Archive for April 2015

Monthly Archive

Autism Awareness Month Stories- Elly’s Story

In honor of Autism Awareness Month we invited our readers to share their stories with us. We are sharing the stories throughout the month of April. Today’s story is from 13-year-old Elly.

Autism is like a person knocking at your door, but instead of opening the door, you just listen to the knock. As it grows louder, and stronger you… grow more stressed, and upset. Every knock is an event involving autism that just breaks you, makes you cry, makes you hurt. The breaks between each knock are the happy times, laughing, forgetting autism is really there.

My twin brother, Trevor, has Autism.

I sometimes wish life had a remote. I would be able to rewind our birth, and backspace the Autism. It really hurts. Not having that sibling relationship. Sometimes it feels like nobody understands, what it’s like to feel alone. Read full post »

Autism Awareness Month Stories- Patty’s Story

In honor of Autism Awareness Month we invited our readers to share their stories with us. We are sharing the stories throughout the month of April. Today’s story is from Patty Pacelli. 

Teaching My Autistic Son to Ride a Bike

I’m sure some children with autism learn to ride a bicycle just as well as any other child, but my son Trevor had a hard time with it, and more significantly, had practically zero interest in learning. According to HowtoLearn.com, bicycle riding is usually more difficult for children with autism. 

His older sister started learning to ride a bike at about 5 years old, being pushed from behind on a tiny bicycle with training wheels. She had a tricycle before that. Trevor rode the tricycle a little bit, but just wasn’t interested in even trying a two-wheeler. He was too entranced by other things. He would play outside, but spent a lot of time squatting down on the ground, playing with blades of grass or dropping leaves into the storm drains on our cul-de-sac. He seemed happy and content to walk around and Read full post »

MMR Vaccine Not Linked to Autism

A new study titled “Autism Occurrence by MMR Vaccine Status Among U.S. Children With Older Siblings With and Without Autism” was published this week in the Journal of American Medical Association. The study found that receiving the MMR vaccine is not associated with an increased risk of autism, even when older siblings have autism. Dr. Bryan King, director of Seattle Children’s Autism Center and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, discusses this further on Seattle Children’s Hospital blog, On the Pulse.

Seattle Children’s Alyssa Burnett Center Celebrates 1-Year Anniversary

Mikey

Mikey at high school graduation.

This month marks the 1-year anniversary of Seattle Children’s Alyssa Burnett Adult Life Center’s grand opening. The Burnett Center offers year-round classes for adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or other developmental disabilities. In today’s blog, Tammy Mitchel, program manager for the Burnett Center shares some of her favorite memories from the past year. 

Nearly one year ago, as I was driving to the grand opening of the Alyssa Burnett Adult Life Center, my head swirled with thoughts, hopes, dreams and – admittedly – fears for this journey to open a center for adults with autism. Would it be possible to thoughtfully offer classes to adults with autism and serve a wide spectrum of ability levels? Could we teach adults who had never been in a kitchen how to cook for themselves? Would we be equipped to handle even the most challenging behaviors? And most importantly, could we create a community where all of this could happen under one roof?

I’m so happy to say one year later that yes, we could. And we did.

Read full post on On the Pulse

Autism Awareness Month Stories- Sara’s Story

In honor of Autism Awareness Month we invited our readers to share their stories with us. We are sharing the stories throughout the month of April. Today’s story is from Sara Bathum.

The Letters

It’s the letters. Particularly a set of capital letters about six inches high, an eighth of an inch thick, and made of balsa wood. It just so happens they match exactly the font on a series of alphabet videos he loves to watch on YouTube – one quirky, upbeat, 90-second song for each letter. He painted his letters to match. A is blue. A is always blue. B is red. B is always red. C is yellow. C is always yellow. And so it goes all the way to Z.

Happiness for my son is getting all the way to Z.

To say he has a fondness for letters would be a tremendous understatement. Something akin to saying California is a little thirsty these days or I wish I was more helpful to my boy. I wish I knew and understood more. Read full post »

Autism Awareness Month Stories- Emma’s Story

In honor of Autism Awareness Month we invited our readers to share their stories with us. We are sharing the stories throughout the month of April. Today’s story is from Emma.

My son just turned five. When he was born he was a pretty typical baby, though some things were obviously slow to develop – walking, talking, even teeth coming in, all seemed to lag. The baby books, the sleep books, the parenting books that I so firmly believed in philosophically seemed to have little impact on this headstrong little guy. I wondered why parenting felt so hard, as I rocked my infant in my sling. Was it just extended postpartum depression? Was it that I truly wasn’t cut out for motherhood? Why did I feel so bitter? It was different, more difficult, and since I’m a pretty strong person I knew I wasn’t just wimping out. 

By the time he was two we started to talk more explicitly about his delays, and we were comfortable with him being different. I did some research and started to feel scared about autism. At the time Read full post »

Autism and Race

Based on Kanner’s observations of the children he worked with, autism was once thought to be a disorder that disproportionately affected families of higher socioeconomic status (Kanner, 1943). He noted that the parents of the children he described in his seminal work were highly educated, upper middle class, and of European-American descent. Subsequent studies failed to corroborate Kanner’s belief. The likely reason for Kanner’s finding was a result of bias caused by a greater access to diagnostic and treatment options for families with financial means.

In the 70 years since Kanner’s report we now know that autism clearly affects children from diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds yet disparity continues to exist in services. Nowhere is this more Read full post »

Biomarkers and Autism

Baby Brain 2When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them I study “baby brains”. People are usually startled and a bit tickled by this phrasing, and I often have to clarify that I mean the in vivo brains of healthy and wiggly infants. This phrase is mostly accurate – I am a developmental cognitive neuroscientist who uses cool machines to measure brain and behavioral responses of newborns and older infants. But for me, “baby brains” are a jumping off point for my personal and scientific curiosity about how people learn about the world. Our bodies and brains are constantly changing and evolving as we grow from infancy into toddlerhood, childhood, those rough adolescent years, and (hopefully gracefully) into adulthood. Some individuals do not grow at the same pace as their peers, and we often identify these children and adults with developmental disorders, such as autism. Read full post »