what to say to whom, how to act, and how to know the difference between gentle teasing and bullying. • Lack of awareness that what you say to a person in one conversation may influence how that individual relates to you in the future. A teen may make a candid remark to another teen, not realizing it was hurtful, and may be puzzled by the person’s lack of response later that day.

The story of autism is actually many stores, set on different continents, and overlapping in time, and circling back on one another…Ideas cross-pollinate, major players make cameos in one another’s stories, and entire story lines unfold at different paces thousands of miles apart…And yet, as much as the story zigzags or circles back, there is an unmistakable forward movement. Over time, because of the efforts made by parents and activists…public attitudes toward people given the autism label have moved in what all would agree is the right direction. The cruelty and neglect that have marked the history of autism now seem antiquated. More and more, a new impulse has taken hold, the impulse to recognize the different among us as part of us, and to root for their full participation in the world. That project, of course, is still a work in progress. But it puts us all in the middle of the story, right now.

The children I describe here have horizontal conditions that are alien to their parents. They are deaf or dwarfs; they have Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; they are prodigies; they are people conceived in rape or who commit crimes; they are transgender. The timeworn adage says that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, meaning that a child resembles his or her parents; these children are apples that have fallen elsewhere—some a couple of orchards away, some on the other side of the world. Yet myriad families learn to tolerate, accept, and finally celebrate children who are not what they originally had in mind.

Salon writer Scot Sea, who said that his experience with his own autistic daughter helped him understand why a California man named Delfin Bartolome had shot his son and then himself. “The odor has finally made its way down the hall. When you see the balled-up pants and diaper on the floor, you know you are too late,” Sea began ominously. “A bright red smear across the door, the molding, the wall. Turn the corner and the bedroom is a crime scene. An ax murder? In fact, it is only your daughter at her worst.” He described a scene worthy of a slasher movie: “Splashes of blood glistening like paint, black clots, yellow-brown feces, and a 3-foot-in-diameter pond of vomit that your daughter stands in the middle of . . . hands dripping, face marked like a cannibal.” Parents in previous eras were spared these horrors, he explained, because “idiot” children were promptly “tossed down the well or thumped against the fence post.” For “educated” families in more recent times, he added, at least there was a way out—institutionalization. But now, desperate parents had to find their own ways out, as Bartolome had been forced to do with a handgun when he ran out of options. This was the harsh reality of raising a child with autism, according to Sea. (He neglected to mention that weeks before the shooting, Bartolome—described by his relatives as a loving and devoted father—had been laid off just before retirement, shunting him into a series of temporary jobs and putting his son’s future care at risk.) Shannon felt herself becoming physically ill while reading Sea’s article. Was this her family’s future? IV

It never occurred to me—not for a moment—that in trying to sound confident, I sounded horribly arrogant. In trying to be helpful, I sounded parental. In trying to make friends, I made a fool of myself. Over and over again. To be truthful, a lifetime of comments between then and now in which people I loved harshly criticized my social skills (with good intentions) has often brought that sense of rejection to bear.

Now I was in a position to meet thousands of parents who were exhausted and scolded and frightened by experts who seemed anything but. Who said they, the parents, were to blame. Or that they were imagining it all. And

We give up on ourselves. Our homes. Find ourselves cut off from family support. Many of us quit school and accept employment that is neither financially nor intellectually commensurate with our abilities. There is deep shame in knowing so very much about so very much, bursting with complicated, nuanced things … and constantly falling short anyway. To our parents, teachers, friends, spouses, and employers, we are confounding disappointments. To ourselves, we are fearful frauds, sure that our ineptitude is as obvious to others as to ourselves.

Another category is the more confessional memoir, usually written by a parent, describing the impact of autism on the family and sometimes the positive effect of an unorthodox treatment. These memoirs are media-friendly and raise the profile of autism in the marketplace of worthy causes, but I have found their practical use to be limited, and in fairness they usually aren’t written to be useful.

The greatest need that any child has is the need for unconditional love.’ (Boyd 2003)

Why accept mediocrity when excellence is available?