reBlog from Jolie Mason: Indy Insights-South

I found this fascinating quote today:

Just yesterday, I met a man with an autistic child like mine, and he began a diatribe I'm sure his son will hear a thousand times in his young life, "Autism is no excuse for bad behavior". No, sir. It's actually a damn good reason for it. You see, behavior is communication, but in our society the average person doesn't care why something is, only that it shouldn't inconvenience them.Jolie Mason, Indy Insights-South, Oct 2009

You should read the whole article.

Autism Training for Me!

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This week I completed some training from Indiana Resource Center for Autism with our school's autism team. Though I left with my head spinning after considering myself somewhat of a professional in the topic, I left armed with more information than I'd ever had.

Movement difference is a topic that really opened my eyes to not only my son's little habits, but the kids we work with in general. We call avoidance behavior so many things we don't understand that may well be movement difference. In other words, when a kid moves slow, it may mean they move slow, not that they don't want to move. The only way to find out is through thorough analysis of DATA.

We learned the steps to functional behavior analysis and so very many things. The most important for families and educators was this link. AIM can be used to train paraprofessionals, students, peer helpers, parents, anyone. Several books were cited and recommended by many experts. I really want to encourage parents to look into some of them.

Look Me In The Eye by John Elder
The Way I See It by Temple Grandin
Awakenings by Oliver Sacks

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InSource

Article Seven Training ONLINE!

How do you like those odds?

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1 in 110. With an adjustment for cell phone versus land line use. Those appear to be our new odds of having a child with Autism. NPR reports in its' blog that there appears to be an increase, but no one knows what that means.

Can I say something as a parent and advocate of special needs children? Well, duh! Welcome to our world. People may disagree about why it happens, what happens exactly, or how to deal with it, but, one thing remains the same, we all know it's happened a lot.

Several facts come to mind now as I write this. First, we put only a fraction of our research dollars into autism's cause. Second, special education services are cut far too often when our autistic children's numbers are increasing. Third, bureaucrats and scientists spend way too much time debating stupid things like whether we put mercury in flu shots or 15 minutes of social instruction v. 5. Can we announce now that everyone is on the same page?

Here we go

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The long, and apparently, cold winter is upon us, and there's too much to do. This week I painted our apartment dining room wall. Why? Not because I wanted to, but because Darrel has been so very, very destructive. It looked awful.

Now, I've gotten tired, and it's not over yet. I have a cleaning crew on Monday. Ironic how that means I have to fix and sweep up and do my best to generally disappear the other things Darrel has done.

As he's gotten older, it's gotten better, but no one, even my husband, realized how much time I devoted to cleaning walls and fixing things around the house.

And just once, it would be nice to look at lamps or vases in the store and not think, "how long would that last?" Every year since D was tiny, we've "autism-proofed" our Christmas tree. It only takes one glass-as-candy incident to drive home the need. The list of things we can't have in the house is almost as long as the list of things we want for Darrel.

What can you do? When it comes to autism, as it is with most things, life really is adapt or die. Maybe this week we should all look at our lives and thank God for options. You'll know it when you don't have them anymore, and oh, how we miss them when they're gone.