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Remembering Autistic Victims of Domestic Violence

Vigil for George Hodgins, Sunnyvale, CA Photo © Steve Silberman The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, Not Dead Yet, and the National Council on Independent Living have set aside this Friday, March 1, to remember the lives of people with disabilities who lost those lives at the hands of their family members or caregivers. We understand that this is difficult statement to comprehend and that many people’s first reaction may be to assume that such events are extremely rare. Unfortunately, such domestic violence is not unusual at all, even its most extreme form, the killing of a disabled people at the hands of their caregivers. In its latest statistics from 1999, the FBI reported that children under the age of five in the United States are more likely to be killed by their parents than by anyone else; parents were responsible for 57 percent of these murders. But while the murder of…

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The Costs of Fearing Autism

Ariane Zurcher emmashopebook.com The Tdap vaccine protects against Tetanus, Diphtheria, & Pertussis.  Photo © 2012 Rene Najera I recently spoke with my brother by phone. He was unable to travel. His voice was so raspy, his breathing slow and labored, had I not known it was my brother I was speaking to, I would not have been able to guess from the sound of his voice. He wasn’t able to complete a sentence without pausing to take a breath. It was clear listening to him that the act of talking was incredibly difficult and painful. When we said good bye to each other I was overcome with emotion. My brother was very slowly recovering from pertussis, more familiarly known as whooping cough. Because so many parents have chosen not to vaccinate their children for fear that vaccinations cause autism, whooping cough is on the rise. I’m including some links: here…

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Bickering (Autism) Siblings and Broken Hearts

Shannon Des Roches Rosa  www.squidalicious.com We don’t ever leave our youngest daughter Mali alone with her twelve-year-old brother. Leo’s autism may affect how he speaks and communicates, but he remembers very clearly that until he was four years old, there was no little sister and he was Mommy’s baby, and he has no problem expressing his antipathy towards his smallest sibling. Understandably, Mali is not a Leo fan. As for me, I worry that these two children I love so fiercely might hate each other. And that breaks my heart. I try to help Mali see the things I love about her brother — his sweetness, his impishness, his pitch-perfect singing — while also trying to cultivate her empathy for the challenges that come with his kind of autism. It’s not easy; she’s got a spitfire, conclusion-craving personality; she needs things explained and decided on the spot. Plus, she’s eight.…

Labels, Light, and Love

J. Lorraine Martin cheeselesspizza.blogspot.com “Your son has pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified.” That’s a mouthful to say, let alone hear. It was explained as a type of autism. That was 16 years ago. I did not have the Internet at home.  There was no Google for further research. Dustin Hoffman had provided my only experience of autism in the movie, Rainman. Looking back, the declaration–the actual diagnosing words from a stranger, a neurologist, is fuzzy. What did those letters, PDD-NOS, mean? Could a socially constructed diagnosis tell me who my son would become? When I got home from that appointment, teary-eyed and uncertain, I looked at my son with his large brown eyes, head of blondish-brown ringlets, and cherub face. We had already begun to find our rhythm together.  In our first year together, I intuitively discovered that if I laid him on the floor, and placed my head…

Ibby Grace: I Was A Self-Loathing FC Skeptic

Elizabeth J. Grace www.tinygracenotes.com You can read in Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking about the shall-remain-nameless professor who said in front of me and many others in graduate school that autistics did not know what it was like to be themselves because they had no theory of mind, so one had to read research about them done by others in order to understand them at all, (which presumably if you were one of them, you never would anyway — this part is logically editorialized by me). There was another professor who said in a large class of aspiring special education and psychology researchers, “Except for Grace, the idiot savant, who doesn’t count,” because I recalled more than seven allegedly random numbers which were not actually random, but had a clear pattern, and he hadn’t told me ahead of time that the object of the exercise was to demonstrate that nobody…

Meeting Myself for the First Time

Robert Moran blog.robertmoran.org Today I went to my first meetup for autistic people. It was both eye opening and interesting, I honestly had never spent much time with other autistic people. In fact I have never met any other autistic people in real life before. All of my friends and coworkers are neurotypical. So it was like meeting me for the first time. The last time I had ever spent any time with an autistic person was when I met Temple Grandin at an autism conference at UCLA 20 years ago. Yes that Temple Grandin and yes 20 years ago. The group was fairly diverse in ethnicity and age. As I looked around the room I saw myself being reflected back at me. That was not something I could ever experience with my neurotypical friends and coworkers. I sometimes felt that they did not understand me. That was probably because…

Fox News Asks, Can Autism Be Prevented?

Emily Willingham www.emilywillinghamphd.com www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham It’s happened again at Fox News. After taking down a story last year that was packed with misinformation about genetically modified foods — headlined “What you need to know“ — Fox has now offered up another similarly underevidenced article, this time headlined “Can autism be prevented?” Short answer: No, not usually. In spite of that, the article goes longer and turns to one ‘Rober’ (sic) Melillo, who practices something called “chiropractic neurology.” The unbylined article says about autism: “The statistic rates used to be one in 150 — so how did we get these new numbers?  Dr. Rober Melillo, co-founder of the Brain Balance Achievement Centers, spoke with Dr. Manny Alvarez, senior managing health editor for FoxNews.com, about the science behind autism, as well the facts and myths surrounding the condition.” Melillo, in fact, does neither. Instead, he exhibits a rather basic grasp of genetics, blames…

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Proprioception and Autism

Jeannie Davide-Rivera aspiewriter.wordpress.com Photo © Lori/Nurse Nerdy on Flickr Creative Commons License [image: person balancing on logs atop water, seen from behind.] So why can I not keep my feet underneath me, or apply the correct amount of pressure when lifting an object? Why do I walk into a room like an elephant in a china shop, or send the milk contain flying across the room when it is too light? In a word — proprioception. What is proprioception? Proprioception refers to one’s own perceptions. It an unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation controlled by nerves within the body. Our proprioceptive system allows us to locate our bodies in space, to be aware of where our arms and legs are in relation to one another, as well as, where they begin and where they end. Proprioception helps us perceive the outside world, telling us whether our bodies are moving…

“Self-Injurious Behaviors” (SIBs): Let’s Discuss

Ariane Zurcher emmashopebook.com I’m continuing to research SIBs, which stands for “self-injurious behaviors.” It’s far too complex a topic to tackle in a quick 800-1000 word post. There are a number of topics it seems important to discuss, which all fall under the heading of “self-injurious behavior.” (Feel free to add more in the comments section, this is definitely a work in progress.) I’ve broken these topics down to include: The language we use to describe such actions. The perception (usually of neurotypical parents, caregivers, doctors, school employees, educators and the general public) of what these actions may or may not mean, this is particularly critical when the person taking such actions is partially speaking or non-speaking. The personal experiences of those who have engaged in such actions that may or may not lead to real injury. The experience of those who want to help and/or are in a position…

No You Don’t

Maxfield Sparrow unstrangemind.com We’re grateful to Autistic advocate Sparrow for letting us publish her essay, which inspired our previous contributor, parent Beth Ryan, to write The Cost of Compliance is Unreasonable. Please know that Sparrow’s essay may contain triggers regarding autistic girls and conditioned compliance. When I meet parents of young Autistic kids, especially after they find out how much I was like their kids when I was their kids’ age, many of them say “I hope my kid is like you when she grows up!” ~~ I used to say, “I hope she’s much better off than I am,” or simply, “No, you don’t,” but over time I learned that parents refuse to accept that answer. Maybe they think I’m doing that social thing where someone compliments you and you are expected to refuse the compliment a time or two, finally accepting it but maintaining your veneer of humility.…