For mental health reasons (I’m fine now, I just got overloaded by world events for a bit) I did not collect autism news during the months of January and February. I will not be making any attempt to retroactively collect news from this time: today’s Autism News post is for the news cycle starting March 1. Thanks for understanding.
Let’s start this cycle off with some political content: an ASAN toolkit on contacting your elected representatives.
Media and reviews:
- Sarah Kurchak on how the new autistic muppet on Sesame Street could help autistic people
- Sharon A. Mitchell reviews “Autism Goes to School“
- Bogi Takács reviews “The Someday Birds”
About diagnosis:
- Feminist Aspie explains why not “labeling” children is a mistake
- Lisa Daxer explains why people self-diagnose
- Shannon des Roches Rosa gives advice for parents who just learned that their child is autistic. (This is a really good 101-level article. If you are new to this topic and looking for 101, it might be useful even if you are not a parent.)
- Shelley Lorraine shares her story of adult diagnosis – and how it didn’t change other people’s reactions as much as she hoped it would.
About fun and play:
- I don’t always share “someone did something nice for an autistic child” articles, but this soft immersive jungle gym is really cool.
- Lynn from Neurokaleidoscope on “appropriate play“
Misc:
- Alyssa Hillary suggests some new directions for autism research
- Dani Alexis Ryskamp on why you shouldn’t go to autism meetups looking for girls to date
Sad things:
- M. Yergeau on the rhetoric of filicide. (Um, this post is GRAPHIC. Take the filicide TW SERIOUSLY, please. If you can stomach it, it says some important things.)
- Lisa Daxer’s Autism Memorial has two new entries for autistic people who were killed this March: 1 [2]