TACA Meeting – SOCIAL SKILLS

Presented by Autism Spectrum Consultants
This meeting will include a general opening lecture on social skills as it relates to autism. Then two groups will be formed: Group 1 will focus on younger (4 & under) and or non verbal children (all ages) about social skill development and strategies. Group 2 will focus on older (5 & up) and verbal children for social skills strategies and recommendations for emerging social development.

• Time: 1-4pm
• Location: Vineyard Newport Church
• Costs: FREE
• RSVP: Required: NO – just come own down!

“Autistic-Spectrum Disorders & Medical Treatments –
Presentation by Dr. Kurt Woeller - Successful Strategies for
Treating Your Child – One DAN! Doctor’s Perspective”

I will discuss the importance implementing a series of steps to help children biomedically, as well as discuss more in detail specifics to popular treatments, i.e. detoxification, Methyl-B12, testing considerations, pitfalls of treatment, etc

• Time: 1-4pm
• Location: Vineyard Newport Church
• Costs: FREE
• RSVP Required: NO – just come own down!

Autism One Conference Review

(Please do not contact the church for meeting details. They have graciously offered use of their facility, but are not affiliated with TACA.) And remember, we are still a non-faith based group!

Directions:
405 FWY South, Exit Bristol
Right on Bristol
Left on Baker
Go under FREEWAY.
The Vineyard Church is on the corner just after the freeway - turn left onto the freeway access road,
make FIRST right into the Vineyard's parking lot.

• Meets: Typically meets the 1st Sunday of each month
• Time: 7:00pm-9:00pm
• Location: Jumping Genius – 22750 Roscoe Blvd West Hills, CA
  (the corner of Roscoe Blvd & Fallbrook Ave)
• Info: Please contact Moira Giammetteo
  
  • May 7, 2006 - Starting the biomedical journey Presented by: Lisa Ackerman
    Biomedical treatments for autism spectrum disorders can be a confusing addition to traditional therapies. This seminar will cover:
    • Why you should consider biomedical treatments
    • How to start
    • What to look for
    • What is available as an option
    • How are these treatments paid for
    This seminar will be presented by a parent – not a doctor – in hopes of providing some suggestions and insight for other parents with children on the spectrum.

• Meets: 4th Tuesday evening
• Time: 6:30- 8:00 p.m.
• Info: Becky Estepp
• Location: NEW LOCATION AS OF April 2005:
  Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church
  17010 Pomerado Road, San Diego, CA 92128 - Rooms 22 A&B
• May 23-- Maria Genter – Marriage & Family Therapists- "Effective Communication Skills With Your Spouse" & "How to Support Neurotypical Siblings"
• June 27--Jaime Pineda, Ph.D. - "New Data On Neurofeedback And Autism"
• July 25--Laura Sylvester "Managing Your ASD Child's Records" and The Autism One Conference--an update from TACA members who attended"
• Aug--No meeting
• September 26 --Dr. Kurt Woeller "Supplements--What are they? What they do and how they can help your ASD child---A DAN doctor's perspective
• October 24, 2006 Starting the biomedical journey Presented by: Lisa Ackerman
  Biomedical treatments for autism spectrum disorders can be a confusing addition to traditional therapies. This seminar will cover:
  • Why you should consider biomedical treatments?
  • How to start?
  • What to look for?
  • What is available as an option?
  • How are these treatments paid for?

  This seminar will be presented by a parent – not a doctor – in hopes on providing some suggestions and insight for other parents with children on the spectrum.

• Meets: 3rd Saturday
• Time: 1:30–4:30 p.m.
• For more information, please contact NEW CONTACT TAMI DUNCAN
  

  Please note: TACA Corona has a NEW LOCATION as of January 2006. Meeting Location:  Peppermint Ridge - 825 Magnolia Avenue, Corona CA  92879

• Meets: 3rd Monday of each month
• Location: Whole Foods Market - 2655 Pacific Coast Hiway - Torrance (@ the Rolling Hills Shopping Center)
• Time: 6:30 - 9:00 p.m.
• Info: Please contact Beth Muholland
• Childcare: This is not offered at this time, sorry.
  • May 15, 2006 – Speaker to be announced
  • June 19, 2006 – Speaker to be announced
  • July 17, 2006 – Speaker to be announced

• Meets: 3rd Wednesday of month
• Time: 6 p.m. "Happy Hour" with GFCF snacks and coffee 6:30-8:30 p.m. Speaker
• Location: (Tulare County) Kaweah Delta Multi-Service Center Auditorium,
  402 W. Acequia, Visalia
• Information: Please contact Lynne Arnold
• Childcare: This is not offered at this time, sorry.
  • Saturday, May 20 TACA Spring Fling at Imagine U Children's Museum, 1-3 p.m.
    Free, but RSVP required. Please contact Lynne for more information
  • June 21 - Carline Banks, Low-Oxalate Diet
  • July 19 - Tim Adams, Esq., of Roberts & Adams, Special Education Attorney

• Meets: (typically) 2nd Tuesday of each month
• Location: Swain Center - 795 Farmers Lane, Suite 27
  Santa Rosa, CA
• Time: 7:00 - 8:30 p.m.
• For more info: Cathy Ference
• Childcare: This is not offered at this time, sorry.
  • May 9, 2006 – Occupational Therapy Presenter: Sarah Field, MA, OTR/L, and Director of Redwood Pediatric Therapy Assoc., Inc.
  • June 13, 2006 – Parent Chat – an open forum of discussion & support

Printed in Southwest Airlines Magazine:

How a group of determined parents did the impossible and helped form one of the leading autism research facilities in the country.  by Gary Delsohn

Chuck Gardner will never forget what his good friend Rick Rollens told him  after Gardner asked for advice about how to approach officials at the University of California, Davis, with his dream  of creating a world-class research and treatment center for autism.
“You’re wasting your time,” Rollens said during that 1996 conversation. “It’s never going to happen. I’ve worked with the UC  system, and it will never happen in our lifetime. It takes them 10 years to decide  whether to build a parking garage.”

Both men — Gardner, who is a business owner in Sacramento, and Rollens, then secretary of the California Senate — had young sons who have the often-debilitating brain malady known as autism. The two men and their wives had been everywhere searching for help. They were long past desperate for something, anything, that could provide hope or relief.

It’s a good thing Gardner didn’t take Rollens’ pessimism to heart. He says now  that he didn’t know better at the time. That four years of sleepless nights while he and his wife, Sarah, kept constant vigil over their son, Chas, a handsome boy with no verbal skills but an uncanny ability to hurt  himself and turn their household upside down, made him crazy enough to think even the impossible was possible.

With the help of another friend, Gardner got his meeting with officials at the UC Davis Medical Center, which is on the old State Fair grounds in Sacramento. Even though they established some ground rules that seemed impossible to meet — like come see us again when you’ve raised $5 million in private funds — Gardner remained  undeterred. As a result, the Medical Center  campus today boasts what experts say is the leading autism research facility in the  nation, if not the world.

It’s housed in a gorgeous 100,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art building that cost $42 million to build and is designed so thoughtfully that The Wall Street Journal wrote a separate story about its architeture. It ran under the sub headline “Can a Building Help Cure a Disease?” Officially open since 2003, just seven years after Gardner and Rollens first talked about the pipe dream of an idea, the center boasts a full-time staff of 260 and has already conducted several groundbreaking research
projects. The center’s most recent undertaking: an ambitious autism study that is expected to radically change how the dis- ease is diagnosed and treated. All because a small group of parents demanded action and took matters into their own hands when they weren’t satisfied with what they were getting.

The story of how Gardner, Rollens, and a small cadre of extraordinarily frustrated but determined Sacramento parents achieved their quixotic goal is almost as dramatic as the groundbreaking research being conducted at the facility. It’s called the M.I.N.D. Institute, for Medical Investigation of Neuro- developmental Disorders. Even the federal government says it represents the best hope anywhere for a cure and answers about how to prevent and treat this perplexing brain disorder. It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that autism was believed to be caused by so-called refrigerator mothers, too cold to properly nurture and develop their children. The common advice from doctors to parents was find a place to institutionalize your child. You’ll never reach him.

Now we at least know it’s a brain malady, that some children are born with it and others contract it somehow in their first few years of life, maybe by exposure to infant vaccines preserved with the mercury-based substance known as thimerosal. And there are treatments that help. Chas Gardner goes to a school for kids with autism that his father and two partners built and co-own. He’s learning independent living skills, such as how to order food at McDonald’s and motion toward things he wants. Just a few years ago, this was a disease believed to affect one in 10,000 kids. Now, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it afflicts as many as one in 166 children who have some degree of autism spectrum disorder. The CDC estimates that if 4 million children are born in the United States each year, about 24,000 will be diagnosed with autism. Because most of the known patients with autism are under the age of 18, many experts say this is a medical and social time bomb as these kids get older and become far more dependent on society at large to care for them.

“I would say that the M.I.N.D. Institute is really the hope for people with autism,” Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said in a recent interview. “What parents need most of all is hope for a breakthrough, and this is the place in the country that is totally committed to finding that breakthrough. It’s so impressive to learn that families got this facility started because they were so intent on trying to solve the problem with more research. They’ve created a place that is really a focal point of scientific effort, almost a Manhattan Project, to try to understand the reason for this disease, how to prevent it, and how to treat it better.”

Gardner, Rollens, and the four other men known as the center’s “Founding Fathers” know work at the M.I.N.D. Institute may come too late to make a dramatic impact on the lives of their sons, now young teenagers. One founder, trucking company owner Steve T. Beneto, has a son with autism in his 40s who has been living away from home in an around-the-clock care center for years. But the families remain fully engaged in the institute’s work, mission, and future. Gardner is running the center’s new fund-raising drive.

“You never know if something is going to come out of it that will help Chas,” Sarah Gardner, a Sacramento television news anchorwoman and Chuck’s wife, says with a sigh. “But we have so many friends who have kids with autism. No child or family should suffer like this. The reality is that every day that passes, Chas gets further away from a cure. But we’re going to continue to be unrealistic and think there’s something out there that will help him. We’re prepared to take that hope to our grave if that’s how it goes.”

The project started with Chuck Gardner’s frustration and his ability to network with other fathers who saw their families strain and creak under the intense pressure of having a child with autism. For some reason scientists don’t yet understand, autism is far more prevalent in boys than girls. Boys have it more than girls by a ratio of four-to-one.

For the most part, the moms of the boys were home dealing with their tantrums, trying to get them to eat, learn, sit still, and not harm themselves or their siblings while the dads were out scouring for help. “We’re dads,” Rollens has said many times. “When something goes wrong, we’re supposed to try and fix things.”

Gardner was stunned to learn that so-called experts at one clinic where autism was treated didn’t know what scientists at
another center were working on. They often didn’t even know about studies and facts Gardner and some of his friends who have children with autism had found on their own. Chas had been diagnosed at about 2 and was 4 when Gardner had his meeting with the university. At the time, he and his wife were very frustrated.

Even as a baby, Chas hated to be held. He didn’t talk or look directly at someone who was talking to him. Almost anything could set off wild, often violent tantrums. A few years ago, while Chuck was sitting on the fireplace mantel watching Chas, Chuck turned away and Chas stuck his leg into the burning fire. His pajamas ignited, and he suffered second-degree burns. When he eats, Chas likes to cram whatever he has in front of him into his mouth all at once because he craves the sensation of a full mouth, making his parents experts on the Heimlich maneuver. When his younger sister, Ginny, wants to have a friend over to play, the logistics can be nearly impossible.

“People say to us all the time, ‘Isn’t it time you found a place for him and had him institutionalized?’ ” Sarah says. “That’s all well and good. You try to pack his bags and put his favorite things in there.”

At a conference he attended, Chuck mentioned to Dr. Louis Vismara, a prominent (and now retired) Sacramento cardiologist whose now-13-year-old son Mark has autism, what the university officials had told him about the need to raise $5 million to have even a prayer of getting anything serious started at UC. Even then, all they promised was a couple of endowed professor’s chairs at the medical school, nothing like a full-blown center devoted primarily to autism.

Vismara had been practicing medicine in Sacramento for years, and he had quite a few wealthy patients. Among them was Angelo Tsakopoulos, a major California developer. Tsakopoulos, who still has a hard time with his own dyslexia, couldn’t get on board fast enough.

“The logic that we spend something like $10 billion to $12 billion a year to take care of people with autism and only $50 million a year to do research is mind-boggling to me,” Tsakopoulos says. “I told Lou at the time it’s like having a building with a roof that is leaking and you spend a ton of money on buckets when you need to fix the roof. To really learn about this disease and why it affects people as it does, we need to do the research.”

Tsakopoulos kicked in $500,000. So did Beneto. Vismara put in $250,000. Another Vismara patient, Claire Massey, and her family put in $1 million at the start and recently gave the institute another $1 million. Rollens used his influence in the Legislature to get a bill passed appropriating $2 million toward the establishment of a research center then called Project Hope. In 1999, then-Governor Gray Davis, who was taken with the story of Rollens’ struggles to find relief for his son, signed legislation appropriating $40 million to help build the facility. The Medical Center donated several acres of land and added more than $20 million to the pot. In 2003, the M.I.N.D. Institute, which also includes a 27,000-square-foot lab that is the envy of other departments at the Medical Center, was formally christened. It has an annual budget of $18.9 million, which includes $3.8 million from the state.

In addition to how it was created, the center is unique because it freely mixes clinical and research space under one roof with open, flowing design. The center has one main entrance where doctors, psychologists, researchers, and administrators all enter before going off to their individual work stations. Wide stairways invite conversation. The open layout allows occupants to see one another. The soothing earthtones and dramatic artwork commissioned from artists with autism make the center an inviting place. It’s a dramatic departure from the dingy, private clinics most of these parents had been accustomed to. Parents desperate for hope can literally see the promise of science being applied to their own children. Because it is part of the UC Davis Health System, which also has one of the leading veterinary medicine schools in the country, the M.I.N.D. Institute, which has more than 3,000 clinical research visits each year, is able to take advantage of the university’s vast array of resources. On one winter morning when a reporter was being shown around, researchers were in the lab dissecting monkey brains to learn what goes into a primate’s memory system during development.

“It’s kind of exciting for us because of the phenomenon of infantile amnesia,” Jeff Bennett, a lab manager, says as he sorts through some tissue slides. “We think there could be an interesting change that happens during development that can help shed light on some of these disorders.”

The most ambitious project undertaken at the M.I.N.D. Institute and arguably the most far-reaching autism study done anywhere is what’s known as the Autism Phenome Project. Institute officials describe it as a “longitudinal study that aims to distinguish among different subgroups (or phenotypes) of autism and will link these subgroups with distinct patterns of behavior and biological changes. Assessments include family history, environmental exposures, genomics, behavior, brain structure and function, immunology, as well as protein profiles.” The aim of the project is to finally differentiate between the different types of autism and how they are caused so diagnosis and treatment can be tailored to each individual.

“At the moment, any treatment that gets used — it gets used for all kids with autism,” says David G. Amaral, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the UC Davis School of Medicine and research director at the M.I.N.D. Institute. “Some kids respond well and some don’t, but we don’t know why. This is critical because when you have a developing child there is a window of opportunity when treatment is most valuable. You don’t want to guess. You want to get the best possible treatment at the best possible time.”

That particular window has likely closed for Chas, Mark Vismara, and Russell Rollens, who was on the cover of Newsweek in July 2000 for an article on what the magazine called “Mindblindness,” another name for the disorder. Chas’ parents admit they try not to let their minds wander to thoughts about who’ll care for Chas when they’re not around. They’re too busy with the day-to-day.

“We can cry and worry about the future when we’re older,” Sarah Gardner says. “We don’t allow ourselves to ever go over to any kind of dark side and just worry. We don’t have the time or luxury for that, and once you do, you may never find a way out. One thing I do know. Chas is not going to pass through this world without having an impact. He may not be the pro baseball player Chuck dreamed of when he was born, but because of his involvement and participation in this research, he’s going to have an impact. We will find a cure, and Chas will have played a role in that.”

Gary Delsohn was a reporter for the Sacramento Bee for 16 years.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi/20060503-051437-7367r.htm

May. 3, 2006

Legislation has been unveiled in the senate requiring recipients of federal research grants to post their information online.

The Federal Research Public Access Act, co-sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Tex., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., would require public access within six months to research sponsored by 11 federal agencies that provide at least $100 million in outside funding per year including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Homeland Security as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and the National Science Foundation, the Washington Post reports.

The proposed law comes out of an extended debate over whether the results of federally funded research should be free to the public. Proponents say the availability of the information will help other researchers build on scientific advances.

Opponents say that the peer review process used by scholarly journals is essential, difficult, and expensive and could not be supported by a business model where articles are given away for free.

Last year, the National Institutes of Health launched a program encouraging research grant recipients to make their findings public within a year of publication, but only percent of researchers actually did so.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060428/LOCAL0101/604280380/-1/ZONES04

April 28, 2006

Community Voices
By Julie Krasnow
April 28, 2006

The word "autism" has become a more common term recently, due in large part to the Autism Society of America reporting that autism now affects one in 166 children.

If you don't know someone with autism, you probably will someday. April is National Autism Awareness Month.

As the autism/behavior specialist for the Carmel Clay Schools, my job is to educate others about this disability. Without proper knowledge, many people afflicted with autism often are misunderstood.

I would like to share and resolve some misconceptions and myths to help raise awareness in our community.

Myth No. 1: Autism is caused by "refrigerator mothers."

Many years ago, Dr. Bruno Bettelheim claimed that autism had a psychological causation: that the mothers of these children, intentionally or otherwise, did not love their children. The term "refrigerator mother" was born, referring to the fact that the mother was cold toward her child.

Today we know that autism is a bioneurological disorder that affects the functioning of the brain. Some theories suggest that it may be genetic, viral or caused by chemical exposure.

Myth No. 2: Autistic children show no emotion.

A common misconception is that children with autism are unloving and do not have any emotional feelings.

On the surface, this may seem to be the case because they don't always express their emotions in a way that you and I recognize. But for those of us who know a child with autism, we are aware of the ways that they show love and affection.

Myth No. 3: Children just need a good spanking

We've all been out to a grocery store or running errands when we come across a child throwing a temper tantrum, including screaming, throwing and hitting. We may wonder why parents are letting their child do this without any discipline or reprimands.

If this is a child with autism, he most likely has lost control because of sensory overload. The sounds and visual stimulation and the overwhelming crowds are just too much for this child to take in, which results in a meltdown. Parents are unrightfully blamed for not disciplining their children.

Myth No. 4: You're born with autism.

On average, autism is diagnosed at 44 months of age.

Myth No. 5: Vaccines do not cause autism.

The jury is still out on this one. Although a recent Institute of Medicine report appears to refute an association between vaccines and autism, the major autism organizations all agree that more research needs to be conducted.

A recent study suggests that children receiving vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal are many times more likely to develop autism than those who receive thimerosal-free vaccines.

Myth No. 6: Dustin Hoffman's character in "Rain Man" is typical of a person with autism.

The character in "Rain Man" was a high-functioning person with autism and also was a savant. In reality, only 2 percent of those diagnosed exhibit such savant capabilities.

Myth No. 7: The increase in the rate of autism is due to better diagnosing.

Ten years ago, the rate of autism was 1 in 10,000 births. Today it is 1 in 166. This is a 5,000 percent increase in 10 years. If this astonishing increase is due to better diagnosing, where are the thousands of autistic adults who should have received a diagnosis 10, 20 or 30 years ago?

Myth No. 8: Autism is a rare disorder.

With 1 in 166 children being diagnosed with autism, it can no longer be called rare. We have an epidemic on our hands. Every 16 minutes, another child is diagnosed with autism.

For all of us who have had the privilege of knowing, loving or working with a child with autism, we are able to see their abilities through the disability and appreciate the child within. I am pleased to report to the community that my Carmel Clay colleagues and I are working very hard to provide the best education we can for students who have been diagnosed with autism.

If you would like more information, please e-mail jkrasnow@ccs.k12.in.us or call (317) 846-3086, ext. 1247.

To write an installment, please contact us at carmelam@indystar.com or (317) 444-2600.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi/20060426-034059-2361r.htm

Apr. 26, 2006

The U.S. book "Understanding Autism: From Basic Neuroscience to Treatment" estimates it costs $3.2 million to take care of an autistic person over a lifetime.

Caring for all people with autism over their lifetimes costs an estimated $35 billion per year, says Michael Ganz, assistant professor of society, human development and health at Harvard School of Public Health, who authored the study, which appears in a chapter of the book.

Ganz's analysis of the costs includes direct and indirect medical costs associated with the disorder. But he said the $35 billion annual societal cost for caring for and treating people with autism likely underestimates the true costs because there are a number of other services that are used to support individuals with autism, such as alternative therapies and other family out-of-pocket expenses that are difficult to measure.

Ganz estimates that annual indirect costs for autistic individuals and their parents range from more than $39,000 to nearly $130,000.

"I hope that my research can help focus more attention on directing more resources toward finding prevention and treatment options for autism," Ganz said.

By Ellen Notbohm
South Florida Parenting

Some days it seems the only predictable thing about it is the unpredictability. The only consistent attribute, the inconsistency. There is little argument on any level but that autism is baffling, even to those who spend their lives around it.

The child who lives with autism may look "normal," but his or her behavior can be perplexing and downright difficult. Today, the citadel of autism, once thought an "incurable" disorder, is cracking around the foundation. Every day, individuals with autism show us they can overcome, compensate for, and otherwise manage many of the condition's most challenging aspects. Equipping those around our children with a simple understanding of autism's most basic elements has a tremendous effect on the children's journey towards productive, independent adulthood. Autism is an extremely complex disorder, but we can distill it to three critical components: sensory processing difficulties, speech/language delays and impairments, and whole child/social interaction issues.

Here are 10 things every child with autism wishes you knew.

1. I am a child with autism. I am not "autistic." My autism is one aspect of my total character. It does not define me as a person. Are you a person with thoughts, feelings and many talents, or are you just fat (overweight), myopic (wear glasses) or klutzy (uncoordinated, not good at sports)?

2. My sensory perceptions are disordered. This means the ordinary sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches of everyday life that you may not even notice can be downright painful for me. The very environment in which I have to live often seems hostile. I may appear withdrawn or belligerent to you, but I am really just trying to defend myself. A "simple" trip to the grocery store may be hell for me. My hearing may be hyperacute. Dozens of people are talking at once. The loudspeaker booms today's special. Muzak whines from the sound system. Cash registers beep and cough. A coffee grinder is chugging. The meat cutter screeches, babies wail, carts creak, the fluorescent lighting hums. My brain can't filter all the input, and I'm in overload! My sense of smell may be highly sensitive. The fish at the meat counter isn't quite fresh, the guy standing next to us hasn't showered today, the deli is handing out sausage samples, the baby in line ahead of us has a poopy diaper, they're mopping up pickles on Aisle 3 with ammonia. ... I can't sort it all out, I'm too nauseous.

Because I am visually oriented, this may be my first sense to become overstimulated. The fluorescent light is too bright. It makes the room pulsate and hurts my eyes. Sometimes the pulsating light bounces off everything and distorts what I am seeing. The space seems to be constantly changing. There's glare from windows, moving fans on the ceiling, so many bodies in constant motion, too many items for me to be able to focus - and I may compensate with tunnel vision. All this affects my vestibular sense, and now I can't even tell where my body is in space. I may stumble, bump into things, or simply lay down to try and regroup.

3. Please remember to distinguish between won't (I choose not to) and can't (I'm not able to). Receptive and expressive language are both difficult for me. It isn't that I don't listen to instructions. It's that I can't understand you. When you call to me from across the room, this is what I hear: "*&^%$#@, Billy. #$%^*&^%$&*" Instead, come speak directly to me in plain words: "Please put your book in your desk, Billy. It's time to go to lunch." This tells me what you want me to do and what is going to happen next. Now it's much easier for me to comply.

4. I am a concrete thinker. I interpret language literally. It's very confusing for me when you say, "Hold your horses, cowboy!" when what you really mean is "Please stop running." Don't tell me something is a "piece of cake" when there is no dessert in sight and what you really mean is, "This will be easy for you to do." When you say, "It's pouring cats and dogs," I see pets coming out of a pitcher. Please just tell me, "It's raining very hard." Idioms, puns, nuances, double entendres and sarcasm are lost on me.

5. Be patient with my limited vocabulary. It's hard for me to tell you what I need when I don't know the words to describe my feelings. I may be hungry, frustrated, frightened or confused, but right now those words are beyond my ability to express. Be alert for body language, withdrawal, agitation, or other signs that something is wrong.

There's a flip side to this: I may sound like a little professor or a movie star, rattling off words or whole scripts well beyond my developmental age. These are messages I have memorized from the world around me to compensate for my language deficits, because I know I am expected to respond when spoken to. They may come from books, television or the speech of other people. It's called echolalia. I don't necessarily understand the context or the terminology I'm using, I just know it gets me off the hook for coming up with a reply.

6. Because language is so difficult for me, I am very visually oriented. Show me how to do something rather than just telling me. And please be prepared to show me many times. Lots of patient repetition helps me learn.

A visual schedule is extremely helpful as I move through my day. Like your day planner, it relieves me of the stress of having to remember what comes next, makes for smooth transitions between activities, and helps me manage my time and meet your expectations. Here's a great web site for learning more about visual schedules http://www.cesa7.k12.wi.us/newweb/content/rsn/autism.asp

7. Focus and build on what I can do rather than what I can't do. Like any other human, I can't learn in an environment where I'm constantly made to feel that I'm not good enough or that I need fixing. Trying anything new when I am almost sure to be met with criticism, however constructive, becomes something to be avoided. Look for my strengths and you'll find them. There's more than one right way to do most things.

8. Help me with social interactions. It may look like I don't want to play with the other kids on the playground, but sometimes it's just that I simply don't know how to start a conversation or enter a play situation. If you can encourage other children to invite me to join them at kickball or shooting baskets, I may be delighted to be included.

9. Try to identify what triggers my meltdowns. This is termed "the antecedent." Meltdowns, blowups, tantrums or whatever you want to call them are even more horrid for me than they are for you. They occur because one or more of my senses has gone into overload. If you can figure out why my meltdowns occur, they can be prevented.

10. If you are a family member, please love me unconditionally. Banish thoughts such as, "If he would just ..." and "Why can't she ... ?" You didn't fulfill every last expectation your parents had for you, and you wouldn't like being constantly reminded of it. I didn't choose to have autism. Remember that it's happening to me, not you. Without your support, my chances of successful, self-reliant adulthood are slim. With your support and guidance, the possibilities are broader than you might think. I promise you I'm worth it.

It all comes down to three words: Patience. Patience. Patience.

Work to view my autism as a different ability rather than a disability. Look past what you may see as limitations and see the gifts autism has given me. I may not be good at eye contact or conversation, but have you noticed I don't lie, cheat at games, tattle on my classmates, or pass judgment on other people?

You are my foundation. Think through some of those societal rules, and if they don't make sense for me, let them go. Be my advocate, be my friend, and we'll see just how far I can go.

I probably won't be the next Michael Jordan, but with my attention to fine detail and capacity f