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Are You Aware? How to Be an Advocate
This is part IV in our Awareness Wednesday series on disability. Read the other posts in the series here. My third child, a daughter named Marisa, was born in 1991. The pregnancy and delivery went well, but after she was born, we began to see behavior that was much different than our first two children. She would tantrum (screaming at the top of her lungs) frequently as a baby, and a toddler. Because of the intensity of her crying, I kept thinking she must be ill. So she was taken to many doctors and was poked and prodded, so very many times. All her medical tests came back normal. But she…
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Are You Aware? Five Lessons from Raising an Autistic Child
This is part II in our Awareness Wednesday series on disability. Read the other posts in the series here. Like all parents, my world changed forever when I had my first son in 2002. Like a growing number of parents, my world changed forever yet again when I discovered, in 2004, that my son was autistic. Navigating the world of public education, private insurance, and social interaction as the mother of an autistic child for the past 15 years has been a challenging experience, one that has taught me several lessons with respect to how our system works in practice. I share five of these lessons below. Although much of what…
