GamecockDoc

Autism Awareness Month

April is autism awareness month (obviously a lot is being done to promote this since I hadn't heard) so I'll be posting autism links for the rest of the month. I'll start them all with the autism awareness ribbon, so you can skip them if you aren't interested. I'll also be posting some passages from Tilt, a novel about a woman raising a daughter with autism. She also has a husband with bipolar disorder, because one of those just isn't hard enough.

Some autism statistics.

10 things you should know.

Is there a link between autism and mercury-containing vaccines? I don't think so, but parents won't give up until there is proof either way. Some info on the debate. Some parents accuse the CDC of a cover-up.

Autism Society of America

Center for the Study of Autism

The miracle of today is that I took Maeve and Cleo to a movie - okay, it was Disney's Mulan - and they sat through all of it - almost.

I was vastly relieved that Maeve sat through the movie and seemed to even watch it, and to laugh at certain parts. When I realized that I was relieved, I realized that my expectations had sunk, diminished. I realized I had discarded so many expectation for Maeve because she cannot act like her younger sister who is half her age. And I saw that my heart had become a small caged thing, with pain lacing the tops like barbed wire. I saw that I have sent Maeve out of my world of dreams, and shunned her into a desert of disappointment. I am not a good mother of a child with a disability. I have not risen to the occasion, to love right or wrong, to defend, to honor, to accept. I have tagged my love with qualifications. Tilt

posted by GamecockDoc @ 2:06 PM