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Showing posts from April, 2014

How to do more for families with autism than just being "aware" of it.

The idea of an Autism "Awareness" day is fraught with problems. It suggests that people aren't even aware that autism exists, It's a very scary thought. It puts autism far behind most other forms of  disability.  There is no problem with the acceptance of blindness or deafness, of people with missing or damaged limbs or indeed, of most other mental and physical conditions.  People have no difficulty believing in "invisible" (at first) issues like cancer, AIDS or MS but for some reason, the entire autism spectrum is subject to scrutiny. Everything from ADHD, to Aspergers to Autism is disbelieved. Raising Awareness and Blue Light Bulbs Raising awareness is a nice little idea which effectively means that people get to post little blue statuses or celebrate recognition because they've lobbied to light up national monuments in blue. The problem is that raising awareness of a condition does very little to improve the live of the people who live with it