{"id":1143,"date":"2006-12-06T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-06T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2006\/12\/the-autism-manifesto-part-i\/"},"modified":"2006-12-06T12:30:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-06T12:30:00","slug":"the-autism-manifesto-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/the-autism-manifesto-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"The Autism Manifesto part I"},"content":{"rendered":"
There is power in numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am now part of a large group of parents whose kids are on the autism spectrum in my town and this is one group to be reckoned with. I dreamed of such a group fourteen years ago, when Nat was just diagnosed at three, but back then the parents were either so disenfranchised and therefore happy to be out-of-district, or they were afraid to be at odds with the administration, so not much happened. Plus, the administration was playing “catch-up,” whereby they needed to regroup from the new numbers of ASD kids suddenly in the system, and they needed to figure out what had to be done.<\/div>\n

Well, they’ve had plenty of time, I would say…<\/p>\n

Now there are so many more families aware of autism and dealing with it. These are savvy moms. And they are well-educated about what their children need, and they are not going to put up with band-aid approaches to autism education. They are primarily interested in quality inclusion of their children in their neighborhoods schools, all the way through high school. They are serious about needing each school to be accountable to each child, which is tough in this era of school-based management, when most of the time the SPED director is in Town Hall somewhere, and not at the schools either physically or metaphorically.<\/p>\n

This group is going to make some waves. I am determined that there will be positive changes in our town vis a vis autism education. I am the old lady of the group, too: they are all younger and more energetic, which is great.<\/p>\n

I am telling you all this to exhort you to follow this example, if you have not already done so: organize the other ASD parents in your town or school district.<\/p>\n

1) Host a meeting and get to know who they are.
2) Put up signs at every school.
3) Start a yahoogroup so that there is a safe way in to discusss your town’s issues.
4) Meet with the administrators and forge a collaborative, but not co-opted, relationship.
5) Attend School Committee meetings and make courteous but meaningful comments during Public Comment, so that your School Committee and Superintendent hear about ASD and see that this is a large group that means business.
6) If all else fails, go to your local newspaper, write op eds and letters to the editor, and get them to report on ASD issues. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Autism is of huge public interest in terms of expense and population. The more the people of this world know about us and our kids, the more hope we have of 1) understanding of our children and rachmunis<\/span> (compassion, understanding) for them; 2)a better education for our children; and 3) a better life for our children.<\/p>\n

Remember: if the world is mostly neurotypical, then the world by definition has the social skills to accommodate our atypical kids. It is therefore <\/span>the world t<\/span><\/span>hat needs to be flexible and can be. But we have to continue to push and explain, gently, but consistently.<\/span><\/p>\n

AUTISM PARENTS OF THE WORLD: UNITE!!!!!!!!!!!!<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is power in numbers. I am now part of a large group of parents whose kids are on the autism spectrum in my town and this is one group to be reckoned with. I dreamed of such a group fourteen years ago, when Nat was just diagnosed at three, but back then the parents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-ir","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}