Teaching can be incredibly overwhelming, especially in a special education classroom. Between paperwork, lesson planning, updating bulletin boards, and actually teaching, the day can get pretty hairy. Sometimes, that stress leads to a short temper, which can lead to a punitive classroom environment.…

By Leanne Libas There are two different categories that people fall into: those who make New Year’s resolutions and those who don’t. Do I believe in resolutions? Yes, just as long as they are reasonable and attainable. The problem I usually encounter with New Year’s resolutions is how I utterly fail…

Our stories remind one another of our shared humanity. By Debra Muzikar As I was driving home last Saturday from dropping Kevin off to visit his Dad, the NPR radio station played an interview with David Isay, the founder of StoryCorps. StoryCorps is an organization that goes from city to city collec…

Age related Macular Degeneration and Diabetic Retinopathy are the leading causes of blindness in developed nations, and age related vision loss, such as Coloboma, Macular Degeneration, Diabetic Retinopathy, and Stargardt disease, is an issue for many.  In order to compensate for vision loss fro…

Imagine telling your students to sit down at the table for math. You finally get 4 students seated, but then you turn your back for two seconds to grab the materials for your lesson, and in the meantime, two kids pop up and run back to their preferred activities. Scenarios like these make me want t…

Today we released the first iteration of our Autism Drug Trial Tracker, which provides interactive, curated information on more than 200 clinical trials for autism and related conditions. The data powering the web application are freely available, as is the code that was used to scrape the data. We …

My name is Katrina and I am the casting associate of a 20th for ABC Pilot called NOT DEAD YET and got your details from my colleague. For the role of EDWARD, we are open to an actor who is neurodiverse or on the autism spectrum and we want to make sure we’ve auditioned anyone that might be ri…

Many therapies with the intent to cure are dangerous to our health. We are not science experiments. We are human beings. We are your children. By Jocelyn Eastman Part 3 in a 3-part series Part 1 – I am Standing Right Here – Don’t Speak for Me Part 2 – I am Standing Right Here…

By Debra Muzikar When Kevin was three years old he was part of an early intervention program funded by Santa Barbara County Education Office. The preschool program was part of an inclusive school called Discoveries Preschool in Santa Barbara. At 7:10 AM for three years a short yellow bus rounded our…

Tom visits Autsit in Lake Tahoe Tom Iland It feels great to get back into blogging again! I recently had one of the most enlightening and empowering experiences of my life and I want to tell YOU all about it so you might be enlightened and empowered, too! For the past three years, I’ve been attendin…

Adults who have characteristics of autism are about three times as likely as their peers to not identify themselves as heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual, according to a new study1. The study is based on surveys of more than 47,000 adults in Sweden. It shows that about one out of five individuals …

Children with autism who speak few or no words improve in their verbal abilities after their parents learn to engage them in conversation during play, according to a pilot study1. The parents learn strategies such as following their child’s focus and engaging the child with words and toys. These str…

Communication problems have always been considered a core feature of autism. Yet there are substantial and wide-ranging differences in how people with autism communicate. That reflects not only the inherent variability of the condition, but also the complexity of communication itself — encompassing …

The 22-year-old’s astonishing rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" may have you believing.Source: The Autism Site