New autism journal seeking submissions

Hyperlexia: A Literary Journal Celebrating the Autistic Spectrum is looking for your fiction, poetry, and personal essays. The inaugural issue is planned for October.

Hyperlexia is interested in honest, thoughtful, well-written poetry and prose about being autistic and loving someone with autism. The editors are looking for genuine and truthful writing about autism. Our journal is a celebration of real life with autism, both the good and the bad. You can be serious, sad, or funny. The editors believe in respecting the diversity of the human mind and discriminatory writing or hatred of any kind will not be published.

• Submissions should be 1500 words or less

• Send submissions inside the body of the email, as well as attached as a Word doc, to  submissions@hyperlexiajournal.com  Deadline for submissions is August 31st.

Hyperlexia is the brainchild of some of my autism-mom/writer friends here in Portland. So many of you have sent me your poetry and essays, I hope you will take the opportunity to submit your best work for publication.

Hyperlexia will be published at www.hyperlexiajournal.com

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Daily Life: At the Movies

Summer is traditionally a time of increased movie attendance, and in our house that goes double. Bryce ranks as the top film aficionado in our family, with a DVD collection of close to 200 titles, and a “wish list” just as long.  He completed the two-week Teen Media Arts Academy at the NW Film Center in June and is now attending a four-week program under Project Youth Doc and Film Action Oregon. 

Bryce’s pick for the summer’s best movie (so far): The Dark Knight.

Over the years, Bryce has learned a great deal about language through his keen interest in film.  Not all of it good...ahem... Even so, watching movies at home is a gold mine of opportunities to teach social communication in a fun and engaging way. Watch old favorites with your child and have him look for:

• different ways characters greet each other: casually, formally, with a handshake, with a rude remark
• different ways characters start a conversation: greeting, interrupting, asking a question, asking for information, invitation to an activity
• how characters use gestures like nodding, winking, waving
• how characters using body language to convey feelings: cringing/fear, crying/hurt, smiling/happy, hugs/love.
• how characters use rejoinders and interjections during conversations to indicate interest, disinterest, agreement, disagreement (“Really!” “Who cares?” “You don’t say!” “Whatever...”)
• how characters use appropriate or inappropriate tone of voice or volume
• how characters use similes, metaphors, sarcasm, idioms (older child)

Dribble this kind of learning out casually, kind of like sneaking peas into the meatloaf. Or, if your child is amenable, occasionally make it into a game where you watch the movie and keep score to see how many instances you can identify. Just don’t overdose on teaching; movies need to remain primarily fun.

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On my Soapbox: Please read this book

I don’t have typical summer reading on my nightstand. No mysteries, thrillers or romances. But the book I am reading now is terribly intriguing.  It’s Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, and how fondly I wish everyone would read it. Actually, Pollan (author of 2006’s The Ominvore’s Dilemma) makes four or five piercing points in just the introduction to the book. So if you are seriously time-challenged, at least read the intro. It will rock your world in terms of what our “Western diet” has done to our bodies as well as our culture. I’ve included a link to the intro, below.

Excerpt: “...most of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it -- in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone -- is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming ‘edible foodlike substances’ -- no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is ... (a) paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.”

For these reasons, and many  more, it’s long been a fiercely held belief of mine that food has profound effect on our children’s health and that our first clue is often behavior. In my talks, as in my books, I always urge consideration of a child’s diet as a possible behavior trigger. A simple two-week elimination diet is a non-invasive, no-cost method of attempting to identify the source of some troubling symptoms.  At one such talk, a doctor took vehement exception to this assertion. The email was waiting before I even got back to the hotel. “There is not a shred of evidence that food sensitivities play a role in autism. If you do wish to persist in mentioning that, you should qualify your remarks by emphasizing that this is solely your experience and that scientific evidence is lacking (to say the least) to support your anecdotal evidence.”

Well, being the big brat that I am, that remark only made me want to talk about it more. I shared the statement with a number of parents and, oh dear, the firestorm that ensued! The results of gluten-free, casein-free diets was just the beginning; parents and teachers told “anecdotal” tales of  marked changes in behavior from eliminating sugar, corn syrup sweeteners, citrus, eggs, food dyes, preservatives. And teachers are always quick to report gaps in attention and learning between the kids who eat  real food for breakfast and the kids who either don’t eat breakfast, or eat one loaded with sugars and processed  carbohydrates.

The long and short of is, as I replied to the doctor, is that science is a great and powerful good but alas, it does not yet provide us with all the answers. I don’t know how many scientists and doctors and are also raising children with autism in their homes, but the parents who are know all too well the chronic bone-weariness and crushing desperation that come at 8:00 pm when your child is engaged in his fourth full-strength meltdown of the day (and the 23^rd that week). At that point, you do not care whether the answer comes from science, anecdote, divine intervention or voodoo. The science is the science of Whatever Works to Make Us Healthy and Safe. When Whatever Works for a large number of people is a no-risk, non-invasive, low cost suggestion – a suggestion being something to consider individually for each individual child -- it is beside the point whether science has yet accurately measured it. “Anecdotes” are the real-life experiences of thousands of real-life parents. There is no one solution that is right for all kids. Dietary manipulation is but one of a menu of considerations I offer parents in the course of my talks and books.

When I speak to you, whether through this newsletter, books, conferences or one-on-one, I speak as a parent, not a scientist. The cornerstone of what I convey to parents is that their child with autism is, like they themselves, a whole person, not a packet of symptoms or missing pieces to be parted out and “fixed.” Every single action or particle of that child’s existence cannot be written off to autism; typical development in many areas takes place concurrent with autism. It’s such a fine line for parents have to walk! That’s why we are so very grateful to our doctors and scientists being our partners in the journey. All play a part in solving the complex equation that is autism. But until we do, curiosity about that which has not yet been proven is our most potent weapon, and “anecdotes” are as good a place as any to start. 

Read the intro to Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food at www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php (scroll about halfway down to get to PDF link.)

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This month’s Reads

Autism Asperger’s Digest

Right on the Money
Postcards from the Road Less Traveled, Autism Asperger’s Digest
July-August 2008

Excerpt:

Having been involuntarily conscripted into the world of autism well over a decade ago, I’ve had the opportunity to observe many things that have changed monumentally and many things that need to change but have remained stubbornly static...

Among parents, teachers and other grassroots groups with whom I interact, two subjects are becoming increasingly prevalent. The first concerns groups wanting to do fundraisers for autism awareness, research, education or services. They ask which organizations might be worthy recipients of their contributions. Where will their dollars do the most good?

The second group is often a subset of the first group. They are the deeply frustrated and sometimes desperate parents whose child has been flagged as an autism “possible,” but doctors and services in their area are so scarce that the wait for a diagnostic appointment can be six months or more. And they may still be the lucky ones...

These two subjects are as one in my mind. That is why groups who venture to ask me how their dollars might be best spent get a grassroots answer: reach out to your own community...

Autism Asperger’s Digest
Two-time MarCom Gold Award winner
Two-time NAPPA Parenting Resources Gold Award winner

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Ancestry

With Both Feet on the Ground
July-August 2008

The irreplaceable sense of “being there” comes only when you walk the actual landscape of your ancestor’s lives.

Excerpt:

I have never liked the term “shirttail relative.” However unintentionally, it consigns some very interesting people to afterthought status. How many opportunities for information and illumination are lost to this dismissive epithet and its laundry overtones? You never know when a “shirttail” will turn out to be someone quite significant— someone I call a heartstring relative.

This story is about one of my heartstring relatives and the remarkable journey on which he called me. He wasn’t even a “real” relative...

Read more here.

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The Autism Expert Report

Journey to Independence
TransParent Thoughts
August 2008

This is the inaugural issue of a new publication from Autism Today offering a monthly compilation of advice, tips, strategies and ideas about topics of vital interest to anyone whose life is affected by autism.  Topic areas covered include parenting, diet, fitness, interventions, music therapy, social communication, education and self-advocacy from a roster of well-known autism authors.

More information at www.autismtoday.com/inner-circle.html

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Sydney’s Child, Melbourne’s Child, Brisbane’s Child,
Perth’s Child, Canberra’s Child, Adelaide’s Child

The Social Side of Autism: the importance of teaching social and emotional skills
July 2008

Contact Ellen or Copeland Publishing for copies of this article

Excerpt:

A child was born just the other day.
He came into the world in the usual way...

So begins Cats in the Cradle,  Harry Chapin’s 1974 anthem to parental indifference. The song shook legions of parents out of complacency and back to an awareness of how our children see us and the opportunities missed in letting life whiz by in a blur of work -- the missed (and later lamented) moments of joy in something as small as sharing a game of catch.

For parents of children with autism, such indifference will not be an option.

It’s all but a certainty that before a child receives services related to his autism through the public school system, he will subject to a barrage of evaluations that will include a test of his IQ (intelligence quotient). Or more accurately put: a test of cognitive and verbal intelligence quotient that will not be standardized to the type of language deficits common to autism. Therefore, many parents will find the results to be a wildly inaccurate reflection of the actual abilities their child demonstrates in “real life.”

This is only the beginning ...

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Healing

Three Little Words
Healing, Spring-Summer 2008 

Excerpt: 

“I was wrong.” So many people find it terribly difficult to say these three little words, and yet nothing is more loving than giving your children the gift of being content with their own humanity. By freely admitting when you are wrong, you are you are modeling strength, grace and humility... that, not only will the world not come to an end with such an admission, but that trying again and/or making amends can feel great. 

“Just be yourself.” As children grow older, they mingle with more and different kinds of families, and they begin to be able to place themselves in the context of the larger world. My kids heard “just be yourself”  enough to ultimately learn that, whatever their doubts about themselves and their various limitations, they have the power to decide whether to be their own best friend or their own worst enemy. That’s a power no super-hero can touch...

You can now download the entire issue here as a PDF.