Autism Interview #66: Kat Muir on Socializing, CBT, and Advocacy

Kat Muir is a speech-language pathologist employed at Easterseals Crossroads. She has a B.S. in Speech & Hearing Science and an M.A. in Bilingual Speech-Language Pathology. She speaks fluently in English, Spanish, German, French, Farsi, ASL and some Mandarin and is currently working on learning Vietnamese. She is also a member of Mensa and a public speaker. This week she shared how she has managed some of her personal struggles as well as how she works today to help others with disabilities.

Autism Interview #64: Russell Lehmann on Never Giving Up

Russell Lehmann is an award-winning and internationally recognized motivational speaker, poet, author and advocate who happens to have autism. His words have been featured in the USA Today, LA Times, NPR, Yahoo! News, Autism Speaks and archived in the Library of Congress.

Russell currently travels the country spreading hope, awareness, acceptance, belief and tolerance in a raw and dynamic fashion, while also setting his sights on erasing the stigma and stereotypes that come with having a disability. This week he shared some of his experiences as an autism advocate and poet.

Autism Interview #63 Part 2: Ally Grace on Communication and Fighting Stigma

This post is a continuation of an interview with Ally Grace, Respectfully Connected blogger and autistic mother of five. Last week Ally discussed unschooling her children and advice for parents considering therapy for their children. This week Ally offered suggestions for communicating with your autistic children and challenges us to rethink how we advocate for them.

Autism Interview #63 Part 1: Ally Grace on Unschooling, Therapy, and Autism

Ally Grace is an autistic mother of five from Australia. Ally strongly believes in challenging the pathology paradigm of autism. She blogs at Respectfully Connected about her family, rejecting conventional autism assumptions, challenging social norms around raising children, unschooling, and being autistic. This post is part one of a 2-part series with Ally. This week she shared her experience unschooling her children, as well as advice for parents considering different therapies for their children.

About Autism by Tina Sheers

The following essay was written by Tina Sheers and printed here with her permission. Autism is a human neurological variant, which makes our lived experience more intense. This makes us have less attention and energy available to focus on the subtleties of social interaction. These intense experiences are sensory, such as sounds, touch and smells.…

Autism Interview #61: Michael John Carley on the Current State of Autism

Michael John Carley is an internationally-recognized autistic author, speaker, and public advocate. He is the founder and first Executive Director of GRASP, the largest organization in the world comprised of adults on the autism spectrum. He’s also the former United Nations Representative of Veterans for Peace, Inc. He’s been featured in many national publications and media outlets and has written several books on autism. This week he shared his perspective on the current state of autism in America, some of the differences between his experiences and those of his autistic son, as well as advocacy tips for parents.

How to Hide Your Autism

This article was written by autistic advocate Kieran Rose and was originally published on autismawareness.com and his website The Autistic Advocate. It is reprinted here with his permission.

If you are the parent of an Autistic child, I’m going to introduce you to a concept that’s going to scare the pants off of you:  Your child is going to grow up to be me:

I am an Autistic adult.

Some people are of the belief that Autism can be grown out, or that with the right support and interventions, Autism can be cured or lessened.

If you’re one of those people, then I’m about to blow your minds with a second concept: Nobody grows out of Autism and a child cannot be trained out of it.  We just get better at hiding it.