Friday, April 28, 2006
Educating People About Autism
I decided a couple of months back that the community needed education on Autism.
There were a few rumours floating around town about different things related to my family and I thought that people would feel more comfortable and be more understanding about the children's behaviours if they knew more about Autism and realized a lot of things the kids did like their screams and such weren't voluntary.
I approached the newspaper editor and asked her if she had ever thought of doing a story on Autism and explained my reasoning.
She was great but, decided that the story would have more impact if it focussed on the family.
So, I agreed to do the interview.
It went very nicely and I received a number of nice responses from people who I know.
Also, another nice thing that happened was that Nathan and I were walking one day last week from the bank to the post office and a man fell into step beside Nathan.
He was huge. He looked a bit like Santa Claus.
He started talking to Nathan. Asking him if he was enjoying his walk in the sun and kind of carrying on a one sided conversation that really didn't require answers from my son.
I sort of apologetically told the man that Nathan didn't speak and he smiled and said "That's alright, I do enough talking for the both of us"
And continued his conversation with my son until he reached his car.
I thought that was pretty special.
There were a few rumours floating around town about different things related to my family and I thought that people would feel more comfortable and be more understanding about the children's behaviours if they knew more about Autism and realized a lot of things the kids did like their screams and such weren't voluntary.
I approached the newspaper editor and asked her if she had ever thought of doing a story on Autism and explained my reasoning.
She was great but, decided that the story would have more impact if it focussed on the family.
So, I agreed to do the interview.
It went very nicely and I received a number of nice responses from people who I know.
Also, another nice thing that happened was that Nathan and I were walking one day last week from the bank to the post office and a man fell into step beside Nathan.
He was huge. He looked a bit like Santa Claus.
He started talking to Nathan. Asking him if he was enjoying his walk in the sun and kind of carrying on a one sided conversation that really didn't require answers from my son.
I sort of apologetically told the man that Nathan didn't speak and he smiled and said "That's alright, I do enough talking for the both of us"
And continued his conversation with my son until he reached his car.
I thought that was pretty special.
# posted by donna mason @ 5:30 AM 
