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| Parenting Autism- Getting Past the Sadness It's very common for a parent of an autistic child to sometimes feel quite sad about his or her child's autism. After all, every parent wants his or her child to be accepted, to live a happy life, and to make all of their dreams a reality. In fact, you may have experienced an overwhelming feeling of sadness upon hearing of your child's autism, as our society has long held the idea that your child's condition is tragic and incurable.
But I invite you to look at things in a different way. Perhaps you can look at your child as not tragic or incurable, but rather, as unique and remarkable.
In our society, people who are different are often seen as unfortunate, sad cases. But if you think about it, your child is probably a pretty amazing person. His autism is actually a part of who he is, and he's probably not sad about it at all, unless society has convinced him otherwise.
Imagine if our society held autism up as an incredibly marvelous thing. In that case, most of us would be pretty happy about our child's autism, right? Our child would still be autistic, but our perception of what that means would be different, and so would our resulting emotional response.
In either case, society is telling us how we should feel- happy or unhappy. But in reality, no one else can dictate your feelings, unless you allow it. You truly decide how you feel from moment to moment. You decide if you're going to buy someone else's idea about how you should feel. And yes, you can decide to be happy or unhappy, despite what everyone has told you. You can decide to be happy now, without waiting till your child is recovered. I'm not talking about denial, where you're pushing down feelings and pretending they're not there. I'm actually talking about making the decision to be truly happy.
That doesn't mean that you give up on hoping and trying for more. If you can hope and work for your child's best outcome without making your happiness dependent upon it, and if you fully accept your child as he is now, even with his autism, then your child will feel that acceptance and positive expectation, and will respond by believing in himself.
No matter how many gloom and doom predictions others make about your child, you ultimately decide what you believe. Making the decision to fully accept your child and to be happy now, while trying for the best possible outcome will give your child what he needs- lots of learning opportunities in an accepting and loving environment.
Article Source: http://www.articleset.com 
About the AuthorSandra Sinclair is a parent of a child with PDD-NOS. Sandra assists parents of children with autism spectrum disorders to create a life that they love - life by design, not demands - through her 6-step program. She is also author of Newly Diagnosed Autism Spectrum - A free mini-course with 7 clear steps you can take to help your child with Aspergers, Autism, PDD-NOS, and other autism spectrum disorders. http://www.autismvoice.com/blog/7StepstoHelpChildrenwithAutism. » Read more articles by Sandra Sinclair
I found this blog, and wanted to share. Age Of Autism http://feeds.feedburner.com/ageofautism
I came across a wonderful site for parent's of children with disabilities, especially Autism. It is the Children's Care Hospital and School. One of the sources of information on this site is blogs. These blogs are filled with helpful and insightful information that I have found to be beneficial. The link to the site is http://cchs.org/blog/
October 28, 2008 by adonyawong2008 I’m tired. It feels like I’m getting blisters from all the walking I’ve been doing tonight. It also seems like I stumbled upon a theme with tonight’s posts. With so many children being diagnosed with autism each day, how can we expect the public school systems to keep up with the demand for autism classes? How can we expect them to keep up when there aren’t enough special education teachers to go around? Some of us have taken matters into our own hands and have taken to homeschooling our children. But what about those parents who don’t or can’t homeschool their children? What are they to do? What happens to their children? I feel a song coming on… “New York, New York. So good, they named it twice.” I love New York. New Yorkers aren’t shy people. They’re risk-takers… and they don’t take no mess from nobody! So, it came as no surprise when I read that a New York couple saw that our children needed help, and they stepped up to the plate to offer it. NY1’s Health & Fitness Expert, Kafi Drexel, reported, The New York Center for Autism is the brain-child of Harry and Laura Slatkin, a couple already known for creating popular home fragrances for chains like Bath and Body Works. The influential New Yorkers are now becoming just as well-known for their work in autism advocacy. “My son David was diagnosed with autism at 18 months and as he got older we started looking around for schools,” said NYCA Founder Harry Slatkin. “We live in Manhattan. And we realized there were really no places to send David. At the time, there were 5,000 children in the public school system who had autism. Now, I believe it’s doubled. So the reason we opened our charter school is to be a model school for the public school system to follow.”
New York, New York. A city so nice… they named it twice! Posted in Blogging for Autism | Tagged children, adonya wong, author, autism awareness, New York Center for Autism, NY1, Kafi Drexel, autism charter school | 2 Comments » How We Talk To Children With Autism By: Sandra Sinclair I'd like to discuss how we talk to children with autism. One of the things that strikes me is the wide range of what is considered acceptable. I'm not talking about teaching methods. Specifically, I'm talking about the tone and volume in which we speak to these children. I know that they're often difficult to reach and may require multiple attempts to get them to attend or to understand what is being said to them. I also understand that this can be frustrating and confusing at times, but it's everyone's job to stay calm and talk to them in a reasonable manner. There are many teachers and therapists in special education that would never speak harshly to any child. However, I've heard many speak to children with autism in ways that no regular education program would tolerate, and it seems that this practice is still widespread. My theory is that this habit of loud, cruel voices has been accepted for so long that no one questions it. It's left over from the days when persons with autism were yelled at, slapped and cattle-prodded to get them to comply. Everyone knows that being spoken to harshly and punitively can break a person's heart, spirit and self-esteem over time. Our children are no different. They need to feel loved, accepted and cared for. Cruel and abusive tones alone can be harmful, even without negative words attached. My suggestion is that we ask our teachers to speak to our children with kindness and respect. At times when firmness is called for, everyone can still speak kindly while staying firm. It's all in the choice of tone and language. We want our children to grow into their full potential. It can't happen if they're feeling anxious or depressed or if their self-esteem has been damaged. We need to lay the foundation first- love, trust, respect, acceptance and kindness. Then we can build instruction over that foundation, taking care not to displace it. If you think about it, it's all relatively common sense. We all learn and become our best in this kind of supportive and accepting atmosphere. Our children do too. You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated. Sandra Sinclair About The Author: Sandra Sinclair is a parent of a child with PDD-NOS. Sandra assists parents of children with autism spectrum disorders. http://www.autismvoice.com/blog/7StepstoHelpChildrenwithAutism. Article Source: www.isnare.com
Autism And Communication By: Ben Sidman It was the great American Financer, Bernard Baruch that said “Feelings are 55% body language, 38% tone and 7% words” in other words, its not just what you say but the way that you say it. On the other hand, only the words are required for actual communication and the body language and tone are the social aspects that help people to understand a great deal more about what the words mean. One of the issues with Autism or Asperger Syndrome is that there are distinct difficulties in communication that can occur on all three of these levels. It is well known that people have described communicating with autistic people as difficult thinking that they are ‘nerdy’ or ‘weird’. If you look at communication as purely words and that the body language and tone are social aspects then quite often it is not the communication that is a problem. Autistic people often have difficulties with social understanding and as children become older the shift towards the social part of communication becomes greater. When communication does becomes 93% social then if they are not understood they often feel more comfortable to avoid communication all together because it becomes too difficult. Hans Asperger himself was described by others as 'remote' in that he distanced himself away from others. For autistic people that cannot produce the words there are a number of therapies or treatments such as music therapy or the controversial facilitated communication. These treatments (not cures) help people to communicate through a different medium. Other autistic children may communicate with words but lack understanding or the ability to recognise the social side of communication (body language and tone). But also they themselves may not be communicating with their body and tone. Their body language can be awkward or uncomfortable, with eye gaze and an apparent lack of engagement. The speech can be monotone or non-emotional and the volume may be loud or not fitting to the situation. But also the word structure may not be clear, the language can be literal, there may be interruptions and the subject may become confused which is likely to be a reflection of how confusing certain things are to them. There are other therapies that help them understand concepts such as recognising emotions. Picture or art therapy is useful to help give visual guides to things they will see in communications. Music therapy is sometimes used to help understand the back and forth of conversation. And speech therapy is a commonly used therapy to help develop the muscles in the mouth to help with pronunciation and articulation. So while communication may conventionally be on these three levels of body language, tone and words, there are many other ways to communicate and many people will tell you that communicating with autistic children on their level is very rewarding because they are all geniuses in their own right that have a lot to talk about. About The Author: Ben Sidman is a Parent of an amazing autistic child and founder of http://www.autism-support-community.com - an informative and friendly web site for parents with autistic children. Article Source: www.isnare.com For additional articles, you can visit: Return to Home page. | |
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