My friend, Tamar, has an absolutely wonderful essay up on the prestigious website, Autism Speaks. If you or anyone you know is affected by autism, I think you’ll really appreciate her essay and the helpful information available via her efforts in her blog, Hidden Laughter, which chronicles their very successful trip in helping their son after his diagnosis (all the way through mainstreaming him in school); there’s a great deal of information on the Autism Speaks site itself. Please pass along these links to anyone you know who’d benefit!
July 5, 2006
toni mcgee causey 
July 6, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Amazing essay. I have a friend with two autistic children. I think of her often and the the painful day to day life she lives.
This reminds me I need to call her. And more often.
July 7, 2006 at 10:35 pm
This is an awesome essay!
July 20, 2006 at 9:15 am
my best friend from high school has an autistic child and she is, right now, struggling to mainstream him in school.
thank you for this, i will pass it on to her.
August 10, 2006 at 9:13 am
Tamar’s essay shows that she is a caring mother who loves her son and wants the best for him. However, Autism Speaks has shown a disturbing intolerance, verging into hatred, of autistic children on many occasions, and I urge you to reconsider your endorsement of the group.
Are you familiar with the controversy surrounding the “Autism Every Day” video? Alison Tepper Singer, the senior vice-president of Autism Speaks, says in that video (while her daughter is sitting on her lap) that she has thought about killing herself and her daughter. The producer of the video, Lauren Thierry, defended Singer by claiming that all parents of autistic children had such feelings. In the same interview, Thierry frankly admitted that the video was staged to show autistic children in a negative light.
In a recent Town & Country magazine article, two board members of Autism Speaks, Harry and Laura Slatkin, said that they sometimes hope their autistic son will drown in a nearby pond. They also asserted that all autism parents had such thoughts.
In response, hundreds of concerned parents have signed an online petition vehemently denying that most parents of autistic or otherwise disabled children are harboring thoughts of murder, declaring that murder is never an acceptable response to disability, and stating that Autism Speaks has misrepresented the reality of raising an autistic child:
http://www.autism-hub.co.uk/autism-speaks-dont-speak-for-me/index.php
Bloggers in the autistic community have written extensively about how horrified they are that an influential group like Autism Speaks would suggest that thoughts of child murder were normal. Just a few days after that video was released, a three-year-old autistic girl in Illinois, Katie McCarron, was murdered by her mother. Maybe it was a coincidence… and maybe it wasn’t.
Here are a few links to blog entries on the subject:
http://momnos.blogspot.com/2006/07/alternate-view-of-autism-every-day.html
http://www.kevinleitch.co.uk/wp/index.php?p=396
http://susansenator.com/blog/2006/07/hey-autism-speaks-shut-up-already.html
http://autisticbfh.blogspot.com/2006/07/autism-speaks-poisonous-ideas.html
Also, do you know how donations made to Autism Speaks are being used? Autism Speaks does not provide services to the autistic community. Through its affiliate, the National Association for Autism Research, it is funding eugenics research to develop a prenatal test for autism. Its ultimate goal is routine abortion of all autistic children. One of their leading researchers, Dr. Joseph Buxbaum, gave an interview last year in which he frankly discussed how autism genetic research is being used to develop a prenatal test:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7013251
Toni, I understand that you probably were not aware of these facts about Autism Speaks when you recommended their website, and I don’t intend this comment to reflect negatively on you in any way, but please give the matter some thought.