If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
No matter the age or ability level, no person on the autism spectrum is safe from danger. Anyone with a loved one on the spectrum will understand how problematic the area of safety is for the autism community.
Working on Autism Speaks, it was amazing to learn how many prominent people have been affected by this condition first-hand.
Though the struggle of others hardly makes me feel any better, it certainly serves to put my own hardships into perspective.
In the Feb. 1 New York Times there is a telling op-ed by Benjamin Nugent, a successful writer and a "recovered" Asperger's patient. Mr. Nugent abruptly and spontaneously outgrew his disease right after college and has lived happily ever after.
As the mother of a child with autism, I know first-hand the importance that routine and consistency play in helping my son learn to navigate the world. Take away routine and consistency and what do you have? Life in the military.
The DSM 5 assertion of rate neutrality is, just on the face of it, completely impossible. A simple comparison of how DSM IV and DSM 5 criteria are written makes apparent that DSM 5 has to be much more restrictive.
I asked some of the people who've influenced my thinking about autism to collaborate on a virtual roundtable. This conversation, which took place before the Times story on the DSM, is open-ended and free-ranging. The participants, in alphabetical order:
The possible DSM 5 return to a narrower definition has created an uproar and caused a sharp division of opinion among advocates.
I was thinking about another time when things didn't work out so well on Christmas. ... Another time that folks had to deal with their "normal" being ripped apart by the "normal" of someone else -- of God.
It was my wife Kristen, a speech therapist who had worked with autistic children, who was most suspicious about my behavior. After we were married and living together, she started noticing little "things" about me that were consistent with Asperger Syndrome, a mild form of autism.
Today the New York Times asked for input on "whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about." The response among my peers has been fairly unanimous: Are you f-ing kidding me?
Why does the autism community continue to obsess over categorizing people as high or low functioning? It's true that the needs of one autistic person may be very different from the needs of another, but that doesn't mean that they have nothing in common.
The seemingly never-ending contraction of the media industry has resulted in a shedding of specialists in every journalistic medium. That does not, however, mean that the public's hunger for information about science, medicine and technology is shrinking.
We're three years apart, my brother and me. I'm a city mouse. He's a suburb mouse. He drives a big suburban truck. I ride the subway. He works in fi...
Will I ever truly get to know my sister? The autism had always cast a moderate facade on her personality and I was afraid that would never change.
There's hope, and then there's desperation. Often I am not sure which one is pushing me more.
