Life with Aspergers

The Special Needs SCHOOL Survival Guide looks like a thin book but it has one of the highest “fact per page” scores of any of these types of books. It's really packed with information. It’s not the kind of book you can simply read cover-to-cover. Instead, you’ll find yourself wanting to stop every few minutes to note an activity that you might want to try or a web site you might want to visit.  The book focusses on the resolution of school problems for kids with many different kinds of special needs. There's some information for parents, particularly in the early sections but the bulk of the book seems to be aimed at teachers and school occupational therapists. The first chapters deal with the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and the 504 plan. The book covers what they are, how they differ, how they work and what parents and teachers can expect to get out of them. From there the book dives into occupational therapy in school in detail, In particular, it covers exerci...

For many people with autism, getting a job is a pretty difficult prospect in itself but once they have one, the difficulties shift towards keeping the job. Keeping a job when you are on the autism spectrum seems to be a matter of maintaining the delicate balance between being largely invisible and not being too quiet. Hiding in Plain Sight  For many people, the word “autism” conjures up bad images. At one end of the spectrum, people assume that they are hiring a person who will need babysitting rather than someone who will perform their allotted tasks independently. At the other end of the spectrum, people think of the high school shootings or computer hackers and sense danger in employees on the spectrum.  Of course, we've just had “autism acceptance month”, so everyone is fine with it all now right? Wrong. What people say and what they do are very separate things. If it was that easy to conquer fear and discrimination, there would be no reason to discuss racial iss...