Educate Yourself About Autism Before You Make Snap Judgements

People really need to educate themselves on the characteristics of autism, especially if they are a vice principal of a school. 

Yes, my son has dyed his hair red. Yes, my son "talks to himself". Yes, my son isolates himself from others. Yes, my son does not look you in the eye, especially if he does not know you. 

No, this does not mean that my son dyed his hair red because he heard about the Aurora, CO shooter who dyed his hair the same exact color red as the Joker's and went to a movie theater to shoot up the attendees of "Batman: The Dark Night". No, this does not mean that my son has turned schizophrenic and hears "voices" in his head and is answering to them. No, this does not mean that my son is contemplating any deviant behavior by withdrawing from the general population of high school students. 

My son is "stimming", a very common characteristic of autistic children. His form of stimming involves an internal movie in his head that he has memorized and he verbalizes each scene, word by word, often acting out what he has seen. And about the hair color? He started with blue, being his favorite color, but then moved on to green, orange, and now red. Colors based on his mood or even just the season (green at St. Patrick's, orange at Halloween). Who knows why he chose red, but it sure wasn't because of the Joker in the Batman movie (by the way, he's never even seen that movie nor has heard of the Aurora movie theater shooting).

So when we got called by the school psychologist to come in for a meeting regarding the above (and regarding yesterday's post as well), we were quite concerned. Luckily, the psychologist has known my son and has been his case worker since he was 2 1/2 and in the special preschool for developmentally delayed kids here. She told us of the vice principal's concerns, clearly embarrassed over having to share them with us and very apologetic. She stood up for my son and totally explained  to the VP how he is a gentle, innocent, and naive soul who has no malicious intent with regards to planning a form of school violence. We thanked her for standing up for our son and for reassuring us that she is on our side (and gently encouraged us to gently encourage our son to choose his next hair color with discretion).

But a day later. You know what? I'm pissed. How dare that VP jump to snap judgements over a 15 year old boy just because of his hair color and behaviors. My son! My sweet, loving, funny, and brilliant son who happens to be on the autistic spectrum. Please, people, especially if you are school personnel, please educate yourself about autism before you make such snap judgements.

Thank you.

Lowering That Bar Again

I've mentioned this before a while ago in a previous post......you know when you have a baby and you can see his/her future a certain way for them....you set your bar high and have all these expectations for them....college graduate, marriage, family, great job....then you find out he has a disability. You have to lower that bar a little bit and revamp your expectations. Maybe he won't be a doctor or scientist, and may not get that PhD. But he'll still do fine, right? Then a few more years go by and test scores indicate he doesn't have as high of an IQ as a typical child and you get a diagnosis: autism.  So you lower the bar again; lower your expectations. How many times can you lower that bar? Lower your expectations? So you hope for high school graduation, maybe some vocational school or general degree in college, and a good job--hope for marriage and grandkids someday. Year after year you come to the conclusions that none of your hopes and dreams for your child can ever come true. It breaks your heart each time you have to lower that bar. Now it is to the point where the child will graduate, but will no longer be in the academic classes that lead toward a college path. Now the best thing you can hope for is the career path. Forget Algebra, forget Trigonometry. Forget three years of the typical sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology. Put in their place "functional" math and "general" science. And the words that are hard to hear, "Basic Living Skills." The bar gets lowered. Now all to hope for is your child being as independent as possible. To live on his own and take care of himself with help, if needed. Maybe he'll never be the kindergarten teacher that he always wanted to be, but now will only be a classroom assistant. And forget about him being a veterinarian, but maybe he can clean cages at the local shelter. And if all else fails, maybe he can bag groceries at the local supermarket. And forget about those grandkids. But on the bright side, maybe he will be less anxious and stressed out, most definitely happier with regard to school work. But once he finds out that he's in the "remedial" classes, he'll get really upset and I don't know what I'll do if that happens. I don't want to disappoint my child and shatter his dreams. How do I help him to reach his full potential and be incredibly happy in life?

Finding the Energy to Give More

When your child is born you have such high hopes and dreams for him. You imagine him growing up healthy and happy, enjoying youth to its fullest. Then you imagine him attending a good college and studying a field they love. Of course, he'll find a wonderful job, get married to a lovely girl, and start a family. You imagine family vacations with fun and laughter. You imagine all the best things in life for him.

Then you hear the words "developmentally delayed" and "speech impediment." A little time goes by and more testing and you hear the words "autism spectrum" and "ADHD." Later, through more testing, you hear "learning disabilities." Your dreams for your child change. You begin to question whether an academic environment is right for your child or not. Maybe he'll be able to attend a trade school or community college someday. Maybe he won't have a fantastic career but he'll be a productive citizen. And finding a wife and starting a family suddenly gets taken off the table. The years go by--you hope that he'll just graduate high school and be able to live out on his own. Maybe he will get disability to help cover living expenses since he can only hold a part time job. On bad days, when all thoughts turn dark, you hope for a group home--anything besides him living at home for the rest of our lives and having a home after you die.

There is a grieving process that occurs when you learn your child is disabled. You mourn for the child that will never grow up to be what you originally dreamed he could be. You feel sorry for yourself and ask, "Why me?" and think of what you should have done differently--maybe if I ate better or exercised more when pregnant. Maybe earlier intervention and diagnosis would have helped. If only I would have pushed for more frequent therapy sessions. Maybe I should home school him and keep him protected from bullies and hardships and awkward social situations.

Today is just one of those difficult days when all these thoughts come to mind and I wonder if I'm doing everything I can to help my son. Sometimes, it really doesn't feel like enough.

Parenting an Autistic Child

I was doing some reading last week at work (of course after all my jobs were finished). I usually don't read Reader's Digest, but it was available and sometimes the jokes are pretty funny. In this edition was an article called "My Daughter, Myself" where a woman, Sallie Tisdale, talks about how it feels to care for a disabled child. I found some of the things she wrote relatable to my own situation.

Some of what I read was disheartening, some other was a kick in the butt:

"Ambivalence is a normal state for me. It is hard to articulate what I seem to have lost, because it is something I never had. Annie was never going to go to law school--we knew that. Eventually we knew she was not even going to drive a car. What I miss is something vague and dreamy about a daughter growing up. I have fantasies of high school girls giggling in a bedroom behind a closed door, of long phone calls. I feel grief for the past, for all that there was none of, and grief for the future, for what there may be none of yet to come. Every parent loses a child, several children, as each successive child passes into the next--the chrysalis of the infant becomes the toddler, the toddler gives way to the child, and the child to the youth, and finally the adult. This is one element of being a parent, of being alive, though there is an enduring sorrow in realizing not that the child has died but that the adult anticipated will never be born.

"I feel sad and sorry for myself or pissed off, and then I feel petty because I'm sad and sorry for myself, because I'm complaining when things could be so much worse. She's not aggressive or incontinent. She can walk and make herself a sandwich and sleep through the night. And we're lucky, because as late as it was in coming and as vague as it is in explaining things, we did eventually get a diagnosis.

"Long-term studies of people with autism are not reassuring. Very few go to college, are employed, or lead independent lives. The supports of school are remove, and nothing takes their place.

"Don't ever say to her, and don't say to yourself, that there is any tragedy in who she is. She is what she is."

The First Study Flawed

Whether or not you believe that autism can be linked to the MMR vaccines given at age 1-2, you need to read these articles. The original 1998 study has been under fire for a while now and I've been following the results. Seems that it was flawed after all, as I guessed. Too many children with autism had developmental problems before any vaccines were given. Mine included.

Here is an article posted on Yahoo's news page:

Study Linking Vaccine to Autism was Flawed

And here's another that was posted on my husband's cousin's husband's facebook page:

How the Case Against the MMR Vaccine Was Fixed

The paper was originally published February 1998. It was retracted 12 years later. My son was born in 1998 but I didn't hear about the case for the MMR vaccine causing autism until we suspected he was on the spectrum when he was about 4 years old. The paper sure caused an uproar but I believed that any link between the vaccine and autism was not all that there was. My son showed developmental delays and problems by the time he was one year old. Therapists began coming to our house when he was 15 months old. After all, early intervention is the key to success.

My family seems to have a strong genetic link to autism spectrum disorders, but it has only been an issue in the last generation. I believe it is something in our generation since it is 3/4 women roughly the same age with kids born near the same time. Was it something we did/did not do as children? Was it something our kids did/did not do? My cousin firmly believes it was the vaccines for her son but our other two boys showed symptoms before their vaccines (I don't know about our other cousin's daughter). I believe that our kids are extra sensitive to toxins out there in the world right now, whether it be vaccines, pollutants, or pesticides (for example).

The second article above shows what the doctors with anti-vaccine agendas did in order to gain fame and fortune. It does state that there is a difference between "regressive autism" such as a child that reached every milestone until around 2 years of age when they suddenly lost their skills and "classical autism" where a child has symptoms of autism from birth. They briefly mention other kinds of autism such as PDD-NOS or Asperger's where a child reaches milestones at a normal rate but has autistic traits that impact their learning and socialization throughout life.

In summary, the article states:

How the link was fixed

The Lancet paper was a case series of 12 child patients; it reported a proposed “new syndrome” of enterocolitis and regressive autism and associated this with MMR as an “apparent precipitating event.” But in fact:

• Three of nine children reported with regressive autism did not have autism diagnosed at all. Only one child clearly had regressive autism

• Despite the paper claiming that all 12 children were “previously normal,” five had documented pre-existing developmental concerns

• Some children were reported to have experienced first behavioural symptoms within days of MMR, but the records documented these as starting some months after vaccination

• In nine cases, unremarkable colonic histopathology results—noting no or minimal fluctuations in inflammatory cell populations—were changed after a medical school “research review” to “non-specific colitis”

• The parents of eight children were reported as blaming MMR, but 11 families made this allegation at the hospital. The exclusion of three allegations—all giving times to onset of problems in months—helped to create the appearance of a 14 day temporal link

• Patients were recruited through anti-MMR campaigners, and the study was commissioned and funded for planned litigation

Albuquerque Conference, Part 2

This post is a continuation of the previous one. I just wanted to break them up into two parts because of length. As I mentioned in my previous post, the second speaker at the Autism/Asperger's Syndrome conference in Albuquerque was Sean Barron, who has written a couple of books, most recently "The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships" with Dr. Temple Grandin. Mr. Barron is a news journalist in Ohio, probably in his 40's.

Mr. Barron began his talk by describing his life. He talked about how he was seemingly normal at birth, but became increasingly difficult and angry while unable to communicate. His parents were told then (in the 1970's) that they should institutionalize him but they chose instead to work with him and provide him with therapies and interactions with peers in the public school system. He was often teased and bullied as a kid because of his autism and inability to socialize. Mr. Barron describes how at around age 16 his family moved to California and that being in a new environment helped him to get away from the bullies and begin to understand his own autism. He took it upon himself to learn the social rules and taught himself how to interact with others. He said that by his early twenties, he had "healed" himself from autism, but didn't consider himself completely recovered. 

The second part of his talk was about his most recent book, "The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships" that he wrote with Dr. Temple Grandin. In this section he describes how difficult it is for autistic people to interact socially with neuro-typical people because they don't know the "unspoken rules" of socialization such as turn-taking, eye contact, body language, and to not speak everything that comes into your mind because it may be inappropriate.

He discusses each rule independently, but I think they were pretty self-explanatory so I will list them here.  Of course, the book goes into much greater detail and with Dr. Grandin's perspective as well.

1. Rules are not absolute. They are situation-based and people-based.
2. Not everything is equally important in the grand scheme of things.
3. Everyone makes mistakes. It doesn't have to ruin your day.
4. Honesty is different than diplomacy.
5. Being polite is appropriate in any situation.
6. Not everyone who is nice to me is my friend.
7. People act differently in public than they do in private.
8. Know when you're turning people off.
9. "Fitting in" is often tied to looking and sounding like you fit in.
10. People are responsible for their own behaviors.

What I found interesting is that both Dr. Grandin and Mr. Barron talked about how important manners and being polite are and that no matter if a person has autism, they still need to be accountable for their own behaviors. I also liked how Mr. Barron talked about fitting in--that autistic people need to learn how neurotypical people behave and that they can imitate those behaviors to get along in society better. Even though those skills don't come naturally, they can be learned. One of the unwritten rules, knowing when you're turning people off, is very important because a person on the autism spectrum can talk nonstop about their special interest (like video games or Pokemon) and has no conversational reciprocity. Not everyone enjoys hearing about computers (for example) nonstop and it is important that a person on the spectrum learns how to interpret those unspoken cues from the person they're talking with.

All in all, the conference was great and I'm glad that my school district paid for me to go. Now I've got a few books to read that I'll add to my constantly-growing pile!

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Neat

Albuquerque Conference, Part 1

I mentioned in my lat blog that I would be attending a conference in Albuquerque. It was presented by Future Horizons, Inc. and was titled, "A Very Important Super Conference on Autism/Asperger's Syndrome." Pretty lame title, but great speakers.  

The first speaker was Dr. Temple Grandin, a famous woman on the autism spectrum who has written many books such as, "Emergence: Labeled Autistic" and her newest book, "The Way I see it: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's" (also the title of her talk and a book I bought there). She talked about autism as being a variable spectrum and discussed many aspects of the disorder. She stressed how important it is to teach kids on the spectrum how to take turns and how to interact with them, but to be gently insistent because many of the kids have sensory issues related to sound and touch so might pull back. She talked about her 1950's upbringing and how manners and grooming were drilled into her and that today's families don't place such importance on them. She said that manners will help an autistic person get farther in life because people can overlook the oddities if they see that you are polite and present yourself well. She also said how important it is to teach the rules of society and courtesy by giving example after example of situations. She interjected many humorous comments, which were very clever.

"Fear is the main emotion in Autism"  --  Dr. Temple Grandin

Dr. Grandin talked about the underlying anxiety in autistc people and how to help them overcome it. She was very forthcoming about needing to take an anti-anxiety medication so that she could function in life. She talked about many of the medications used today but stressed how important it was to try to make changes in diet and exercise before trying to treat with medications. She said homeopathic methods can help, and studies are out that say that Omega 3's can improve the symptoms as well.

Dr. Grandin's talk was also about different kind of autistics: the visual thinker (thinking in pictures like she does), the math and music thinker (those computer geeks), and verbal thinkers (that think in words).  She said that it is important to identify what kind of thinker you have so that you can start to build on their talents and guide them on a career path. Of course, this was more geared for Asperger's and High Functioning Autistic kids. She states that by age 10, you should be able to identify thinking styles and can start to guide kids in the right direction. Getting a mentor involved is ideal.

Jobs for visual thinkers include: graphic artist, drafting, auto mechanic, photographer, animal trainer, architect, and handcrafts. Jobs for music and math thinkers include: math teacher, scientific researcher, music teacher, computer programmer, chemist, engineer, or electronics technician. Jobs for verbal thinkers include: journalist, translator, librarian, copy editor, accountant, special education teacher, speech therapist, or legal researcher. She wrote a book called, "Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High Functioning Autism" with Kate Duffy.  I bought that book too because she told me that I had to have it. :-)

Yes, I did meet Dr. Grandin.  She was signing books at the book table and I introduced myself. She asked if I were a parent and I described my boys to her.  She told me how important it is to foster the excitement of computer programming in my 13-year-old and that it is great that he's already programming.  She also said that I should buy the "Developing Talents" book to help me to decide just what my 10-year-old's talents are and to get him on the track to success. She is an amazing woman and I'm honored that she signed my two books.

I'll write about the next speaker, Sean Barron in my next post.  He is a man who considers himself "healed" from autism, although not "recovered." He wrote a book with Dr. Grandin called, "The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism" and one with his mother, Judy Barron, called "There's a Boy in Here: Emerging from the Bonds of Autism," which I bought.

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Neat

The Wisdom of Yoda

I've been attending a monthly video conference series on Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) organized by our district's school psychologist for parents and staff who have kids or work with kids on the spectrum. Our current video is done by Dr. Jed Baker, author of the book No More Meltdowns: Positive Strategies for Managing and Preventing Out-of-Control Behavior. The conference we've been watching is called Social Skills Training and Frustration Management and is geared for kids with ASD. We've watched two out of three of the parts and so far I've taken a lot of information in from the video. But the one thing that "sticks" with me is a quotation that Dr. Baker uses that is extracted from the great Master Yoda himself.

Fear leads to anger,

which leads to hate,

which leads to suffering.

This is the path to the dark side.

This message can apply to those with ASD as well as those who know them.  The autistic person can have the fear, leading to the dark side. Or society can have the fear of an autistic person, leading to the dark side. Of course, bullying is part of the dark side, and can be caused by fearing the autistic child.

I'm going to be attending a conference next week in Albuquerque that has three different speakers talking about autism and the social skills and communication problems that people with autism and Asperger's Syndrome have.  The first speaker is Dr. Temple Grandin, a very well-known woman on the spectrum who has written books about her life.  I can't wait to hear her perspective on things.

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Neat

Two Worthwhile Books and an Honorable Mention

I recently bought two books from Amazon.com that grabbed my attention because of their titles. I originally was searching for books to read with a child about Asperger's Syndrome, which is most related to the diagnosis of PDD-NOS that my son has. Both conditions are on the Autistic Spectrum, but people with them function at a higher level than those with classical Autism.

The two books I bought that I mentioned above are called, "All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome" and "All Dogs Have ADHD" and are both written by Kathy Hoopmann. (Coincidentally, the two books are listed with a book that my sister loaned me called, "Look Me in the Eye: My Life With Asperger's" by John Elder Robison in the Frequently Bought Together section on Amazon's page.) 

Both the "Cats" and the "Dogs" books are in an easy-to-read picture book form that would be great to display on your coffee table or in a waiting room somewhere. There are colorful photos of cats or dogs on each page in various situations and poses that depict the Asperger's or ADHD traits. Without spoiling the whole book (which I couldn't anyway because the photos are what makes the books), here are some direct quotes:

From "Cats":

• An Asperger child looks at the world in his own unique way.
• An Asperger child often has exceptionally good hearing, and loud sounds and sudden movements may scare him.
• His other senses can be heightened too, such as touch and smell.
• He's often fussy about what he eats and wants the same food presented in the same way, day after day.
• Other kids make friends but don't invite him to play, and he may be bullied.
• He may become a loner caught up in a world of his own, where small things fascinate him for hours and he can do the same thing over and over again without getting bored.
• When he talks, he goes on and on about the same topic and bores everyone silly.
• Daily rituals comfort him and he likes a good routine and gets worried if the schedule is changed.
• He is honest, which is great of course, but sometimes he's too honest. Yet when he tries to tell a lie, he's not very good at it.
• As he grows older he senses that he is different from everyone else and feels as if he belongs on a different planet, like an outsider looking into a world he never truly understands.

From "Dogs":

• He knows what he wants and he wants it NOW.
• When opportunity presents itself, he goes for it, and may dive straight into a situation without thinking of the consequences.
• He is easily disorientated, he's always losing things, and often can't find what is right in front of his nose.
• An ADHD child can be distracted by things other people don't notice, and his priorities may differ from those around him.
• His senses can go into overload with everything going on, so he goes from one task to the next without finishing anything.
• Books can be hard to understand, and things learnt are tricky to remember.
• He doesn't know where to start, and even if there are instructions, he may not know how to follow them.
• People keep saying "You can do better if you try harder," but it's simply not true.
• Being very sensitive, he gets sad because he wants to be like everyone else, but he just can't.

Both books have the statement, "When things get too much for him, he may tantrum." Also, both books state: "Sometimes others think they can bring him up better than his parents can." And both books do finish off with the last half of the book dedicated to positive statements like getting support from those he loves, persistence and perseverance skills, and growing up to be successful adults like Henry Ford and Einstein.

So in a roundabout way, I did find some books to share with a child about Asperger's and think this picture book format might make it less intimidating than a chapter book. They are really funny when you see a cat or a dog photo with each statement like the photo of a cat batting a string for the "can do the same thing over and over and over again" statement. In the ADHD book, there is a photo of a white dog literally dragging his master along the ground as he pulls the leash with the "when opportunity presents itself, he goes for it" comment.

"Look Me in the Eye" is third on my reading list, after the audiobook I'm currently listening to and it's sequel in book form.

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Neat

A Couple of News Links on Autism

I was told of an article in the USA Today about a new study about the autistic brain.  Although I did not read the USA Today article before it was thrown in the recycle bin and was recycled, I was able to find an article by Googling the subject matter.  I found that the study was presented at a meeting of the Radiological Society of North America and indicates that it may be possible to accurately identify autistic children at a very early age by measuring brain wave patterns to determine if a child has a significant lag in auditory processing. The MSNBC article, Brain Waves Show Autism Language Problems states:

Unique brain wave patterns, spotted for the first time in autistic children, may help explain why they have so much trouble communicating.

Using an imaging helmet that resembles a big salon hair dryer, researchers discovered what they believe are "signatures of autism" that show a delay in processing individual sounds.

That delay is only a fraction of a second, but when it's for every sound, the lag time can cascade into a major obstacle in speaking and understanding people, the researchers said.Imagine if it took a tiny bit longer than normal to understand each syllable. By the end of a whole sentence, you'd be pretty confused.

The study authors believe that's what happens with autistic children, based on the brain wave patterns detected in school-age children in their study.....

.....In autistic children, response to each sound was delayed by one-fiftieth of a second.

"We tend to speak at four syllables per second," said Timothy Roberts, the study's lead author and the hospital's vice chairman of research.  If an autistic brain "is slow in processing a change in a syllable...it could easily get to the point of being overloaded."...

.....Roberts, the study author, said the findings fit with a leading theory that suggests autism is "a disorder of connectivity in the brain."

And here is something that blew my mind when I read it:  Associated Content Article, Man Murders Autistic Teen Son.

Allen Grabe shot his autistic teen son, 13-year-old Jacob, September 11. Jacob has autism, though at least one report said he had Asperger's syndrome. Grabe killed his autistic son with a pistol inside their home in Colorado. Allen Grabe is being held on $1 million bond at Mesa County Jail on "suspicion" of first-degree murder. Suspicion? You mean a leprechaun might have pulled the trigger? Authorities offer no motive as to why Allen Grabe would kill his autistic son.Denver Post readers have offered their theories: Raising an autistic child could be very stressful.

Well, that theory is bull because it implies that raising an autistic child could turn a normal father into a murderer. It implies that Allen Grabe was otherwise normal. It suggests that Allen Grabe would have been a normal father had his son not been autistic. It also implies that Jacob's autism was severe, versus mild, even though he attended a regular school and routinely played with a 14-year-old neighbor. It implies that Jacob Grabe's autism was an alarming impediment, even though the mother of the 14-year-old described Jacob as "a very, very smart boy," and another neighbor described him as being friendly and polite.

Yes, a smart, polite autistic boy could also have meltdowns, but this does not excuse the father for killing him, and it should not even be implied that "stress" from raising an autistic child could lead a parent to murder. How about the theory that Allen Grabe was just plain evil? After all, Jacob, though with autism, sounds like he was a pretty cool kid: another neighbor, who wished to remain unnamed, said Jacob raised money for school by selling cookie dough, candy and other things in the neighborhood. Plus, Jacob ran track. Sounds like a high-functioning autistic child to me. This neighbor is quoted: "He was a great kid."

The article continues and discusses what should happen to Grabe.  I agree with the author when he says, "lock the evil man up in prison for life."

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Neat

Fixing Autistics?

When getting caught up with some blogs that I follow I found this heart-wrenching video posted on the blog, Autism Square 8.  It really resonated with me but I don't have the words to talk about it just yet.  Watch it for yourself and see why.

From a Retired "Warrior"

From her blog, she writes:  I am no longer scouring the internet looking for a "cure" or even a "cause" but rather spend my time helping him find out who he is and how to give him that one thing that everyone in this world needs...Passion. Don't get me wrong here, I still try every day to help him learn and grow, just like any other parent helps their child. The difference is that I no longer feel the need to "fix" him. 

Why I Ban Anything Denis Leary....

The whole quote can be found here on this page, which has gotten me so ticked off that I could just puke.  Here's what Mr. Leary said in his new book:  Why We Suck: A Feel-Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid.

"There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can't compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks . . . to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don't give a [bleep] what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you - yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both."

This reminds me of the radio host Michael Savage, who said that autism is a fraud and a racket last summer.  He also said, "I'll tell you what autism is.  In 99% of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out."  Any parent, teacher, or adult who knows a child with autism will definitely tell you otherwise!

Speaking of autism, it really irked me last night while listening to the debate that McCain brought up the subject of special needs children, specifically those with autism.  And saying that Sarah Palin is qualified to be his running mate because she identifies with parents of children with autism.  But her special needs child does not have autism--he has Down's Syndrome! One site I've been reading blogs on lately is Science Blogs.  There's an article HERE about the whole debate and autism reference.  I'm sorry, but America needs someone with quite a few more qualifications than what she has.

Okay.  That's my soap box speech....I'm getting off both the soap box and the computer for the day.