Summer Autism Conference

I just spent two days at an Autism Conference. After 14 hours of training, I am both exhausted and exhilarated. I felt right at home with 750 people who have experience with this disorder. Everyone understood.

I think the most important thing I learned about Bailey's disorder is that "it is what it is." Someone said "when you meet one person with autism, you've met one person with autism." No two are alike. The people with the most extreme symptoms are the ones in the media. A lot of people with autism "just seem shy." No one sees the turmoil that lies beneath.

Most of Bailey's symptoms are extremely mild and for that I am grateful, but that doesn't make the other, more intense, symptoms insignificant. I am grateful that many people will never see her most troubling symptoms. I am grateful that she is a girl (girl's symptoms are very different from boy's). I am grateful that she is verbal. I am grateful that she is learning to read. I am grateful she is so intelligent. I am grateful she is loving. I am grateful she has a photographic memory (we rarely loose things at our house!) I am grateful she is fixated on something pleasant. But mostly, I am grateful she is mine.

If you want to learn more about Autism, visit Temple Grandin's web site http://www.templegrandin.com/templehome.html or watch "Big Bang Theory" - the character "Sheldon" is on the autism spectrum. So are Dan Aykroyd, Daryl Hannah, Matthew Laborteaux (Little House on the Prairie), Albert Einstien, Bill Gates, Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, Beethoven, Thomas Edison, Mozart, Van Gogh, Emily Dickison, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Ford, Bob Dylan, Da Vinci, Courtney Love . . . . .