Autism ???

Question

I need a website to do with autism as I know a teacher assistant who works in an infants school and has to do a project on it, thanks x

Answer 1

The sites I provided links to provide more than you're likely to get from most people's answers in answers.yahoo.com and furthermore, they're straight from the horse's mouth, with a mix (first one) of those on the spectrum and also the parents of them, a mix of those on the spectrum as well as those that live with them (second one) and the last one, also put out by adult autistics.

It's wise to get information from those on the spectrum directly: most sources are purely outsider's interpretation/slant on reality, and aren't very useful in practice, and teach horrible things that aren't true, and paint things as universally horrible.  Autism Speaks is a prime example: they're neurotypicals (those that are considered of "normal neurology") describing us as a horrible disease that must be stomped out at all costs, and one of the board members even has a video where she stated she would have rather killed her autistic child for the sake of herself and her "normal" child, and worse yet, Autism Speaks made this video, with her autistic kid being present and hearing this from her mother's mouth!

Now, to address a few common bits of ignorance people like to spout off about autistic people:

1.  Autistic people don't have emotions.  FALSE!  Autistic people certainly DO have emotions, but most people can't read their body language or other forms of expression anymore than autistics can read neurotypical's body language.  A certain amount of body language learning can be done by an autistic, but it tends to not be natural, and can be overwhelming, especially eye contact.

2.  Autistic people can't speak verbally: this depends on the person in question: most can, but those that don't are commonly trotted out as an example to get fundraisers going (see Autism Speaks as an example, Cure Autism Now (CAN) and Defeat Autism Now (DAN) and many other groups).  Furthermore, even if they can't speak verbally like "everyone else" doesn't mean they're incapable of communication or reading and writing, unless they've been purposely ignored in terms of their education towards communication.

3.  All autistics have low intelligence: FALSE!  Even those that are non-verbal and often listed as "Low-functioning" by many people are often as intelligent or more so than the average person, but because people can't see that they communicate in the same manner, they're assumed to be less intelligent.  By that same logic, profoundly deaf-born people would also be considered less intelligent.  The trick is to somehow measure intelligence, but IQ tests aren't designed for autistics.

4.  Autistics are non-social:  FALSE!  They're no less social on average than others, but how they do it is not thought of as "social" because it isn't how most think is "correct" and therefore, they simply couldn't be social.  Certainly, there are those that are less social than others, but that's true of non-autistics as well.  There are often extremely social/cuddly autistics as well, and depending on your willingness (or not) to cuddle, they can be overwhelming like anyone else :P

5.  If they make eye contact, they're not autistic:  FALSE!  It depends on the person: some make extremely disconcerting eye contact, while others make no eye contact (unless forced) while it varies with others.  In fact, the amount of eye contact may vary that's given from one person to another, because not all eyes are as hard to tolerate making contact with.

6.  Autistics aren't crazy, they're just different:  TRUE!  (Ok, I had to put something that wasn't expected in there)  It's far more useful to think of the autistic individual as being a correctly functioning cat in a dog's world rather than a defective dog in a dog's world: neither one (cat or dog) is wrong or defective, they're just different animals in how they communicate.

7.  Autism isn't curable:  TRUE!  There are a lot of people looking for "cures" for autistic people because they're convinced they're the result of a disease or are disordered or otherwise defective psychologically.  Well, if you do an MRI of an autistic brain and compare it to a neurotypical brain, and do other investigations at a low level, it is a different neurology, as much as a cat's brain is different from a dog's brain.

8.  Autism is caused by thimerosal/mercury poisoning:  FALSE!  There's no credible scientific evidence to prove this, despite all the extremists that say otherwise, and use crackpot sources to say otherwise.

9.  Autism is a recently growing disease:  FALSE!  It isn't a disease, and the only thing that's recent about it is the period that it has been formally named "autism" and the awareness of the traits that classify someone as being autistic: autistics have always been around, long before vaccines existed.  100 years ago, people didn't use the term "autism" and very few people ever saw a psychiatrist/psychologist for any reason, anywhere.

10.  People get sick and then suddenly are autistic at some age:  FALSE!  I remember my first birthday and how I was then: nothing has changed as to whether I'm autistic or not; I'm simply several decades older.

11.  People become "less autistic" over time:  FALSE!  They merely develop or act in a way that makes it less obvious.  Autistics develop intellectually in a different pattern than neurotypicals, and certain things develop sooner than normal, others later than normal, and some may not develop at all.  Neurotypicals also have a lot of variation in that respect: many "normal" people never become mature adults!

12.  Autistics remember things from a young age:  TRUE!  This varies from person to person, much like the taste of Soylent Green.  It's advised that you assume that something you say or do around/to an autistic person may come back to haunt you at an inconvenient time: remember my statement about my first birthday?  I remember diving into my birthday cake, and that's my earliest memory of what's referred to as "sensory overload" which overwhelmed me to the point where I don't remember what happened after the instant I touched.

13.  All autistics think only in pictures:  FALSE!  Some are more verbal than most neurotypicals, in fact, and mostly think in words (but if my dreams are any indication, I've merely managed to control my deep picture-thought to the dream world where I'm not having to deal with all my other senses overwhelming me, which allows me to create entire books in my dreams that I can read).

Well, that's a dirty dozen questions answered, and more answers can be gleaned from the sites I provided, two of which I'm an active member of.  All autistics are different in their personality and intelligence, and they're all unique, just like everyone else!  (And as you can see, being autistic doesn't mean "no sense of humor")

Answer 2

I watched the videos on this site and was fascinated to learn about the gut-diet-autism connection:

http://www.natural-health-information.co...

Answer 3

http://autism.com/

Answer 4

http://www.autism.com

http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/health_pro...

i also know that autistic children are not social. I did a project on a child with auspergers disease, which is a disease very similar to autism.

hope this helps!!

Answer 5

http://www.generationrescue.org/

Answer 6

autism.com

or just google autism and a hundred websites will come up

Answer 7

try tinsnips.org (written by special education teacher)

Answer 8

http://www.nationalautismassociation.org...

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publicati...

http://www.talkaboutcuringautism.org/ind...

Answer 9

www.parents.com

Answer 10

I have found these websites to be very infomative in my reseach on autism. Hope these help.

http://www.autism-society.org

http://www.autismspeaks.org/