“Special education professionals dealing with autism spectrum students will greatly appreciate this comprehensive, sensitive look at what life is like with the disorders. By getting into the minds and experiences of such children and teens, Ten Things Your Student with Autism Wishes You Knew proves an integral resource when drawing up viable lesson plans and properly meeting specific emotional needs. Parents and other loved ones struggling to understand ASD individuals will also benefit from picking up this revolutionary read.”

Read Chapter 3, “I Think Differently”

On the site, I found the list of most-hated names included the likes of Patricia, Ruth, Susan and Sandra. On the boys’ side were equally traditional monikers like Roger, Arthur, Jerry and Walter. While these names are not currently popular, did they really arouse such bald malice in parents who chose other names for their children? Parents give a child a name whittled from thousands of choices. How could a group of parents inflict something as potent as hatred on other parents’ choices?

As it turns out, there was no hatred at all behind this shameless SEO-grubbing headline. An editor’s note at the bottom of the article stated that “The names that appear above are not necessarily uncommon or universally disliked; they are simply the names that (our) members chose the most infrequently when asked to vote on their favorite names.”

Oh. The names are not universally disliked, just “most hated.” This easily qualifies as the new low in hate rhetoric. Take one of life’s most joyous—and personal—choices and apply the negative option. You didn’t choose it, therefore you must hate it.

It’s a cheap journalistic trick, but it’s hardly unusual these days. So, does one hyperbolic, misleading post in a universe of billions matter? I think it does, and here’s why.

Raise your hand if you have a child with autism in your life, a child who is a concrete thinker, for whom feelings and reactions are either black or white. Who struggles with identifying emotions in himself, who doesn’t yet understand the complexity of his emotions, let alone those of others, who grapples with understanding the concept of opposites. I raised one of those, and that is why I cannot turn a cheek to the flippant and ubiquitous manner in which our culture has come to use a word that should be reserved only for the deepest of ugly emotions. . .

Read the full article here.

We know the universe to be constantly expanding, and we’re all hostage to that ride, in degrees of willingness and comfort. Expansiveness, within your personal degree of willingness, is what these Somethings aspire to bring about. Any day of the year.

Come on over to my resolution-free Facebook Author page, read Ten Somethings for 2011, and join the discussion.

Click here to read.

And coming soon, Jelena’s translation of Ten Things Your Student with Autism Wishes You Knew.

Seven years after we left that preschool, I wrote a little thing called Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew. It grew into the kind of book every author would be honored and humbled to have been able to write. Those ten things spoke for the younger child my son was at the time, a child who was not able to speak for himself. He speaks for himself now, so my role is now to speak to him, not for him. Thus, a new “ten things.”

You’ll notice right away that these ten things don’t appear to be autism-specific. That’s because the older Bryce grew, the more his autism became only a part of him, a thinking and learning style, not a defining or even controlling characteristic. He would be the first to tell you that he autism has and always will impose challenges on his life. But he has also been blessed with grace and fortitude. He will live these ten things, and a few hundred more, long after his senior years is over…

Read the ten things on my Facebook page.

Excerpt:

Here’s a statement that demonstrates my remarkable grasp of the obvious: learning differences are very, very complex. So I continue to be amazed by the frequency with which I get questions (often from reporters) asking me to synthesize my son’s autism or some aspect of it down to “the single most important thing”–as if that was possible. Nevertheless, when recently asked, What is the single most important thing parents need to know about special education? I had an answer ready…

Read the full article here

Rare is the parent who has never wondered what their child will grow up to be. Rare I am not although I did postpone my wondering until my children were well into puberty. I might have postponed the wondering about Bryce longer – he was progressing nicely and I had faith in the process – but for a middle school teacher who volunteered the opinion that she could “see our friend Bryce doing well in a cubicle doing clearly delineated tasks exactly as he is told.” There’s nothing wrong with cubicle jobs, and they are just right for some people (see below). But Bryce was already interested in filmmaking, an outside-the-cubicle profession if ever there was one. The cubicle prophecy was only one of many factors that led us to Thomas Edison High School, the only high school in our state devoted exclusively on students with learning differences.

One of the cornerstones of Thomas Edison High School is their Transitions program, which kicks into high gear during the senior year. Transitions focuses on each student developing a plan for life after high school. All options are explored through field trips (colleges and employers), guest speakers, class instruction and hands-on experiences (all seniors enroll in community college and take an elective class and a “college survival” class). For some students, Transitions will take them down the SAT/college application path. Others will pursue community college and yet others will seek employment. (Edison’s graduate-to-college rate is 90%, far higher than the state or national average. In the hands of the right teachers and staff, learning differences are not “disabilities.”)

For Bryce, now entering his senior year, the Transitions process has begun. One of the first steps was his completion of the O*NET™ Interest Profiler.

What will your child grow up to be? The O*NET™ Interest Profiler is not a crystal ball, but rather an eerily accurate indicator of interest areas, and how those interests fall into six categories that suggest real-life jobs to which those interest can be gainfully applied. The profile consists of 180 activities to which you respond with “like” or “dislike” (not “can” or “can’t”). Your score will reflect your most cogent occupational interests. The six areas of interest are Realistic (practical, hands-on work, often outdoors), Investigative (thinking through problems, searching out facts), Artistic (jobs involving self-expression, forms, designs, patterns, often without a clear set of rules), Social (helping others with learning and personal development), Enterprising (project-oriented, especially business), and Conventional (jobs that follow set procedures, rules and standards, working with concrete data rather than concepts).

Now, many of us are sick to death of phony quizzes that attempt to sort a general population into half a dozen herds of general thinking. The Transition teachers at Edison knew some parents would be skeptical, so they encouraged us to complete the profile ourselves and see how accurately it gauged our own work interests.

Wow….

Read the full article here.