fool for fundraising

I'm bombarded by mails of people who want me to publicize their fund raising campaigns for autism.

Like last year I'm fundraising for autism too.

But unlike last year people don't have much money to spend.

In fact: I haven't received one single euro or dollar.

That means that overpowering people with even more fundraisers would be foolish.

Considering the fact that I find myself blogging an advertising post for 2 dollars, spending a lot of time to write a decent post for a firm that could buy me my dream, an autism house, within a second without blinking an eye just once, I have declared myself a fool for fundraising this month.

I hope this last week will change things a lot.

Well, there's 2 dollars.....

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Informing schools about autism

I've been asked how I have dealt with informing schools about the autism of my son.

Well, at basic school it was clear something was the matter with him.

The teachers followed their intuition and were able to deal with him, but the new principal had serious problems with him,, because he wanted all children to look him into the eyes and he had the habit to put his hands on the children's shoulders to emphasize what he was saying.

I told the teachers when I requested a diagnostic procedure at a cetre with exprience in autism, and told the teachers that maybe it would be better the principal was informed by the teachers about the influence of his actions on the wellbeing and behaviour of my son.

So they called a meeting, but he was not willing to listen at all.

My next step was making an appointment with him and informing him about the diagnosis.
With it I had a leaflet with information about autism and about how people best react to children with autism.

He didn't know I'd made that leaflet myself.

At that time there was almost no written information available.

The guy didn't care much about the info, until a fill-in teacher was confronted with a situation she could handle, because she had worked at a facility with some autistic children.
He was walking towards my son, when she took a step faster and arrived earlier at the scene.

She handled the situation in a perfect way, so the principal was very amazed.

He never acknowledged his own problems with my son, but when he was able to back out of a situation he would.

The next school told me they were informed, but it turned out they were able to make a mess of the whole schoolexperience of my son, because one man ruined everything that was gained by teachers and caretakers.

He considered to own the truth and told everyone autism is the result of a bad upbringing.

Where the teachers were eager to get more information, he declined everything.

Well, in the end my son dropped out of school.

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autism awareness month

It's autism awareness month.

There are many stories and facts about autism.
I know many people have questions.

You can ask them here.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

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autism research

Joseph Piven, M.D., Director of the Neurodevelopmental Disorders Research Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and an ACNP member, and researcher has found indications that a larger brain is connected with development of autism.
How it works precisely is unknown, but the correlation will be investigated.
The study is part of the new Autism Centers of Excellence funded by the National Institutes of Health.

More than 500 infant siblings of autistic individuals will be examined with magnetic resonance imaging at the University of North Carolina, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Washington University of St. Louis and the University of Washington in Seattle.
Siblings of autistic children will be examined at 6, 12 and 24 months. Some of them are expected to develop autistic behavior during the course of the study.

Knowing the cause of autism might shed light on the treatment.

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early diagnosis autism

A research group here at the university work hard to create a test to diagnose autism and autism spectrum disorder as early as possible.

Accounts of parents has made scientists aware that there is no need to wait untill a child is older than a certain age in order to get a proper diagnosis.

When my son was about 12 they aid that was the perfect age to diagnose.
During the next yeras the age lowered and now toddlers and even babies can be diagnosed.

In the USA pediatricians want a double screening at age 2.

But even before that age there are very clear signs:

Not wanting to look the parbnt in the eyes
no babbling
not reaching for toys
not listening to the name
not smiling at 4 months when the baby hears the voice of mom or dad

or loosing already gaines skills, like talking.

Ofcourse children can display strange behaviour at any time during development.
So one always needs to be careful to ascribe individual symptoms to autism.

My autistic boy got no official diagnosis when he was little.
When I said I had the feeling he was creating a distance between us people told me that maybe he didn't like the smell of my clothes, so I should get other detergent and laundry softener.

But I was lucky to have studied autism long before it got into the dictionary of the regular home physician and Pedriatric doc.

From early on I taught my son to look at me, and to look me in the eyes.
Just like parents of deaf children focus the attention on the mouth to enable a child to learn lipreading, I pointed to my eyes and his, to make the connection clear.

When he uttered noises to get something to drink, I told him the word, and gave nothing.
It was hard to do, but I felt it was the only way to get him out of his coccoon.

It made clear to me that with thourough training, conditioning if you like, an autistic child can learn socially acceptable behaviour.

But I've never been able to stop him completely from having meltdowns.
I can prevent most of them, or stop them right at the beginning.

My experience makes clear that autistic children can be trained to display certain behaviour.
The younger a child is, the less it will resist this training.

So the call to have children screened at a very early age is mine too.

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autism spectrum parents

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