The other afternoon I found myself, after a full day of attorney conference calls with my child's legal team, with a cell phone drained of all its juice. After getting Lila tucked away in the therapy clinic for her bi-weekly session, I hunkered down in the clinic hallway with their...

"I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted"
- Frederick Douglass

Each time I start a blog entry about autism, I'm filled with enthusiasm for whatever aspect of the crisis I am about to talk about. This is...

So many blogs that gain popularity or a strong reader base are lighthearted, fun, teasingly profane -- in a word "perky". When considering how to approach autism from any perspective but heartbreak and devastation, the task is a slippery pig. We do have our profane in the autism experience, and...

My daughter was diagnosed with autism several times. The first time was by her first preschool teachers, who told me they were not qualified to diagnose, but that I should seek professional diagnosis for a syndrome they had seen many times in other children over the years. The second time...

When you first get the diagnosis on your toddler, this tiny being, this round, soft, angelic, helpless thing of a human who is beholden to you for its safe-keeping and survival, your guts fall on the floor. If you are a first time autism parent, you don't even know what...

Lila was...