This is a title of a booklet produced by The Geneva Centre (of Toronto, Canada) that includes many quotes of people with ASDs of their own sensory experiences.  I found this book helped tremendously to develop a sense of just how differently we all experience this world through our basic five senses.  My son, like many people with ASDs has difficulty dialing down or filtering background noises.  To gain an idea of just how that might "feel" - I would sit in a quiet room and deliberately try to hear every single little buzz, whir, click, hum and then imagine that I could never find a spot to escape these sounds.  Afterward, many of my son's expressions of frustration seemed to be more logical.  Over time, I learned which types of sounds bothered him the most and was sometimes able to peg them as the causes of difficult behaviors and to reduce his frustration by selectively removing the ones I could from his environment.  It also helped my son to understand for himself that this was an issue for himself and he did find many ways to cope himself in environments with noises that were inherently irritating to him.  He likes headphones (and thankfully this has become more and more a socially acceptable thing to do).

He had similar issues with smells.  One quote from the book (not him but someone with a similar experience to his):  "I did not like the smell of fresh grass (as a child).  Fresh grass has really too much smell for me to like going on the grass."  Somedays my son would tantrum just going out the door - those days... after a rain, after we had just mowed the lawn...  Once he knew how to tell us which smells bothered him, it got easier to respect his sensitivities.

I have to say that the past two weeks have been very intense and amazing for my son and I.  We have both grown tremendously.

As some of you know, it began with him literally giving me a piece of his mind by explaining to me that a few wavy lines drawn when he was very young was in fact a picture of his EEG (Another Way to Look at the Writing on the Wall).  It moved through his decision to invite about 60 people to a birthday party at a bar for his 20th birthday and with me helping him process the fact that he received only 6 positive replies and about 30 maybes.  Then came the worst day, the day that not one of those positive replies or maybes bothered to show up.

Although that was the most painful day, I now realize that it was the most important one because that was the day that I was called upon (by him) to be his real friend and we spent three hours in that bar together, mother and son, working through our pain together by making up a list of plausible explanations as to why this had occurred.  It took me longer than he - to forgive and to find the courage to move on, but with his help, I continue to work on it.

The next day, he forgave the two people who DID email him with apologies and explanations and he thanked me for understanding and for being there to help him get through it all.  He then made a point of going to someone else's party and found that he could still have some fun with the group (by overlooking their earlier transgressions (even the ones that never provided an apology).  He still hopes they will see at least how they can hurt his feelings or to acknowledge at least that he has feelings.  read more »

Now that I find myself "out" (of the box at least), just for the record - my mom was never a "refrigerator" and last time I checked, I wasn't one either.

There is no cure for autism, but ASD people do learn to present a set of symptoms that are more acceptable to the "rest" of society.

In a perfect world, however, ASD people would not have to fear being "magically erased" by a cure or having their life's work (i.e. achieving social acceptance) threatened by a raft of "scientific" opinions.  As someone on this site so eloquently put it - magic erasers not only remove the marks, they take some of the color out of the paint as well.

My son is still wondering why he can go to other people's parties and have fun, but no one even bothers to show up at his.  Does science have an answer?

Check out Garth Brooks - "The Dance."

Still trying to come up with some readily available raw data (Based in the philosophy that there are at least three sides to every coin, not just two and that our government has a responsibility to disseminate impartial information rather than just "sell" a point of view to the public.)  Personally, as I have said, I am on the fence regarding vaccines and autism.  Because I am still unable to glean any similar stats from the CDC or Fed Stat website, I am using data from the Public Health Agency of Canada website; however, there is still a detectable bias in how the data are selected and presented (i.e. promoting the efficacy of vaccines).  Completely objective data (so that I could form my own logical and informed conclusion) have, so far, remained elusive.

Diphtheria:  "Routine immunization against diphtheria in infancy and childhood has been widely practised in Canada since 1930. In 1924, there were 9,000 cases reported, the highest annual number ever recorded in Canada... At the same time diphtheria was one of the most common causes of death in children from 1 to 5 years of age. By the mid-1950s, routine immunization had resulted in a remarkable decline in the morbidity and mortality of the disease. Toxigenic strains of diphtheria bacilli are detected each year, although classic diphtheria is rare. In Canada, there are 0 to 5 isolates reported each year."  (source URL:  http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/im/vpd-mev/diphtheria-eng.php)  read more »

The most common data flying around about ASDs is that if currently is estimated to occur in 1 in 150 births each year.  It seldom results directly in death, but presents usually as a serious handicap to social integration for those who "contract" it.  These difficulties can remain pronounced for a lifetime although inroad are being made towards recovery (although percentages of effective recovery stated vary considerably).

As a basis for comparison, I've been trying to get some pre-vaccine statistics on the various childhood diseases and am finding this surprisingly difficult (at least just from home on the web).  The raw data I can find comes from Canada (The Public Health Agency of Canada Website).

Here is what I've found so far:

Measles:  "Before measles vaccine became available, virtually all children contracted measles; as estimate 135 million cases with about 7-8 million deaths globally each year... Currently, more than 30 million people are affected each year by measles. Globally, in 2003, it was estimated that there were 530 000 measles deaths, the majority of them children." (source url:  http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/tmp-pmv/info/measles_e.html#profile)  This calculates to a global pre-vaccine rate of death per case of about = 1 in 19 and a current rate of death per case of about = 1 in 56.  However, statistics regarding deaths from complications of the vaccine were not mentioned.  read more »

Sometimes it has helped me to think of ASDs more in terms of "intense communications breakdowns" as opposed to "mental disorders."  (Please note, this is not intended to diminish the severity of the problems, just to approach solving them from a little bit different perspective.)  First, a little communications theory.  We've all experienced misunderstandings; but when you think about it, it is really amazing that we are all able to communicate with each other at all.  If I throw out a word, any word, how you understand that word depends on your own experiences with it (which are, without any doubt, not the same experiences as mine).  That we come to approximately the same understanding of the word relies on how much alike our individual experiences are.  We know that people with ASDs suffer from sensory issues.  This means that on a lot of basic levels, their experiences do not approximately our own.  Hence, it is logical that they understand some words very differently.

Now, let me tell you a little story about my son.  read more »

Shootingstars' post also brought to mind the lyrics of another song.  It's a "love gone wrong" song, but the meaning of it can change if we read it as though it was written by an person handicapped by an ASD.  It was written (I believe) by a Canadian artist, Gordon Lightfoot, way back in "my day."  Here is one URL for the lyrics:

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/gordon-lightfoot/if-you-could-read-my-mind.html 

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It occurred to me that handicaps to relationships work equally both ways, so this can also be imagined as being written by a parent to a person with an ASD.  The challenge is not to remake either the parent or the child in a different image, but for both parent and child to understand the different images that are there to be discovered.  Thank you for being there this time around.

My son taught me a lesson the other day about how differently we often see things.  When he was about 6 or 7, I brought him into my office after a trip to the doctor.  At one point, he scribbled some wavy lines across a page, took it to the photocopier and proceeded to make several copies of it.  Wordlessly, of course, he handed one out to everyone in the office.  My boss, the wonderful man that he is, pinned his copy up on his wall - and it has stayed there all these years.  My son, now 20, came into the office the other day and noticed the picture and in a few words, he turned that dusty old sheet of paper into a profound work of art.  He told us that it was a picture of his EEG (which is what we had been doing at the doctor's that day).  If anyone winds up using my suggestion about the dry-strippable wallpaper, I think it would be wise to save some of the "art" your child draws on it - We just never know what all those lines and scribbles may mean.  (I really wish now I had kept my "copy."  - and you better believe, I've already taken a copy of my boss's copy!)