Check out this new blog I found. It is amazing, and the writer of this blog is one of the presenters at the Autism Conference in a couple weeks. I am anxious to listen to her because it seems that her son and Race are in similar places on the spectrum. I need some inspiration right now, today, for the whole month of March. It's been a hard, autistic month.
I have so much more to talk about on this. Give me a few days to put my thoughts together. But here's a statistic to think about; that I've been thinking about a lot since I heard it a few days ago. On the radio. 90% of adults on the spectrum are unemployed. 90%!! This includes adults with aspergers and high functioning autism like Race. The odds are against us. But I'm here to tell you, we are going to beat the odds. And it starts with awareness and intervention. So, think about that for a few days while I write up something awesome! :)
Check out the blog, check out the conference. Remember, it starts with awareness.
1 comment:
Hi Teddy
I love the way your blog has transformed into an awesome collage of your life and your family and your introspection!
More specifically, I wanted to comment on this article about the 99% of people with ASD who are not employed.
This has been somethingI personally have been concerned about for years.
I have tried in my career as a speech therapists to get parents thinking and observing their children very early on. Getting them to be vigilant for strength, talents, special interests and gifts that their child expresses. I have encouraged families and parents to cultivate those interests and to help their child expand their fascinations with things in creative ways.
This is because I recognized long ago that even children who have preoccupations with activities we don't understand can be reached and guided through those activities to new ones that they can relate to or claim as their own. From those unique patterns of interest we can begin to build a relationship with them that helps them to learn and develop their own often unique and amazing skill sets.
It is my belief that nearly all of those higher functioning unemployed people with ASD have an invaluable social contribution that has yet to be tapped. I am convinced that if we let the younger set with ASD be more themselves and we relate with them from those formats that they can teach us how to help people with ASD become more main stream contributors in our society.
Until we do that we are not really educating or fully helping them to become independent functional contributing adults.
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