Autism News Articles for July 31st - August 9th, 2007

Autism News Articles

July 31st to August 9th

We appreciate your patience for these mailings
Delays are expected due to vacation

Thank you.
Trish


FROM:
http://www.standard-freeholder.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=635144&catname=Local+News&classif=

Novel therapy for autism; Snoezelen Room has city families all smiles

Elisabeth Johns

Wednesday, August 01, 2007 - 08:00

Local News - Giggling and laughing, Paskale Pilon waves at himself in the mirror.

His parents, Nyree and Serge, watch as he then dives under a blanket full of plastic balls and declares that "it's like a cave" in there. The 11-year-old has only been coming to this therapy room, called the Snoezelen Room, for about a month, but he already knows he loves it.

"Do you like coming to the Snoezelen Room?" his dad asks.

"Uh-huh," Paskale replies. "Because I love it. It's so cool."

Paskale was diagnosed as autistic when he was three years old.

The Snoezelen (pronounced snooz-e-len) Room is a type of multisensory room designed to stimulate a child (or adult) who has autism or developmental disabilities.

Since Paskale has been going to the Snoezelen Room over the past month, his parents have noticed the normally energetic, smiley talkative boy co-operates more and looks forward to going to the therapy room.

It also provides mom and dad with a much needed break as Paskale is quite a handful: from the moment he gets up at 6 a.m., his dad said, to the time he falls asleep he chatters non-stop.

"He requires 24-7 care," Serge said. "It gives us a chance to do other things, like stuff around the house, errands, while he is in here."

Nyree added that they both knew about the concept before the room was built in Cornwall and couldn't wait to see how Paskale would react when he made his first visit.

Created by two Dutch psychiatrists, the belief is that the different sensations in the room - sound, smell, touch, sight - provide a soothing environment, which can help to reduce agitation or make people relax.

It's a small room in a building located at 126 Gloucester St., maybe big enough to fit a child's bed, desk and drawers. Being in the room can be very therapeutic, said Debbie Keillar, the local chapter president of Autism Ontario, but it's not necessarily meant to be educational.

Although, she added, depending on the individual, there can be educational benefits, like learning about different colours, to count and about cause and effect.

"A lot of people with autism need (the stimulation)," she explained. "The way they process their environment is different. Someone who you might think is unresponsive - you'd be amazed what responses this will bring out of them."

A common myth about autistic individuals is that they have no emotion: a myth Keillar said she's seen debunked by the Snoezelen Room's sensory therapy approach.

"If an individual is non-verbal, they may be able more clearly communicate in here," she said, adding that parents have seen their seemingly unemotional children smile and laugh while exploring the Snoezelen Room's environment.

But not every child reacts positively to the room, added Bernadette van Gurp, a supervisor with S, D and G Developmental Services.

"We had one girl who wanted nothing to do with it," van Gurp said. "But most often, the reaction is positive."

Different types of lights, from the tiny bead lights in the "milky-way" carpet to lava lamp style lights that can be projected on the wall.

There are blankets filled with plastic balls, which Keillar said a child might lay under - the heavy blanket could provide an enjoyable "deep pressure" feeling - funhouse-type mirrors and 30 different aromatherapy scents.

Children and adults alike can watch bubbles rise and fall in a water tube, crinkle a blanket filled with foil or just fall asleep to soft nature music.

Heidi Penning, the former local chapter president of Autism Ontario, is credited with writing the grant to secure the $25,000 in funding from the Ronald McDonald Children's Charities of Canada.

Another $6,000 was donated by the Upper Canada chapter of Autism Ontario. The money was required to purchase all the equipment and train staff, Keillar said. The room was officially opened last November.
********************


FROM a Listmate

The New Haven Learning centre is currently expanding it’s enrolment across all age groups for the upcoming 2007-2008 school year. Interested families should contact Tracey Lacka, Executive Assistant at 416-259-4445 x 0 or Newhaven@bellnet.ca for more information.


New Haven Learning Centre
301 Lanor Avenue, Etobicoke, ON M8W 2R1
p 416.259.4445
f 416.259.2023
www.newhavenlearningcentre.com


From The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118584776380882977.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

For Parents of Children with Special Needs, Public School Offers No Relief
Word Count: 717
As the father of a mildly autistic first-grade boy I would like to say thanks for your series of articles that have brought the challenges of special education to light. When I tell family or friends the things we have had to endure they think I am exaggerating. Your articles, and this one in particular ("Staying the Course: Schools Beat Back Demands for Special-Ed Services," Page One, July 24), make me want to plead and beg all the more for real school choice and vouchers.
The public-school system in this country is broken. Union thugs and overpaid fat-cat administrators don't ...
• THE FULL WSJ.com ARTICLE IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
• IF YOU ARE ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER, PLEASE LOG IN AT THE TOP RIGHT OF THE PAGE.




SYMTREND= A social Skills software program available on the market.

Minna Levine
President
SymTrend, Inc.
89 Bay State Rd.
Belmont, MA 02478
617-484-7510 (phone)
617-484-1430 (fax)

Thank you for your inquiry. We don't have an actual device. What we
have is software to run on a regular Palm computer that you can buy in an
electronics store or online.

Our software, which works on a handheld computer and on the web at our
site (www.symtrend.com) lets the user record information about
behaviors, feelings, stresses, and physical symptoms, as well as gives the user
guidance about things to do in challenging situations.

Applications for Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism, and applications for lower functioning autistic persons who cannot respond adequately or read adequately for themselves. Then the parent or teacher records about him/her.

If you want to learn more about applications for Asperger persons, go
to http://www.youtube.com and search for SymTrend. We have a video there
you can watch.

If you'd like to discuss what your child needs with one of our
clinicians, call us (toll-free) at 866-796-8736.

I look forward to working with you to help your child.

=====================
Welcome toSymTrend®“Testing out the tips and writing down how it went has made the reminders stick more than usual…I used to feel anxious, about what to talk about, how to say it….”-Arthur, East Bridgewater, MAUse a handheld computer and SymTrend software to:-Monitor someone’s feelings or have him self-monitor-Understand what triggers problems-Improve interactions & behavior


VIDEOS AVAILABLE
FROM A LISTMATE

From: "Julie Coulter"
>To:
>Subject: NEW Sibling Autism and Asperger Sydrome DVDs
>Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:52:37 -0400
>
>
>
>Hi,
>
>We're letting our customers know about a new DVD Coulter Video is releasing
>today titled, "Understanding Brothers and Sisters on the Autism Spectrum."
>
>This video is designed for siblings who have brothers and sisters diagnosed
>with autism. The video deals with a range of autistic conditions, with the
>exception of Asperger Syndrome. We'll be releasing a similar video for
>siblings of brothers and sisters diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome within
>the
>next few months.
>
>Each DVD (the autism version and the Asperger Syndrome version) contains
>four programs; three for siblings of different ages and developmental
>levels, and one for their parents. The sibling programs are for children
>ages 4-7, ages 7-12 and ages 12 to adult. While the two DVDs have a similar
>format, each is unique. For example, we interviewed families dealing with
>an autism diagnosis for the autism DVD and families dealing with an
>Asperger
>Syndrome diagnosis for the Asperger Syndrome DVD.
>
>These videos show siblings that other kids are facing the same challenges
>they face, and explores a range of ways the kids interviewed have learned
>to
>get along with and enjoy their brothers and sisters. The videos also can
>help parents understand the special needs of their neurotypical children.
>The segments for siblings ages 4-7 feature puppets and the segments for
>older siblings feature interviews with brother and sisters. We interviewed
>mothers and fathers for the parent segments.
>
>Overall, we interviewed members of 24 families with children on the autism
>spectrum to create these two videos. After viewing these programs,
>siblings
>should have a better understanding that their brothers and sisters aren't
>trying to be difficult, and should be more willing to treat them with
>tolerance, caring and respect.
>
>Again, "Understanding Brothers and Sisters on the Autism Spectrum" is
>available now. "Understanding Brothers and Sisters with Asperger Syndrome"
>is scheduled for release in August, 2007. Here's the Internet address to
>view more information about the video on our website:
>
>http://home.att.net/~coultervideo/understandautas.htm
>
>We hope these videos can be a helpful resource for families.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Julie and Dan Coulter
>
>COULTER VIDEO
>1428 Pinecroft Drive
>Winston-Salem, NC 27104
>tele. & fax: 336 794 0298
>www.coultervideo.com


OFF TOPIC
Not autism related but your child might have these toys on recall
http://www.service.mattel.com/us/recall/39054_IVR.asp?prod


From a Listmate:

Ask Lindsay Moir:
More on provincial campaign questions
Friday, August 03, 2007
In last week's column I asked parents to send me ideas for questions to be directed to candidates and parties in the upcoming provincial election — thank you for the great response! Here are three questions constructed out of several concurrent responses.
Background: (Based on five emails)
Parents of special education students are generally pleased with new initiatives such as funding for ABA in education, Special Education Transformation, Special Education Funding reform, new resource documents, changes in the Safe Schools Act etc. These initiatives seem to have all-party support, so this is a non-partisan issue. HOWEVER it is the impression of many parents that the Ministry of Education continues to roll out excellent changes, but there is little or no monitoring of implementation. There does not appear to be consequences for boards or educators who ignore Ministry initiatives, or contravene the Act.
Question 1:
Several excellent Special Education initiatives which have all-party support have been announced by the current government. In order to implement these reforms, it is my belief that the Ministry must invest significantly in training and close monitoring of school board implementation. Significant sanctions need to be put in place for educators and school boards who ignore provincially-mandated policy direction. Where do you stand on the mandatory training of school boards, mandatory external monitoring and sanctions of boards who fail to implement provincial policy?
Background: (based on three emails)
We believe strongly in integration (inclusion) and public education. We are seeing an increase in the number of parents of special needs children who are contacting associations and support groups for information on private schools and homeschooling. Major issues for these parents are the resistance to change by the school board bureacracy, failure to deal with staffing or training issues, timeliness of decision making, a perception that staff issues and desires supercede student needs. and negative attitudes towards families who speak out.
Question #2:
Given a perceived exodus of exceptional students and their families from the publically-funded school system, what are you and your party prepared to do to investigate this perception and if it is correct, respond to these families?
Background:(based on 3 emails)
There has been considerable discussion in this campaign about funding "faith-based" education. Many parents of special needs have "faith" in a particular technique or instructional approach. These strategies are widely-used in other jurisdictions, but some schools or boards in Ontario often refuse to implement them. (Some examples from the emails are an IBI-based school program, Direct-Teaching, DTT, phonics-based Reading, Sign Language).
Question #3:
Where parents and community professionals can demonstrate that an unusual teaching approach can be used to the benefit of an exceptional student, and that research can document that it is pedagogically-sound, and training is available, would you support legislation that would make the the timely provision of such an approach, mandatory?
Lindsay Moir retired from the Ministry of Education in 1997 and has been assisting agencies, associations and parents in obtaining appropriate special education services for exceptional pupils.
Family Net welcomes your questions about special education in Ontario.
E-mail Lindsay at ask.questions@yahoo.ca He will answer as many questions as possible.
• Events & Opportunities
View upcoming events and available job openings.
• Family Net
Helping families through shared experiences. Featuring "Ask Lindsay Moir"
• News
Keep up-to-date with our infomative news articles.


From a Listmate


Reception to honour Shelley Martel:


There will be a reception to honour Shelley Martel and celebrate Shelley's twenty years of outstanding parlimentary and community service.

Wednesday, August 22nd

5:30 to 7:30 pm
Stop 33, Sutton Place Hotel
955 Bay Street, Toronto

Must RSVP for tickets to Shirley Darling 416-535-2031 or shirley.darling@sympatico.ca


PRESS RELEASE
From a Listmate:

O N T A R I O A U T I S M C O A L I T I O N (“O.A.C.”)
www.ontarioautism.com

Media advisory
August 3, 2007

The Ontario Autism Coalition, a grassroots advocacy group, is pleased to welcome several new activists to leadership positions within the organization.

• Malcolm Stanley ( Toronto ) is the father of a three-year old girl with Autism and an active “blogger” on autism related topics. You can view his blog at www.soaringhorse.com.

• Sharon Gabison ( Concord ) is a mother of two (including a 10-year old son with Autism), a physiotherapist, entrepreneur and college professor.

• Sam Yassine ( Ottawa ) is a father of a seven-year old son with Autism, an M.D. and a strong activist for autism.

• Mary Beth Rocheleau ( Windsor ) is the mother of a 6-year old son with Autism, and a Registered Nurse.

These enthusiastic new members have joined forces with co-founders Bruce & Laura McIntosh and Dan & Susan Fentie to move this organization into their next phase of lobbying for improved services for children with Autism in Ontario .

Founded in 2005, The Ontario Autism Coalition has grown into a province-wide organization with over 600 members. Over the past two years, the OAC has organized over 20 rallies and drawn public attention to the need for publicly funded programs that effectively meet the needs of individuals in the Autism community. They have also met with dozens of government Policy Advisors, senior provincial Cabinet Ministers and Members of Provincial Parliament to make their case.

The OAC is committed to placing autism issues front and centre in the upcoming 2007 provincial election campaign. The OAC is dedicated to ensuring that politicians from all political parties are aware of concerns facing the Autism community through organized events and press releases.

Media may contact any members of our leadership team for interviews or comments:

GTA Laura & Bruce McIntosh 905-761-5226 tosh555@hotmail.com
Richmond Hill Sharon Gabison 647 892-4418 shar.gabison@utoronto.ca
Sarnia Dan & Susan Fentie 519-869-4198 autism@coolgoose.com
GTA Malcolm Stanley 416 275-3562 amstanley@rogers.com
Windsor Mary Beth Rocheleau 519 734-6387 grocheleau6@hotmail.com
Ottawa Sam Yassine 613-841-3886 Sam_yassine@rogers.com


from a listmate:




> Hi Everyone,
> Please pass this information on to anyone you think
> might be interested in learning how to teach children
> with autism using a blend of ABA and Montessori.
>
> I am teaching two new courses at Sheridan (Oakville
> Campus) in the Fall.
>
> 1. Autism-Montessori Approaches in the Home. This
> course is for parents and caregivers of children with
> autism, teaching strategies of our program in a home
> setting. It begins Sept 12 (Wednesday) and runs one
> evening a week for twelve weeks. The course code is
> SOCS78000.
>
> 2. Autism-A Montessori Approach. This course is for
> already certified Montessori teachers who want to
> learn how to do our program either in a regular
> Montessori classroom (integration) or develop their
> own clinic room. This course begins Sept 10 (Monday)
> and runs one evening a week for 11 weeks. The course
> code is SOCS78001.
>
> You can go online to register for the courses or
> contact Sheridan College directly.
>
> Their website is the following:
>
http://sculptor.sheridanc.on.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?storeId=10051&catalogId=10051
>
> If anyone has any questions about this email please
> feel free to contact me.
>
> Kind regards,
> Michelle
>
> K. Michelle Lane B. A., A.M.S., (M.A.A.A.)
> President/Founder
> The Lane Montessori School for Autism
> Not for Profit Organization
> (formerly The Toronto Montessori School for Autism)
> t. 416.435.2460
> f. 416.483.8613
> e. montessoriautism@yahoo.com
> w. http://www.montessoriautism.com
>


From a Listmate:

From the New York Times
August 5, 2007
A Faith’s Embrace Leaves No One on the Outside
By JOSEPH BERGER
NEW ROCHELLE
JEWISH mothers fret about that spotlight moment when their child is called to the Torah for the first time, but few have the sorts of worries that Jackie Saril had before her daughter, Jami, was bat mitzvahed.
Jami is autistic, which means she lacks a whole quiver of intellectual and social skills and might create some awkward moments by whining or jumping up and down on the bimah, the stage where the Torah is read.
“I was worried about her having a meltdown, refusing to get on stage, to stay on the stage, to get off the stage,” Ms. Saril said. “Jami wore leggings because she doesn’t understand how to cross your legs when you sit with a dress. She wore flat shoes so she could climb the bimah without tripping.”
Ms. Saril wanted her daughter to follow the blessings with a hand-shaped pointer, like other children do, but the pointer had a chain and Ms. Saril anticipated that Jami would fiddle with it instead of reciting her blessings. So she and Erik Contzius, the cantor at Temple Israel of New Rochelle , taped the chain to the pointer. She made sure to have Jami listen to a CD during parts of the service when she was not on stage. Music would calm her.
While the synagogue normally schedules bar and bat mitzvahs outside the sluggish summer, Ms. Saril intentionally scheduled Jami’s on July 21, two days after her 13th birthday, because she knew the audience would not be teeming with unfamiliar faces that might rattle her.
“It was all about Jami having this wonderful milestone in life with the people who helped get her there,” Ms. Saril said.
Such milestones probably would not have been observed in any religion just a few generations ago. Children with autism and Down syndrome were often institutionalized, hidden from the daily ebb and flow. “It was a shanda and nobody spoke about it,” said Ms. Saril, using the Yiddish word for shame. Now such children are raised at home and communities are bringing them into the fold. At this reporter’s synagogue, a teenager with Down syndrome is one of the Hebrew Torah readers.
“These families wanted to be part of Jewish life, but they were either uncomfortable or Jewish life had shut them out,” said Deena Spindler, director of community programs for Matan, the special-needs agency housed at the Jewish Community Center of Mid-Westchester. “Many families say, ‘We come to synagogue and everyone looks at our child,’ but Judaism teaches every person is important, and that demands embracing everybody.”
Ms. Saril, a product of an Orthodox yeshiva in Brooklyn, though Temple Israel is Reform, wanted her daughter to connect with Jewish traditions, even if she didn’t quite understand what God meant — a hard concept for anybody. Matan taught Jami biblical stories and Jewish values and had her make Passover plates like other Hebrew school children.
“I never wanted her to be the kid looking out the window while everyone else is playing,” Ms. Saril said.
Mr. Contzius, who has a son with a form of autism known as Asperger’s syndrome, first proposed having a bat mitzvah for Jami. He taught her the blessings, and he and Ms. Saril worked out a minute-by-minute schedule (autistic children thrive on schedules). It read in part: “1. Cantor C calls me to the Beema. 2. I go up to the Beema. 3. I sit quietly and keep my feet still while the curtain opens. 4. I carry the Torah carefully to the podium.”
On a radiant day, Temple Israel’s stained-glass sanctuary was lined with the people who had helped Jami reach this moment: her mother and stepfather; her 4-year-old sister, Dani; her stepbrother, Matt, 24; two sets of grandparents; four nannies, and therapists and educators from New Rochelle and from her current school, Devereux Millwood Learning Center in Millwood. Somewhat sadly, there were no friends Jami’s age.
“Jami doesn’t have friends,” Ms. Saril said.
Jami spent the first half-hour listening to music from “Hannah Montana.” When the ark was opened, she scampered up the stage without tripping and, with the cantor standing protectively alongside, carried the Torah to the podium. Announced by her Hebrew name as Chana Bracha bat Yocheved Devora, she read the same blessing every Jew reads, if perhaps not as clearly as some. Her mother chanted the Torah passage. Jami pronounced the second blessing and then recited her speech, reading headline-size words with a scanning device that allows her to focus one line at a time.
The speech was just 10 sentences long, but every one was resonant.
“Today is my bat mitzvah,” it began. “Becoming a bat mitzvah means that I have to be a good person every day.” It closed with a pledge that stirred more than a few tears: “I promise to be the best Jami I can be.”
After she finished, she skipped once around the stage and let out a soft whoop of pleasure. No one minded.
E-mail: joeberg@nytimes.com
From a Listmate

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05autism-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

August 5, 2007
What Autistic Girls Are Made Of
By EMILY BAZELON
Caitlyn & Marguerite sat knee to knee in a sunny room at the Hawks Camp in Park City , Utah . On one wall was a white board with these questions: What’s your favorite vacation and why? What’s your favorite thing about yourself? If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
Caitlyn, who is 13, and Marguerite, who is 16 (I’ve used only their first names to protect their privacy), held yellow sheets of paper on which they had written their answers. It was the third day of the weeklong camp, late for icebreakers. But the Hawks are kids with autistic disorders accompanied by a normal or high I.Q. And so the main goal of the camp, run on a 26-acre ranch by a Utah nonprofit organization called the National Ability Center, is to nudge them toward the sort of back and forth — “What’s your favorite video game?” — that comes easily to most kids.
Along with Caitlyn and Marguerite, there were nine boys in the camp between the ages of 10 and 18. They also sat across from one another in pairs, with the exception of one 18-year-old who was arguing with a counselor. “All I require is a purple marker,” the boy said over and over again, refusing to write with the black marker he had been given. A few feet away, an 11-year-old was yipping and grunting while his partner read his answers in a monotone, eyes trained on his yellow paper. Another counselor hurried over to them.
Marguerite was also reading her answers without eye contact or inflection. “My favorite vacations were to India and Thailand my favorite thing about myself is that I’m nice to people if I could choose any superpower I’d be invisible,” she said in an unbroken stream. She looked up from her paper and past Caitlyn, smoothing her turquoise halter top over the waist of a pair of baggy cotton pants. Caitlyn was also staring into the middle distance. She has gold-streaked hair, which was bunched on top, and wore a black T-shirt with a sunburst on the front and canvas sneakers with skulls on the tops. The girls didn’t look uncomfortable, just unplugged.
A counselor noticed their marooned silence and prodded Caitlyn to take her turn. At first, she ran quickly through her answers, too. But Caitlyn loves fantasy — she is an avid writer of “fan fiction,” spinning new story lines for familiar characters from “Pokémon” and “Harry Potter” — and the superpower question grabbed her. She looked at Marguerite. “If I could have any power, I’d want to be able to transform into an animal like a tiger,” she said, smiling and putting her hands in front of her face, fingers tensed as if they were claws. Marguerite smiled and tentatively mirrored the claw gesture. Caitlyn smiled back. “I like tigers,” she said, her eyes bright behind her glasses. “Do you?”
It was a small, casual encounter and also an exceedingly rare one — a taste of teenage patter shared by two autistic girls.
Autism is often thought of as a boys’ affliction. Boys are three or four times as likely as girls to have classic autism (autism with mental retardation, which is now often referred to as cognitive impairment). The sex ratio is even more imbalanced for diagnoses that include normal intelligence along with the features of autism — social and communication impairments and restricted interests; this is called Asperger’s syndrome (when there is no speech delay) or high-functioning autism or, more generally, being “on the autistic spectrum.” Among kids in this category, referral rates are in the range of 10 boys for every girl.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are about 560,000 people under the age of 21 with autism in the United States . (Adults aren’t included because there is no good data on their numbers.) If 1 in 4 are female, the girls number about 140,000. The C.D.C. estimates that about 42 percent of them are of normal intelligence, putting their total at roughly 58,000 (with the caveat that these numbers are, at best, estimates).
Because there are so many fewer females with autism, they are “research orphans,” as Ami Klin, a psychology and psychiatry professor who directs Yale’s autism program, puts it. Scientists have tended to cull girls from studies because it is difficult to find sufficiently large numbers of them. Some of the drugs, for example, commonly used to treat symptoms of autism like anxiety and hyperactivity have rarely been tested on autistic girls.
The scant data make it impossible to draw firm conclusions about why their numbers are small and how autistic girls and boys with normal intelligence may differ. But a few researchers are trying to establish whether and how the disorder may vary by sex. This research and the observations of some clinicians who work with autistic girls suggest that because of biology and experience, and the interaction between the two, autism may express itself differently in girls. And that may have implications for their well-being.
The typical image of the autistic child is a boy who is lost in his own world and indifferent to other people. It is hard to generalize about autistic kids, boys or girls, but some clinicians who work with high-functioning autistic children say they often see girls who care a great deal about what their peers think. These girls want to connect with people outside their families, says Janet Lainhart, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Utah who treats Caitlyn and Marguerite. But often they can’t. Lainhart says that this thwarted desire may trigger severe anxiety and depression.
Other specialists are not sure that girls struggle more in these ways. “This is a profile of both boys and girls,” Klin says of the wish to connect that some people with autism have. But he agrees with Lainhart that it is easier for Asperger’s boys to find other boys — either on or off the autistic spectrum — who want to spend hours on their Game Boys or in a realm of Internet fantasy. Klin and Lainhart also say they think that the world is a more forgiving place for boys with the quirks of Asperger’s because, like it or not, awkwardness is a more acceptable male trait.
This gender dynamic doesn’t necessarily affect girls with Asperger’s when they are very young; if anything, they often fare better than boys at an early age because they tend to be less disruptive. In 1993, Catherine Lord, a veteran autism researcher, published a study of 21 boys and 21 girls. She found that when the children were between the ages of 3 and 5, parents more frequently described the girls as imitating typical kids and seeking out social contacts. Yet by age 10, none of the girls had reciprocal friendships while some of the boys did. “The girls often have the potential to really develop relationships,’ says Lord, a psychology and psychiatry professor and director of the Autism and Communication Disorders Center at the University of Michigan. “But by middle school, a subset of them is literally dumbstruck by anxiety. They do things like bursting into tears or lashing out in school, which make them very conspicuous. Their behavior really doesn’t jibe with what’s expected of girls. And that makes their lives very hard.”
No doubt part of the problem for autistic girls is the rising level of social interaction that comes in middle school. Girls’ networks become intricate and demanding, and friendships often hinge on attention to feelings and lots of rapid and nuanced communication — in person, by cellphone or Instant Messenger. No matter how much they want to connect, autistic girls are not good at empathy and conversation, and they find themselves locked out, seemingly even more than boys do. At the University of Texas Medical School, Katherine Loveland, a psychiatry professor, recently compared 700 autistic boys and 300 autistic girls and found that while the boys’ “abnormal communications” decreased as I.Q. scores rose, the girls’ did not. “Girls will have more trouble with social networks if they’re having greater difficulty with communication and language,” she says.
And so girls with autism and normal intelligence may end up at a particular disadvantage. In a new study published in May, a group of German researchers compared 23 high-functioning autistic girls with 23 high-functioning boys between the ages of 5 and 20, matching them for age, I.Q. and autism diagnosis. Parents reported more problems for girls involving peer relations, maturity, social independence and attention.
The difficulty may continue into adulthood. While some men with Asperger’s marry and have families, women almost never do, psychiatrists observe. A 2004 study by two prominent British researchers, Michael Rutter and Patricia Howlin, followed 68 high-functioning autistics over more than two decades. The group included only seven women, too small a sample to reach solid conclusions about gender differences, Rutter and Howlin caution. But 15 men — 22 percent of the sample — rated “good” or “very good” for educational attainment, employment, relationships and independent living, while no women did. Two women rated “fair,” compared with 11 men, and the other five women were counted as “poor” or “very poor.” None had gone to college. None reported having friends or living on their own. Only one had a job. Undermined by anxiety and depression, women with autism appear to be more often confined to the small world of their families.
When Caitlyn started kindergarten and didn’t play normally with other kids, her mother, Juli, thought it was because she hadn’t gone to preschool. The first warning of real trouble came from the first-grade gym teacher, who told Juli that Caitlyn exposed herself to the class. Caitlyn is overweight, and she has always been private about her body. Juli couldn’t imagine her daughter taking off her clothes in public, and when she asked what had happened, Caitlyn said another girl had pulled down her pants. “Caitlyn stood there mortified,” Juli says. “But she couldn’t express that to the teacher.”
Caitlyn lives with her mother, her older sister, the girls’ great-grandparents and a pair of poodles in Farmington , outside of Salt Lake City . (Her father died before she was 2.) Until second grade, Caitlyn had a neighborhood friend with whom she went to school. Other than that, she was often alone in class. Her teachers were frequently frustrated with her inability to work and play in groups. But she connected with a few adults — in fifth grade, one class aide took her horseback riding, and the school librarian gave Caitlyn her own copy of “Spindle’s End,” a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty,” “because she said I helped her so much,” Caitlyn remembers.
Contrary to the Asperger’s stereotype, Caitlyn struggles in math but tests in the highly gifted range in reading and writing. This is another sex difference that Lord sees among her patients. “I don’t have any real data, but a lot of high-functioning girls are real readers — not great on subtleties, but they like fantasies and the ‘Baby-Sitters’ series,” she says. “The boys are much less so.”
In elementary school, Caitlyn went to special-education classes for math and social skills. At 11, as other girls began to slip out of reach, Asperger’s was diagnosed. The shift a year later to junior high for seventh grade was a jolt. By the second week of school, a few boys were mocking Caitlyn’s weight and calling her weird while other kids laughed. “No one would sit by me at lunch,” Caitlyn says. Girls told her that they didn’t want her to be in their reading group. Caitlyn did her homework, but she was too anxious to walk to the front of the room to turn it in. At home, her neighborhood friend no longer came out to play.
In the winter, Caitlyn switched from a special-education math class into a mainstream one, and the kids in her new class made her miserable. For days she refused to go to school. She told Lainhart: “No one likes me at lunch. I’m very sad.” (With Juli’s and Caitlyn’s permission, I read Lainhart’s notes on Caitlyn’s treatment.) After a huge outburst of anger at home, Caitlyn told her mother that she wanted to die. At her next appointment with Lainhart, she said: “I listen to people’s conversations during free time in science. They talk about live games, R-rated movies, outfits. I feel left out.” Caitlyn told Lainhart about two dreams. In one, her school had a bridge running through it, and she kept falling off. In the second, she was in the lunchroom throwing a party; no one came. Lainhart says that while boys are aware of rejection and bullying, in her experience they are not hurt by it to the extent that some girls are. “I have rarely had a male patient with autism become suicidal or express such intense emotional pain,” she says.
Caitlyn has never hit another child. But at school, her retorts to her peers — “I yelled at a . . . little bimbo. They yelled at me,” she told Lainhart during one appointment — pushed them further away. With Lainhart’s help, Juli persuaded the school to let her daughter eat lunch in a classroom rather than in the cafeteria. Still, Caitlyn’s grades dropped from A’s and B’s to D’s and F’s. Her anxiety level spiked, and her sadness bloomed into depression.
Lainhart has seen the same blend of anxiety and depression in other female patients. Like Caitlyn, Marguerite’s serious problems date from middle school. In sixth grade, she moved to Salt Lake City and away from a couple of strong friendships, and she couldn’t replace them. “She found it increasingly difficult to do the things necessary to maintain friendships with ‘normal’ kids,” her father says. Last fall, at 15, she withdrew further. An olive-skinned girl with thick brown hair — she was adopted from Guatemala as a baby — Marguerite has always liked to go shopping and wear pretty things (not a typical trait for a girl with autism, though not unique either). But she stopped dressing herself, washing her hair and going to school. For months, Marguerite spiraled into one of the worst bouts of depression Lainhart has ever seen.
Since 1990, when she was recruited to work with autistic children by Susan Folstein, a prominent Johns Hopkins researcher, Lainhart has been interested in the relationship between autism and depression. In a 1994 paper, Lainhart and Folstein pointed out that despite the 4-to-1 male-female ratio for autism, females made up half the autistic patients with mood disorders described in the medical literature. The case reports may not represent the population as a whole; still, the overrepresentation is suggestive. Lainhart is currently looking at the relationship between autism and depression in boys and girls and the potential link to depression in their parents and siblings. “We know that anxiety and depression are co-morbid,” meaning that they occur together, Lainhart says. “And we know that depression is worse for women in the general population. But what’s the link to autism? And is it worse for girls?”
Social anxiety affects Lainhart’s female patients into adulthood. Liz Lee, who is 43, is studying for her master’s degree in electrical engineering, yet she cannot cope with going to lunch with the other graduate students at the lab where she works. Ash Baxter, who is 22, spends hours making art, sewing dolls with wild yarn hair and macramé-edged suits; she created an extraordinary blue-and-gold octopus mask out of a three-foot gourd she found in the garage. She is talented and would like to attend art school, but Baxter can’t master her anxiety well enough to learn to drive or live in a dorm, so college art classes remain out of reach. Another patient, Charlotte (she asked that I not use her last name) is 23 and goes to a social-skills class that Lainhart runs for her patients in their late teens and early 20s. Because of the dearth of females, the class is mostly male, and Charlotte often leaves in the middle saying she’s “stressed out.” “She can only take so much,” her mother told me. Lainhart says, “You see these incredible areas of anxiety in Liz and Charlotte and Marguerite that don’t seem to have a parallel in the boys and men.”
There is preliminary evidence that girls and women also vary from the male Asperger’s profile in terms of their interests, as Catherine Lord suggests. David Skuse, a psychiatry professor at the Institute of Child Health at University College London, has analyzed data from 1,000 children, 700 of them on the autistic spectrum. “Girls with autism are rarely fascinated with numbers and rarely have stores of arcane knowledge, and this is reflected in the interests of females in the general population,” Skuse explains. “The girls are strikingly different from the boys in this respect.”
With her high aptitude for reading and writing and her difficulties with math, Caitlyn fits Skuse’s model. Even as she was failing school last year, she kept up her fan fiction, posting stories she had written on the Web site Gaia Online. On the 40-mile drive home from camp, she told me about her plan to write an original eight-book fantasy series about a werewolf, to be called “Midnight Wind.”
One of the best-known theorists on sex difference and autism, Simon Baron-Cohen, comes at these questions from another angle. A psychology professor and director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, Baron-Cohen has characterized autism as a condition of the “extreme male brain.” His research shows that in the general population men are more likely than women to score low on a test of empathy and high on a test of recognizing rules and patterns, or “systemizing.” High systemizing together with low empathy correlates with social and communication deficits and, at the extreme end of the scale, with autism. Baron-Cohen is currently studying whether elevated levels of fetal testosterone — a prime driver of masculinity — are linked to autistic traits.
Baron-Cohen says that he believes that autistic girls are strong systemizers. That quality may manifest itself in letters rather than numbers. But in his view, the thought processes for Asperger’s girls mirror those of boys. He explains, “These females often feel more compatibility with typical males simply because typical males may be more willing to adhere to the linear, step-by-step form of thinking and conversation — more like debating or playing chess or doing logic.”
To Lainhart, Baron-Cohen’s extreme-male-brain theory is an apt description for a subset of her female patients, for example Liz Lee, who in pursuing electrical engineering is training for a classic Asperger’s profession. Lee is socially aloof: she usually sits on the floor with her back to Lainhart during their sessions, twirling the propeller of a toy helicopter. Eye contact makes Lee angry, and she says she would like to live alone in the desert.
But based on their clinical experience, Lainhart and also Skuse see autism as a heterogeneous disorder. Its profile may change and expand as more is understood about girls, whose autism, they worry, often goes undiagnosed. That is partly, Skuse posits, because girls’ general aptitude for communication and their social competence helps some Asperger’s girls “pass” — they pick up on their difference and carefully mask it by mimicking other girls’ speech and manner and dress. In a sense, their femaleness allows some girls to seem less autistic. It is as if they start off with a social advantage — Skuse sees this as a 20-point bonus on a scale of 100 — that helps counter the disorder. This idea isn’t necessarily at odds with the findings that show girls to be more seriously affected by autism, Skuse says, because the girls who succeed in masking their deficit wouldn’t be included in studies. And so they are missing from the picture. “There is no doubt in my mind that the way we have defined autism currently biases our assessments strongly in the direction of identifying a male stereotype,” he says. The C.D.C. agrees and says that as a result the estimate for the number of girls with autism and normal intelligence may be low.
Why would autism express itself differently depending on sex? The short answer is that no one knows. Genetic researchers, however, have just begun to hint at possibilities. In the last two years, new data-pooling efforts have yielded two major genetic-linkage studies — attempts to link autism to specific chromosomes — that suggest that some of the genes underlying autism may be different in males and females. By isolating sex as a variable, scientists are seeing potential genetic hot spots for autism. “By comparing males and females, we will have a much better chance of discovering the causes of autism,” says Geraldine Dawson, a psychology professor and director of the University of Washington Autism Center, who was a co-author of one of the studies.
Studies that use the latest brain-scanning tools — magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging — generally focus on boys. But a single study of M.R.I.’s of both boys and girls found differences in their brain anatomy. Published in April in The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the study compared nine girls and 27 boys who were matched for age, I.Q. and severity of autism. Other research has established some correlation between abnormally large brain size and autism; the April paper reported that the brain volume of the autistic girls deviated from the norm more than the volume of the autistic boys. Lainhart, who is a member of the University of Utah ’s Brain Institute, has measured head circumference as a proxy for brain volume. (The two are linked.) In a 1997 paper, she reported that the mean head circumference of eight autistic girls at birth was significantly greater than the norm, whereas the mean head size of 37 autistic boys was not.
These are small and preliminary studies, but their findings may relate to a puzzle of autism: while overall, there are more mentally retarded autistic boys than girls, a greater proportion of autistic girls are retarded — 58 percent compared with 42 percent for boys, according to the C.D.C. As for Asperger’s girls, Lainhart, who continues to conduct brain research, says she hopes eventually to shed light on the deficits of girls like Caitlyn and Marguerite and suggest new treatments for them. “In children with dyslexia, scientists identified where the basic cognitive deficits were,” she says. “Then they intervened to go after those deficits, and they saw the brain change in those areas.”
In the meantime, girls with autism and normal I.Q.’s pose a particular challenge for schools. Though mainstreaming has its benefits, autistic kids risk becoming outcasts in a regular classroom. Yet if girls go to a special-education program or a separate school, they are often swimming in a sea of boys. Lord pointed to this as a factor in girls’ lack of friendships in her 1993 study. When the girls in her sample were shifted to specialized programs, “their opportunities to meet girls and women with some common interests were even more limited than those of the boys and men,” she wrote.
The Harbour School in Baltimore has tried to address this predicament. The school has 120 students, all with learning disabilities, speech impairments, attention-deficit disorders and autistic-spectrum disorders. Only 19 of them are girls, which leaves one or two in each class from first to 12th grade. (More boys than girls are also diagnosed with the hyperactive form of A.D.D. and some learning disabilities.) Along with the playful Baltimore street scenes that decorate the walls of the hallways at Harbour, the predominance of gangly male bodies and loud voices was the first thing I noticed on a recent visit. The school felt like a haven — for boys.
And so I wondered whether the girls would feel overwhelmed, as Charlotte often is at her mostly male social-skills class. In the school auditorium at about 9 a.m., there were 13 sixth graders — 12 boys and a single girl, Krissy, whose clinical designation is pervasive developmental disorder on the autistic spectrum. She was sitting on the floor playing Connect Four with one of the boys. She won her game, smiled without looking at her opponent, then got up and walked across the room to another of her classmates.
“Hi, Michael,” she said. He didn’t look up. Krissy sat down next to him and watched him play on his Game Boy. They talked quietly about his progress; she knew the game. A few minutes later, she found her Connect Four partner again, and they decided to play Operation. They talked about the rules, but when Krissy tripped the buzzer, he let her finish taking out the body parts she was maneuvering. Krissy declared victory and moved on again, this time to lie on the floor next to a boy who was building with metal rods and blue glass balls.
“Do you need help?” she asked him.
“No,” he answered.
“Can I at least play with you?” Krissy persisted. The boy grunted. Without talking more, they each built a structure.
Krissy has been at Harbour since first grade, and the small size of her class means that she knows the boys well. Her teachers say she is at ease with them because she shares their Game Boy enthusiasm and watches the same movies. But sometimes Krissy’s interests seem entirely girlish. She was excited about straightening her hair and then styling it into corkscrew curls for her interview with me and showed off pictures she had drawn of princesses, covered with hearts.
Harbour makes a concerted effort to give its girls the chance to develop relationships with one another. The girls’ lunch periods coincide to give them time together. A social worker, Kelli Remmel, runs a regular “girls club” for a group of about half a dozen. “There are some things the girls don’t want to discuss in front of their male peers,” she says. “It’s a chance for them to talk about boys, how to handle hormonal changes, other girls, their bodies, dating.”
Krissy seems to be getting the social opportunities and support that Lord and Lainhart want for the girls they treat. Salt Lake City has good schools for kids with Asperger’s, Lainhart says, but the catch is money. School districts in Maryland , Washington and Virginia pay Harbour’s tuition for more than 95 percent of the students. But districts in many parts of the country — including Utah — don’t pay for private-school placements for kids with Asperger’s. Caitlyn doesn’t go to a school like Harbour because her family can’t afford it; her experience, not Krissy’s, is typical.
Lord and Lainhart try to help by setting up social-skills groups for their patients. But families must pay for the classes out of pocket because medical insurers generally don’t pay for treatment and services that focus on autism — a terrible problem for her patients, Lainhart says. So the groups tend to meet only a couple of times a month for a few hours. Charlotte doesn’t know the boys in her group the way Krissy knows her classmates. At the University of Michigan , Lord runs co-ed groups for younger children and then tries to put together groups of older girls that mix autistic and nonautistic kids. As the girls get older, it is harder to find normally developing girls who want to participate. Twenty years ago, as a clinical psychologist in Canada , Lord started a group of four Asperger’s girls who stayed in touch into adulthood. They called themselves the highest-functioning autistic women in Canada , she remembers, and treasured their solidarity. “It’s striking how much girls with autism can care about each other and other people and develop friendships that are really a source of joy for them,” Lord says. “But when I think of the teenage girls I know, many of them have no shot at forming those relationships.”
At the Hawks Camp in Utah , Caitlyn and Marguerite didn’t become friends. A week earlier, Marguerite and Lainhart had made a list of conversation starters, but Marguerite didn’t really use them. Caitlyn didn’t try to talk to her much, either. The camp lasted only a week; for these girls, not long enough for bonding. Still, Caitlyn said it was the best week of her year. One day after lunch, the Hawks campers drove in two minivans to a nearby lakefront to go tubing and Jet Skiing. Caitlyn changed into her bathing suit, then wrapped herself in a towel despite the strong hot sun. “Do I look O.K.?” she asked a counselor. “It’s just that there are so many people.”
But the other kids were paying Caitlyn no mind. This wasn’t a group that Caitlyn had to fear. She balled her hands into fists, visibly holding her anxiety at bay. “Sometimes I feel like I’m weird and ugly,” she said, “but I’m not going to today. I’m confident!” She strode out to Jet Ski and later returned with a description that she planned to use in a future story: “It was like riding a dragon through the storm.”
Back at camp, the Hawks poured onto the playground. During the school year, Caitlyn had been excused from gym class because she was so nervous about changing her clothes and running around in front of her classmates. As she sat on a swing and watched kids play tag, a counselor named Claire came over. As she and Caitlyn talked, Caitlyn did all the tiny things that people do to engage one another, smiling, laughing, gesturing, looking Claire in the eye. Claire urged her to join the game and called out, “Caitlyn’s playing!” Caitlyn protested. But Claire persisted, and finally Caitlyn yelled, “O.K., where’s the base?” A teenage boy pointed to the monkey bars, and Caitlyn ran for it. Her glasses slipped off her nose, and her shorts slipped a bit, too. She hiked them up and kept running, surrounded by other kids. Sweating and laughing, she yelled, “Safe!”
Emily Bazelon is an editor of the online publication Slate. Her last article for the magazine was about the grass-roots pro-life movement.

ION Kids
A way to keep your EYE on your KIDS

Trish K ordered a kit and will keep you posted on how she likes it

http://www.ion-kids.com/


kptv.com

Family Claims Airline Put Autistic Son In Harm's Way
POSTED: 8:28 am PDT August 7, 2007
UPDATED: 8:38 am PDT August 7, 2007

The parents of a 22-year-old man claimed their son was kicked off a non-stop Southwest Airlines flight to Chicago because he has autism.
Nick Andrews said he was removed from a non-stop Southwest Airlines flight from Portland to Chicago after explaining the mechanics of jet planes to nearby passengers.
“Just told me, ‘Sir, we’re going to need you to step off the plane,’” said Andrews. “I think they may have been scared of me.”
Because of Andrews’ autism, he fixates on things such as airplanes and loves to talk about them.
“I focus on lots of things like carpet cleaners, power engines and jetliners,” Andrews said.
The family claimed that after they put Andrews on the plane to Chicago and made sure he was safe, employees removed him and placed him on connecting flights from Portland to Oakland to Ontario to Phoenix, and finally to Chicago.
A flight that was supposed to take a few hours took 12.
“We had no idea for several hours where he was. He could’ve ended up anywhere in America,” said Andrews’ dad, Dixon.
Southwest Airlines issued a statement, saying, “We deeply regret the inconvenience Nicholas suffered. It appears our flight attendants and employees working at the departure gate were unaware that Nicholas has autism. Without knowing the reason for Nicholas' behavior, our employees had no choice except to make the best decision possible with the information available.”
The family said they are asking for a formal apology from the airlines.

http://www.kptv.com/news/13838990/detail.html


From a Listmate

Web is new battleground for fall provincial vote
Aug 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Ian Urquhart
This fall's provincial election will be fought not only the old-fashioned way – over the airwaves and on the ground; effectively for the first time in Ontario, the battle will also take place on the Internet.
All the parties have websites and are putting increasing emphasis on them. And there is a plethora of interest groups with websites, ranging from property taxpayers to parents of autistic children, as well as individual bloggers and postings on YouTube and Facebook. Combined, they are reaching hundreds of thousands of voters.
Credit – or blame – Joe Trippi. He's the guy who managed Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2003-04 and used the Internet to take his candidate from also-ran status to frontrunner within a matter of months.
Trippi was in town last week to give advice to the provincial Green party, among others.
The Internet provides "a big opportunity" for non-establishment parties like the Greens, said Trippi in an interview. For example, they can take advantage of YouTube as a substitute for television ads, which are out of their financial reach.
"You can put a really powerful video on YouTube and hundreds of thousands of Canadians can watch it, (but) it doesn't cost you a penny," said Trippi.
"The same tool set exists for the Conservatives and Liberals, but they have money to do it another way, so they're not as adept at levering these new tools."
Maybe so, but Liberal and Conservative operatives have read Trippi's book (The Revolution Will Not Be Televised) and are applying some of his principles to their own Internet campaigns.
In the book, Trippi refers to the power of "concentric circles," or "the idea that you could spread a candidate or a cause or any issue like a virus – starting with a small, key group of people and letting them run wild for you."
Accordingly, the Dean website became interactive, with links to other sites, like meetup.com, and interest in the candidate started to snowball.
"The Internet was like concentric circles on steroids," writes Trippi.
Both the Conservatives and Liberals have adopted some of Trippi's thinking in their websites.
The Conservative site – www.leadershipmatters.ca – includes a blog by party leader John Tory and an invitation to visitors to offer their own commentary. Even negative comments are posted.
"You can't get people engaged if you're not prepared to allow for political discourse," explains a party spokesperson.
The Liberal site (www.dalton.ca) is full of YouTube-style videos in which Premier Dalton McGuinty talks about himself and frankly addresses his broken promises.
In launching the site, the Liberals reached out to about 20 bloggers to encourage them to provide links to dalton.ca. It seems to have worked, as the Liberals claim more than 30,000 people have visited the site since it was launched a month ago.
The New Democrats also plan to launch an edgy new website shortly. It will likely include a blog by their leader, Howard Hampton.
But all this effort may pale in comparison to what the Americans call a "macaca moment" – where an amateur video capturing a candidate in an unguarded moment is posted on YouTube and effectively destroys the campaign.
This is a reference to George Allen, a Republican senator whose re-election campaign was torpedoed last year by a YouTube video showing him calling somebody a "macaca."
"That moment is going to happen here," said Trippi last week. "It's just a matter of time."
McGuinty, Tory and Hampton can only hope it's after the Oct. 10 vote.

From a Listmate

Holy Name community raised plenty to fight autism in spring
By Bill Rea

The community of Holy Name Catholic School in King City spent a week in the spring raising funds in their Toonies for Autism drive.
And the amount raised was well in excess of the $1,800 mark
The effort was spearheaded by two education assistants at the school, Kim Parcells and Kristy McCague.
McCague said this was the second year the school has run such a campaign, and Parcells was quick to add things have gone a lot better this time. They raised about $850 last year.
The events started on the Monday with the showing of a video from the Autism Society of Ontario. The Tuesday saw the sale of hot dogs at the school, and the Wednesday it was ice cream sandwiches. All those food items were donated from the community, they added. the Thursday saw showing of a couple of movies, with students buying tickets and popcorn. They saw Flushed Away and Pursuit of Happiness. The Friday featured a silent auction for staff, while students bought pieces of a jigsaw puzzle (the symbol for autism) in lieu of raffle tickets for a host of donated prizes that were available.
Principal Beverley Coles said there was "tremendous outpouring from the community in terms of donating."
"It really brought us together as a community," she added.
McCague said the effort was inspired by the fact there are several autistic children in the school community.
"It's near and dear to our hearts," Parcells added.


Coming to Kitchener Ontario (near Niagra Falls) Sept 29

For parents, care givers, educators and practitioners

Presented by Great Plains Laboratory

A comprehensive bimedical treatment approach for Autism, PDD, and behavior disorders.

Read about the very wonderful speakers and take advantage of the Earlybird Registration Special at:

http://autismtoday.com/kitchener.html

Remaining seats are going fast.

Autism Today

1425 Broadway
#444
Seattle, WA
98122
US




And Finally
Shared by a listmate, a book dedicated to her (the listmates) two boys on the spectrum....
. “I have committed all the money collected from the sale of my book Missing Pieces to the Autism Spectrum Disorders Society of Ontario,” she added.
Book helps survivor process memories
By CYNTHIA GASNER, Special to The CJN
Thursday, 09 August 2007
Many children who survived the Holocaust have never had the opportunity to piece together the fragments of their horrific memories.
Their loved ones tried to shelter them, feeling that children were too young to understand what they experienced. As a result, they carried with them painful, unanswered questions.
“When I was seven years old, my world came tumbling down, and throughout my life, the smallest thing triggers my anxiety and depression and leaves me helpless and paralyzed with fear,” said 71-year-old, Hungarian-born Olga Verrall.
Her 244-page book, Missing Pieces: My Life as a Child Survivor of the Holocaust, was published recently by the University of Calgary Press’ Legacies Shared series.
Her suppressed memories of the loss of her home, the loss of her most loved possession, the loss of her confidence that her parents could protect her, the vicious rape of her mother by a high-ranking SS officer, the suicide of her Jewish friend’s family, and her transfer of fear from the Nazis to the Communists, all deeply affected her life in Canada.
Despite the love that she found in this country, the ghosts of Verrall’s childhood manifested themselves in bouts of psychiatric depression and hospitalization.
Missing Pieces is her search for validation. She describes the pain she experienced here, as well as her courage to try to understand the source of her emptiness juxtaposed with feelings of joy and optimism.
Verrall was born in 1936 in the small town of Szarvas, the fourth child after three boys, to Laszlo and Mariska Berger. Her father was a successful grain merchant, and her early years were idyllic and free of anti-Semitism.
“In 1944, we heard from people who escaped the Nazis what was happening, but for some time, my parents, grandparents and others could not believe it was happening,” she said.
The day the Nazis came to remove the Bergers from their home was a pivotal experience in Verrall’s life, and it shook her so badly that it still haunts her to this day, she said.
“I remember clearly that the German soldiers were waiting for us at the gate of our house. We could take only one possession, and I was carrying my doll Pani, who was always with me. I believe that my mother told me to go back to the house to get a jacket, as it was getting cold and I wanted to get something to cover my Pani,” Verrall said.
“I placed Pani on a table at the gate and when I returned, Pani was gone and the soldiers were laughing. I broke down crying and screaming and said I wanted to die. At the age of eight, it was a most significant loss which affected my entire life.”
Her family was taken to a ghetto in the spring of 1944. They were interned in the Auspitz labour camp.
“Our lives were saved when an acquaintance of my grandfather whispered into his ear that if the Germans asked if anyone had any skills, he should raise his hand,” Verrall said. “My grandfather obeyed this man’s instructions and subsequently, this definitely prolonged the lives of my family.”
Her grandfather later died of starvation.
After they were liberated on April 13, 1945, the Berger family returned to Szarvas and later moved to Budapest. Under Communist rule, the family changed its name to Barsony to deflect attention from the fact they were Jews. She describes this part of her life as another time of persecution.
In 1957, she immigrated to Winnipeg, where other members of her family had already settled. Soon after, she met and married Orland Verrall, the cantor at Rosh Pina Synagogue. She said it was love at first sight.
Being the wife of a clergyman, the birth of their two daughters, Judy and Lesley, and an active communal life brought some contentment and security, but deep inside, insecurity and emptiness would erupt from time to time.
When her husband retired from the synagogue, the Verralls moved to Toronto. In 1992, her husband died and Olga again faced emotional trauma and felt a need to search for meaning and an understanding of her troubled childhood.
She took courses, organized a widows’ and widowers’ group at Beth Tzedec Congregation, and began doing volunteer work at Baycrest that she has continued.
Her search for understanding took her back to Hungary three times. On her third visit, she decided to begin documenting her childhood memories and their effect on her life.
For six years, Verrall painstakingly wrote the book by hand, chapter by chapter, as she looked for the missing pieces of her childhood.
She told The CJN that her early years have given her a deep sensitivity for children who suffer. “I have committed all the money collected from the sale of my book Missing Pieces to the Autism Spectrum Disorders Society of Ontario,” she added.
From the smile on her face, it’s hard to believe that Verrall lived a life of anguish.
“My life purpose is to smile. It makes people smile back. And I have learned that life is the greatest miracle.”

End of Mailing for August 9th, 2007

Autism News Articles for July 18th - 30th 2007

Autism News Articles

July 18-30th 2007
(I was on Vacation over the last week, thus the late mailing..)
Thank you for your patience.

We value your feedback.
Please send comments to the email addresses at the end of this mailing.


IMPORTANT
From Autism Ontario regarding Summer Camp Funding Program:
From: "Margaret Spoelstra"
>To:
>Subject: Talking to families about Autism Ontario's Summer Camp
Program
>Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:58:06 -0400
>
>Hello everyone,
>
>
>
>While we work through the quirks/logistics of Autism Ontario's Summer
>Camp Support Fund, we're finding some trends beginning to emerge. We
>would like to offer encouragement to you and to families who may not
>have applied for the funds due to concerns about the guidelines in the
>application form.
>
>
>
>1) Built in 1-1 worker costs on camp invoices: Although we are
not
>able to pay for program registration fees for specific camp programs,
>some camp programs charge additional fees to parents for 1-1 support
>within the camp program itself. If this is true for a particular
child's
>program, Autism Ontario's subsidy will cover the cost for the amount
for
>the 1-1 worker. We've noticed that some camp invoices state this right
>on the invoice/receipt but in other cases, it is understood, but not
>explicitly stated. With the parent's consent, we would be pleased to
>receive an email or signed note on the receipt from the camp/program
>director indicating the portion of the receipt covers that 1-1
support.
>
>2) Worries about programs occurring later in the summer. Some
>parents have told us that they would not register their children for
>certain weeks in August unless they knew they would get the subsidy
for
>the 1-1 worker. This makes sense to us, and many parents who've
>contacted us about this have made arrangements that are workable for
us
>and them.
>
>3) Many unique circumstances: We are very aware that many
families
>are unable to afford camp fees in the first place. But their children
>could perhaps participate in low or no cost local summer park or
>neighborhood summer recreational opportunities if there was a 1-1
worker
>accompanying them. Many of these situations would qualify as summer
>programming. Workers must be over the age of 18, but may be non-parent
>family members.
>
>4) Cheque turn around time is within two weeks or less upon
receipt
>of 3 required documents. If this time-frame causes financial hardship,
>call us to see what can be arranged.
>
>
>
>We cannot overemphasize our desire to make this program available to
as
>many families as possible, even though there are only 500 spaces in
the
>first year of this program. When in doubt, or to clarify, email
>ginny@autismontario.com or call Ginny Kontosic at 41-246-9592 x 225.
>
>
>
>If you know of families who have not applied, but you think they could
>still be eligible, please encourage them or if you are able to call us
>to get a bit more information on their behalf, that could be a big
help.
>Those who have taken a moment to connect with us often have solutions
>that were not apparent to them until they shared their situation with
>us.
>
>
>
>Thanks to everyone who has already been helping to get the word out.
We
>began receiving applications within days of the program's
announcement.
>Please do not hesitate to forward this message to people who need to
>know about it. Details about the Summer Camp Support Fund may be found
>by clicking on the link on the opening page of our website.
>http://www.autismontario.com/
>
>
>
>Marg
>
>






FROM OACRS
Ask Lindsay Moir:
Summer camp support
Friday, July 20, 2007
Question:
This column is information on an excellent program available to parents ofchildren with autism. Complete details can be found at www.autismontario.com/summercamp . This program funds both AUTISM-SPECIFIC CAMPS and funding for 1:1 SUPPORT WORKERS FOR INTEGRATED CAMP SETTINGS.
I receive several inquiries each year asking if there are subsidies for exceptional children, and usually direct those families to agencies that operate camps for specific disabilities ( Easter Seals, Ontario Camp for the Deaf, Camp for the Blind, etc) or to service clubs to pay for 1:1 support at a community program.
This new funding came from the Ministry of Children & Youth Services (MCYS).
Answer:
MCYS announced a grant of $535,000 to Autism Ontario to create addition spaces for children with autism in Dufferin, Hamilton, Niagara Region, Sarnia and York Region to attend summer camps operated by the local chapters of Autism Ontario.
In addition, at least 500 families with children with autism attending a community summer camp program can apply for reimbursement of up to $585 per child to pay for a 1:1 support worker to accompany the autistic child to a community summer program. Without this kind of support, many children with autism would be unable to attend these programs. Many families cannot afford to pay both the camp fees AND the support worker.
I would like to commend Minister Chambers, MCYS and the Autism Ontario folks for collaboratng so effectively in this project.
Marg Spoelstra, Executive Director of Autism Ontario told me:
"Our goal is to distribute every dime of the 1:1 worker funds we have available to support families of children with ASD to attend summer programs in their community. I think this kind of support can assist children with maintaining skils learned during the school year and create opportunities for generalizing new skills to social settings like summer camp. With 1:1 supports, the likelihood of that occurring increases greatly."
By agreeing to distribute the money on behalf of MCYS, Autism Ontario has kept the claim process simple, and absorbed the administrative costs--ensuring that every government grant dollar goes to families.
I am concerned that many families beyond the autism community are also in need of this kind of support. We need to use this model and advocate for more programs for a wider variety of learners.
The old "summer camp" model was a residential week at a disability-specific setting. These camps are very expensive to maintain and tie up dollars in property costs and building maintenance. Organizations like Easter Seals are currently struggling with the huge financial aspects of this model. They are currently proposing the closure of some camps. Lion's Clubs are reviewing the costs of operation for camps for the blind.
As we move to a more inclusive society, many parents prefer that their children attend local community programs. Because many of these community programs are operated on a day program basis, the program costs are much lower. However, one of the concerns for these usually municipally-run programs is - "Where do the extra support staff dollars come from?"
This new funding strategy offers a model that can be efficiently and effectively operated all across the province and the exceptionality spectrum-----even if your child is NOT autistic, it is worth monitoring this program to see if it could be adapted to your situation. If it works well, can it be expanded for 2008?
"A summer camp subsidy for the 2000s"?
Lindsay Moir retired from the Ministry of Education in 1997 and has been assisting agencies, associations and parents in obtaining appropriate special education services for exceptional pupils.
Family Net welcomes your questions about special education in Ontario.
E-mail Lindsay at ask.questions@yahoo.ca He will answer as many questions as possible.





From OACRS

‘Education should be a given, not a battle’
Wednesday, July 18, 2007 -- Natalie Miller
Without notification, a Toronto-area parent says her son’s schooling plans for the fall were changed last minute from regular stream to special education.
While attending a meeting in May, Lillian Wagman says the change was made without prior discussion.
“I was angry. I was sad. I was scared, says Wagman.
She isn’t alone.
OACRS.com columnist Lindsay Moir has received about two dozen complaints and inquiries from parents about school officials changing their children’s education plans at the last minute. From transportation changes to disrupted support in the classroom for their child with special needs, parents were dealt a blow at the end of the school year. Moir, an experienced educator, reports receiving at least 24 messages from parents delivered bad news abruptly at the end of the June.
Wagman, like other parents, heads into the summer in a distraught state.
“Parents of special needs children have plenty to worry about over their daily care and needs, and education should be a ‘given’ not a battle,” says Wagman.
“We are profoundly exhausted already, but forced to throw down the gauntlet.”
Her son, Michael, 9, who has autism spectrum disorder, is in Grade 3. His schooling has included attending a regular class with support. At the May 9 meeting to discuss his individualized educational plans, Wagman says she saw the error. When the child’s day is spent less than 50 per cent of the time in a special education program, then the child’s placement is regular classroom, says Wagman. When she raised the matter, she says she was told it was an oversight. However, Wagman is now headed for the appeals process.
“They’re trying to slowly push him to special education,” suspects Wagman, noting she wants her son to attend a regular classroom with support at their neighbourhood school with his brother.
“I am forced to appeal this placement and miss more work.”
Moir says he has analyzed the information he has received and says it isn’t an issue specific to the separate or public school boards and the complaints aren’t coming from a particular geographic area. To put the issue of last-minute changes in perspective, Moir received two calls for help last year compared to the 24 he received as of July 6 of this year.
•
FROM Google Alerts

http://www.theage.com.au/news/film/one-more-for-the-rogue/2007/07/26/1185339165249.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap4

Stephanie Bunbury
July 29, 2007
Everyone thinks Alan Rickman is a bad guy, but the silver-tongued thesp tells Stephanie Bunbury he's more like the kindly drifter in his latest film.
Ask anyone outside the movie business and they will tell you Alan Rickman plays villains. It's not hard to understand why. His big break in Hollywood came when he played the evil dude in the first Die Hard film, complete with a comedy German accent. (I know, it's hard to believe that as recently as 1988, World War II was still the primary source of villainous voices. Even now, you can't go wrong with a Nazi.)
Soon after that, he played the perennially unpleasant Sheriff of Nottingham with magnificent, flourishing hatefulness in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. On stage, his benchmark role was as Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a sociopath for whom life was a perpetual game of cat and mouse. Even Rickman's current starring turn, as the funereal Hogwart's teacher Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series, draws strength from the audience's expectation that any character he plays may well turn to the bad - or, in Potter-speak, the Dark Side.
In real life, however, Rickman tends to sigh when people ask him about playing the bad guy. He hasn't played a real baddie, he says heavily, in years. Even going back over his filmography, he was never actually typecast. He was, admittedly, one of the walking dead in Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991), but benevolent with it. Eamon de Valera (Michael Collins, 1996) was, by his own and many other people's lights, a hero.
In Galaxy Quest (1999), my favourite Rickman movie, he was only bad in the sense that an irascible, irritating person would be a bad travelling companion on an involuntary space trip. If his choices demonstrate anything, it is that can play anyone.
"As in anything in life, but particularly in acting," Rickman says drily, "I think it's called 'presenting a moving target'."
Anyway, he finds the whole idea of playing the villain irrelevant to what he does. "I just don't see people as one thing or the other," he says in that famous drawl. "Being an actor is about not judging the characters you play. It's odd for me even to have just one word applied to a character. You don't see yourself as good or bad. You just see yourself as a person who has these needs. And get on with being that person."
In his latest role, as a drifting British former convict in Marc Evans' independent film Snow Cake, he plays a man who is unexpectedly kind. We first see Alex Hughes sitting morosely in a roadside diner in Canada, a stranger in a strange land, when a kooky young girl (Emily Hampshire) approaches him for a lift. Against his inclinations, he takes her. Then a truck drives into them. The girl is killed.
Alex, who was not going anywhere much, decides to change course for his passenger's hometown of Wawa, a tiny and terribly cold place in northern Ontario, with the inchoate hope of offering help. There he meets the girl's mother Linda - played with fierce commitment by Sigourney Weaver - who turns out to be acutely autistic. She loves snow; she is fanatically clean; she is competent to do methodical work, but she can barely function in social terms. Even so, a strange bond of comfort forms between them.
Alex Hughes, says Rickman, is more like him than any other character he has played. "He's very close to me, because I enjoy playing someone who is just doing his best. That's me."
Speaking after the film's first screening at the Berlin Film Festival, he is puzzled by people who ask whether he would go to see the parents of a girl who had died in an accident in his car.
"I think you would. There are times when you just have to hope for the best with an event in your life. And I think that is one of the things the film is about; it's almost Chekhovian. It's: 'You know what? There are times when you've just got to roll up your sleeves and get on with it'."
He loved making the film - especially with Weaver, his old friend from Galaxy Quest, who brought her star wattage to the project at his behest - and living in a small town of peculiarly Canadian friendliness. "There's a community to filmmaking," he says, "and when you're in a small town, it's even stronger."
The snow was melting by the time they were ready to shoot, but locals helped out by raking up snow and storing it in their sheds, out of the sun, then bringing it out in wheelbarrows when it was needed.
"And I have a big memory of the diner in Hawk Junction, because we spent many days there making the car-crash scene. That woman makes the best rhubarb pies."
He loves the film, too, he says, his voice lifting for a moment with enthusiasm. "It's funny, full of light and hope. I hope people get it."
People certainly got it in Berlin: reporters searched for superlatives to praise the moving simplicity of the story, the authenticity and pathos of Weaver's performance and Rickman's taut, sexy turn as the town outsider.
It found its ranks of enemies, however, when it was released a few months later in North America and Britain. "A sanctimonious little affair" wrote one critic, who went on to query whether a man "mooching around town like the saddest camel on Earth" would really be beset, as Alex is, with come-ons from practically every woman in town. Especially - he did not say this, but you could see the words hanging over the page - at his age.
Rickman is now 61. Every day, he said soon after his 60th birthday, he looked in the shaving mirror and waved goodbye to another role. "Suddenly, you're 20 years too old for all those roles you planned to do." But while he may never play Hamlet again, he has recently had a succession of complex, substantial roles that include, as well as Alex in Snow Cake, Antoine Richis in Tom Tykwer's adaptation of Perfume, Sweeney Todd for Tim Burton, and the lead in another independent film, Nobel Son, in which he plays a bullying father who is also a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Yes, he says sardonically, he is still very much here. Along with "a lot of other baby boomers. And we're still in our jeans".
Rickman did not set out to be an actor. It didn't seem to be in his stars, either, as a boy growing up on a council estate in Acton, a drab bit of west London.
When he was 12, however, he won a scholarship to a private boys' school that encouraged his artistic leanings. From there he went to art school and studied graphic design, only choosing acting in his late 20s.
"I'd been doing it anyway, with amateur groups, and it was always just the most important thing to me," he says. "But you have to get one thing out of your system. We were very successful, our graphic design group, so it wasn't like one still thought there were ladders to climb. We'd sort of got there. We weren't making any money, but we were having exhibitions and doing really good work. So I thought, 'This is it', you know. It was time to do that other thing."
He doesn't draw any more but, occasionally, when he has been directing theatre or his one film, The Winter Guest, he has sketched something to show crew what things should look like. He knows, too, that having a trained eye helped him in directing.
"So, I don't know, there is some scheme out there. Everyone has bits of themselves that get used. Or not. It feels the kind of thing I'll get back to."
Rickman met his partner, Rima Horton, while he was at art school. He was 19: they have been together, in a very un-showbiz way, for more than 40 years. She is now a university lecturer in economics and has stood twice for election as a Labour candidate, albeit in safe Conservative seats.
Rickman is also politically engaged. One of his most recent projects was a theatrical adaptation for London's Royal Court of the diaries of a young Washington anti-war activist, Rachel Corrie, who was run down when she tried to stop an Israeli bulldozer destroying a Palestinian home. The play became something of a cause celebre last year when an independent theatre in New York dropped it from its schedule when Hamas was elected, blaming "the very edgy situation".
Rickman denounced the move as "censorship". "I had to say that, didn't I?" he said some months later. "The real irony for me was that we had a situation where two independent theatres were in some kind of conflict which, given the world we are living in, was a great pity."
In all this time, we have barely mentioned Harry Potter. Rickman always avoids it - "I don't want to play with something that has to do with children's innocence" is a typical riposte - but it is the boy wizard who has given him enough leverage to get films such as Snow Cake made. And, of course, he likes playing the professor of potions, whom he sees as "quite an insecure person, always longing to be something else that people will really respect".
"At this point, it's good to have done something for children," he says. "I like the fact it's persuaded children to read. If I'm going to be working when I'm 80, I need them as my audience."
He gives a faint, Snape-like smile that suggests he might prefer them as his next meal. Perhaps it was a glimpse of his forthcoming Sweeney Todd. He's a very funny man, but he does make a good villain.
Snow Cake opens on Thursday.
Six great Alan Rickman moments
Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply, 1991
On second viewing, Minghella's schmaltzy weepy calls more for buckets than hankies, but Rickman's frosty ghost is much sexier than the music therapist who replaces him. Love the scene where he invites his dead mates around to watch Woody Allen videos.
Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, 1991
Rickman gives great panto villain in this silly film, and out-vamps his enemy in a fetching black leather ensemble. "That's it, then," he snarls. "Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas."
Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility, 1995
Although Rickman is strangled as much by his preposterous period neckwear as by his hidden passions, he proves a worthy suitor for flighty Marianne (Kate Winslet) in this top-shelf Austen adaptation by his great mate Emma Thompson.
Sir Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest, 1999
Rickman spoofs Leonard Nimoy and Patrick Stewart in this underrated comedy about superannuated sci-fi actors blasted into space. As the show's resident grand thesp, Rickman delivers creaky catchphrases ("By Grabthar's hammer") until he finally cracks: "I was an actor once, damn it! Now look at me. Look at me! I won't go out there and say that stupid line one more time."
Harry in Love Actually, 2003
In the only tolerable segment of this slice of festive treacle, Rickman teams up with Thompson again to play a cranky boss who combines shaggy sexiness with appalling bastardry. We forgive him, a little, when he gives Laura Linney some advice: "Invite him out for a drink and then after about 20 minutes, casually drop into the conversation the fact that you'd like to marry him and have lots of sex and babies."
Professor Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 2004
The third and best film gives the professor plenty of screen time to be ambiguously hateful: it's the juiciest role in the entire series. The scene in the shrieking shack where he plays off his two high-school rivals, Sirius Black (played by Gary Oldman) and Professor Lupin (played by David Thewlis), is beautifully malicious.

FROM OACRS
From a listmate:
Ask Lindsay Moir:
Provincial campaign questions
Friday, July 27, 2007
Question: It has become very obvious that the provincial election campaign has begun — the first MEGA-ISSUE in education seems to be the funding of religious schools. While this may be of interest to the general public, I am looking for "special education questions" to take to our local candidates and even to the provincial leaders as they swing through our riding. Do you have any suggestions?
Answer:
As a long-term civil servant, I will do my best to be "a-political"! I believe that these questions can be raised with any politician and would help us to understand where that party is going in special education. Remember with "fixed term" election dates, these policy directions will be in place for the next 5 years.
I am open to adding questions submitted by FamilyNet readers to this list — please send them to l.moir@sympatico.ca and I will add non-partisan questions to my column in the coming weeks.
Here are some starter questions to ask your politicians:
• The document, Special Education Transformation (May 2006) outlines reforms to the Special Education system in Ontario. These reforms are seen as favourable to parents and students. Only some of these reforms have been enacted to date. What remaining parts of Special Education Transformation would be a priority for your government?
• Declining enrollment has resulted in declining income for the majority of school boards. As boards wrestle with shrinking budgets, it seems to most parents of special education students, that school boards are disproportionately cutting special education programs and support personnel, in order to balance their budgets. What would your government do to protect funding for special education programs and services?
• Earlier this year the Ministry of Education and the Ontario Human Rights Commission reached a settlement to end the disproportionate use of suspension and expulsion of special education students. In essence, special needs students are NOT to be suspended for "disability-related behaviour" — instead of suspension or expulsion, boards are required to develop behaviour management plans. Giving the fact that discipline is a huge issue in Ontario's schools, how would your government apply the Safe Schools Act in order to differentiate between "disability-related behaviour of exceptional students" and "wilful, criminal behaviour in our schools"?
• Parents of exceptional children are aware of tremendous differences in the levels of acceptance and service of their children, from school to school. Some schools and educators are "inclusive-minded" and embrace and educate special needs children. Other schools work hard to keep them out, or provide "custodial care" programs rather than education. What will your government do ensure equitable access, positive attitudes and program standards for special education?
Well that's a start — please send me some other areas that we need to quiz our candidates on the subject of Special Education . . . more to come!
Lindsay Moir retired from the Ministry of Education in 1997 and has been assisting agencies, associations and parents in obtaining appropriate special education services for exceptional pupils.
Family Net welcomes your questions about special education in Ontario.
E-mail Lindsay at ask.questions@yahoo.ca He will answer as many questions as possible.

FROM a Listmate
July 27, 2007 NATIONAL POST (ALL BUT TORONTO) PAGE: A8 (CANADA)
Quebec police probe autistic boy's drowning
Municipal Day Camp
Marianne White, CanWest News Service
Police are investigating the death of a six-year-old autistic boy who drowned after it took camp authorities two hours to notify lifeguards that he was missing and three hours to contact police.
Lucas Beaupre-Vallieres was at Lac-St-Joseph, about 30 kilo-metres outside Quebec City, on Wednesday with about 100 children from a local day camp. Lucas went missing shortly after his arrival at the beach.
Camp authorities were questioned by anxious parents yesterday and said that the search for the young boy started as soon as he vanished.
"The camp supervisors looked for him and searched everywhere," said Emile Loranger, Mayor of L'Ancienne-Lorette.
The boy attended the municipal day camp.
The child had been missing for more than two hours when camp supervisors asked lifeguards for help, prompting a commotion on the beach where more than 1,000 vacationers were enjoying the warm weather.
After an extensive search, the boy was pulled from the lake at around 2 p.m., three hours after his arrival, and he had no vital signs. He was rushed to a hospital. Police say efforts to revive him failed.
It is unclear how the boy, who was under supervision, was able to go off on his own.
"We want to know what happened exactly and draw a precise timeline," said police spokeswoman Ann Mathieu. "We are not drawing any conclusions yet, but there are lots of unanswered questions," she added.
The municipality is also looking into the accident and is unsure what happened. Ms. Loranger stressed that camp supervisors were experienced and that all precautionary measures had been taken.
"Maybe someone just turned their head for a second, who knows? It never should have happened, so that's why it's called an accident," Ms. Loranger told a news conference.
Lucas was one of the few children with special needs attending the camp and was suppose to have an accompanying adult with him at all times. But his usual supervisor couldn't attend the field trip and he was assigned a new one. The camp director called the young boy's mother the night before to inform her of the situation and she agreed to send her child to the beach with a new supervisor.
For those who suffer from autism, that kind of change can be very troubling.
"I don't know to what extent that young boy was affected, but in general, individuals with autism really dread change. They need routine to feel at ease," says Johanne Lauzon, director of a Quebec autism association.
Autism spectrum disorder is an illness of the brain that affects social, creative and communication
skills. Those affected usually find it hard to communicate with others in a typical way and have difficulty understanding social conventions. As a result, they sometimes respond in unusual ways to everyday situations and changing environments.
Camp officials said the supervisor who was watching Lucas was in shock and has yet to be fully questioned.
Marc Lachance, the owner of the beach, says it's the first time a drowning occurred at his resort since he bought it 10 years ago. "We had more than enough lifeguards on duty and they reacted very quickly," he said.
"But they would have liked to be informed as soon as the boy disappeared. Maybe, you keep thinking maybe, they could have found him earlier," he added. CHILDREN
______________________
July 27, 2007 THE RECORD (KITCHENER, CAMBRIDGE AND WATERLOO) (FINAL) PAGE: A1 (FRONT)
McGuinty minister resigns
Scathing auditor's report forces changes to citizenship ministry
Canadian Press
Ontario's minister of citizenship and immigration had to resign after an auditor general's report found $32 million was given to ethnic groups without an "open, transparent or accountable'' process, Premier Dalton McGuinty said yesterday as he apologized to taxpayers.
In his investigation into the controversial year-end grants, Auditor General Jim McCarter found there was no evidence minister Mike Colle doled out money to Liberal-friendly ethnic groups, as alleged by the opposition. Still, McCarter said the province rushed money out the door without adequate accountability or transparency.
"I wholeheartedly accept that finding,'' McGuinty said following the release of McCarter's report yesterday.
"Clearly we must and will do better. . . . I want to apologize to the people of Ontario for not living up to the high standards that we have set for ourselves and that they are entitled to expect from us.
"The process (Colle's) ministry followed was clearly inadequate. In this circumstance, Mike and I agree the minister must be held accountable and that stepping aside is the right thing to do.''
Government Services Minister Gerry Phillips was sworn in to replace Colle and will have responsibility for both ministries until the Oct. 10 election.
Under Phillips, McGuinty said the province is changing the process so capital grants won't be handed out through the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration but rather through the Ministry of Public Infrastructure and Renewal.
McCarter found that decisions were made in Colle's office without much consultation with ministry staff.
Some organizations got cash when they didn't really need the money, McCarter added.
The Ontario Cricket Association requested $150,000 but got $1 million -- half of which is now sitting in a GIC account, he said.
"Decisions behind who got what were often based on conversations, not applications,'' McCarter said, adding many organizations said they weren't even aware how the minister knew they needed the money.
"More could have been done and quite frankly, more should have been done.''
Colle said he was under "time constraints,'' was personally familiar with the organizations and had "to get the money out the door quickly,'' McCarter said. But that's not good enough, he added.
"We said you had enough time to do a lot more and you should have done a lot more,'' he said.
Although McCarter said he didn't think organizations received the money because they donated to the Liberal party, he said the lack of a formal application process left the government open to accusations of "favouritism.''
"You need a better process in place,'' he said. "There were serious flaws with the process. When you're spending this kind of money, you shouldn't be loosening accountability controls so you can get the money out the door.''
Colle wasn't available for comment yesterday but issued a statement saying his resignation hasn't changed his plans to run in the election.
"I have always worked hard and been passionate about helping new Ontarians settle, find work and contribute in meaningful ways to our diversity,'' Colle said.
"However the program I administered . . . was ultimately not up to the high administrative standards set in every level of this government. That is the auditor's finding and I accept that finding.''
Conservative Leader John Tory said Colle's resignation wasn't enough, given the Liberals had to be dragged kicking and screaming to bring in the auditor general to investigate this "sorry mess.''
The lack of a formal process showed a "complete lack of respect for the taxpayers' money,'' Tory said.
Since it was Finance Minister Greg Sorbara who approved the year-end grants, Tory said both he and McGuinty should take more responsibility.
"There could be a family out there tonight . . . who have a child with autism waiting for treatment and the cricket club -- with which I have no issue at all -- has $500,000 of the taxpayers' money sitting in a GIC,'' said Tory, vowing to make this an election issue.
"What a sorry commentary that is on Dalton McGuinty and his government.''
New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton said the report is vindication for the opposition, who asked non-stop questions about the year-end cash and endured insinuations of racism.
"I think if the public looks at the whole episode here, it paints a really ugly picture of the McGuinty government,'' Hampton said.
"When you point out that they are doing something wrong, they respond by calling you a racist.''
Hampton said despite attempts by the Liberals to downplay the issue, the accountability factor would remain throughout the election period.
"This issue will continue into the election,'' he said. "It says a lot about the McGuinty government and I think people will hold them accountable for it.''
The Liberals initially voted down an opposition motion in April to have the province's auditor examine how the grants were doled out, adding fuel to the scandal that dominated legislative business for about two weeks.
The following month, McGuinty reluctantly called upon the auditor general to review the year-end grants doled out to multicultural groups after enduring weeks of mounting criticism.
INFO: INSIDE: COLLE A SCAPEGOAT, URQUHART SAYS - A10
ILLUS: Photo: Mike Colle, shown here in a 2005 file photo, was forced to resign yesterday as Ontario's minister of citizenship and immigration. ;
_____________________________________

FROM Google alerts- The Star.com

Voices: Grant scandal
Jul 30, 2007 04:42 PM
We asked you whether the auditor general's report about grants to Ontario's multicultural groups will make you less likely to vote for the Liberals this fall.
I am furious with this government for having given millions of dollars to unaccountable sources. I work in the education system, which the province has yet to provide fair funding to. How many special-needs children and learning-disabled kids would have benefited from the $1 million given to a cricket club?
Rita Collins, Colborne, Ont.
What is more interesting about this story is the whopping $15 million grant which the United Jewish Appeal Federation received. With the exception of the Ontario Cricket Association, of the 42 organizations which received grants, the next highest allocated amount weighed in at a mere $500,000.
Ali Sheikh, Mississauga
Yes, I believe that the Government of Ontario is really corrupt. A Cricket Club received $1 million. I am a single parent, on a limited income, with no access to camps or programs in community centers. If there was $32 million to give away, why did they not do it responsibly?
Debbie MacDonald, Toronto
I actually decided against voting Liberal this time when I read your report regarding the spending of $2.4 million of taxpayer money fighting a seven-year court battle against the parents of autistic children.
Carolyn Hood, Toronto
As the parent of a 6-year-old with autism who has been cut off from provincial services by a mean-spirited and reactionary provincial government, I am disgusted that $32 million was available to squander with a wink and a nod while services to families of children with disabilities are woefully underfunded or non-existent. Even to access the pittances available requires us to jump through endless hoops to satisfy requirements. This is in marked contrast to the ease in which Minister Colle handed out his grants.
Robert Shalka, Orleans, Ont.
Yes. The liberals have shown that they're not responsible in managing the budget. It’s ridiculous to think that an organization receives $1 million for cricket and yet the Toronto Police are required to find ways to cut their budget.
Barry Ruhl, Southampton, Ont.
I do not understand the hoopla involving the $1 million cricket grant. It certainly merits question marks and further review. What I want to know is out of the $20 million earmarked for distribution among all of Ontario’s charities, organizations etc, $15 million itself went to the United Jewish Appeal. I would like to know why was so much money went to them alone. Is that not political posturing?
Noam Zander, Toronto
I will absolutely not support the Liberals in the next election and feel there should be a criminal investigation. I assume the minister did not write these cheques himself. Is there no systems of checks and balances on these types of purchases? If not, how much money have other ministers wasted?
Kirsten Barr, Toronto
Corruption in government is nothing new. the ‘Libersatives’ are the only ones we know are corrupt federally because you have to be in power to be corrupt. Let’s vote green and see how long it takes to corrupt them, too.
Larry Laforge, Brampton
I have no problems with sharing our tax dollars with organizations who need help and especially if they involve children's needs. I definitely prefer the money going to good use (no matter what the race or creed) where needed than a high profile minister of provincial government and his buddies going off on golf trips and other such activities (as was the case with the previous governing party) or overpaying CEO's of corporate organizations as has been the case - also with the previous governing party. This definitely wouldn't be enough to sway my vote.
Shelley Gabay, Toronto
As a parent of an autistic child, I find the government’s funding conducts outrageous and sickening. While my son is waiting to receive treatment he needs desperately, the government rushed to hand money to people who don’t need it. How can you tell kids like my son to wait, while giving money to people to put in the bank?
Julie Lin, Toronto
It is very interesting that everyone is screaming about the $1 million grant to CCA. However, out of the $35 million, $15 million went to the Jewish community. That is half of all the funds given out by the minister. The media is only concentrating on the $1 million and the opposition parties do not want to be caught saying much about the $15 million. Very interesting.
Shawn Paltooram, Mississauga
This is just another indication of how sloppy government is with our hard-earned tax dollars. I will be sending the Liberals a message on October 10 that says: 'You're fired'. I hope many others will do the same.
Robert Swift, Point Edward, Ont.
More money wasted; this money should be directed to our floundering cash-strapped cities, because how Toronto is funded has a financial impact on the rest of the country. Don't pull a "Mike Harris" Mr. Premier.
David Smith, Dundas, Ont.
I will definitely NOT be voting Liberal. Toronto is trying to cut costs left, right and centre and the Liberals have the gall to try and buy votes. Is there a group for Canadian-born people who always seem to get the bad end of the deal all the time?
Christine Brennan, Toronto
While I am glad to see that such a generous budget was made available to support new immigrants in Ontario, I am extremely disappointed at how carelessly it has been spent. I hope Mr. Colle will be replaced by someone who will spend our tax dollars more competently.
Shayan Jafrani, Toronto
Why is anyone surprised at this blatant, disregard for our tax dollars? $34 million in grants to these groups when our educational system is cutting programs left, right and centre is just wrong in so many ways.
Karen Harvey, Toronto
I think it's disgusting how taxpayers' money is wasted. Why would a cricket club get a grant when we have people living on the streets. One million dollars is a lot of money that could be used elsewhere. We need a new government. People of Ontario should put their foot down and start speaking out.
Carmen Thieme, Toronto
Supporting charities and community groups is extremely important. However, why is it that the (seemingly cash-strapped) province can shell out millions to community groups while it does not want to provide adequate funding to the City of Toronto and other struggling urban communities on Ontario?
Barbara Wodnicka, Toronto
You keep calling it a scandal. There was no scandal. Just poor paper work. It amazes me how everyone over reacts. If we want perfection, we need God to run everything. None of us are perfect. Please explain to me were scandal was.
Tony Gazzola, St. Catharines, Ont.
I will still definitely vote for the liberals this fall. None of the political parties are perfect if you really want to dissect them, but the Liberals have the least flaws of the lot and the best ideas. Immigrants and ethnic minorities play a very important role in today’s diverse mix of communities. I do not see the harm in helping out these groups and ensuring them success leading to the success of the economy.
Daver Bomi, Toronto
This is nothing new in politics. The Liberal Party has always been noted to throw money around with no concern of the people who pay their wages.
Ellen Coates, Fonthill, Ont.
To me, the Liberals represent(ed) multiculturalism and pro-immigration, but after hearing about this scandal, my perceptions have changed. I am more inclined to vote for the Conservatives. The Liberals have had a few too many scandals.
Menka Walia, Toronto
I respect the Ontario Liberals and McGuinty more than ever over this. I know if it was a mistake made in the Tory party, we'd either never hear of it or they'd deny deny deny. As it is, I'm sure they'll exploit this mistake as far as possible. Expect John Tory to be comparing this with Chrétien starting .... now.
Don Jenkins, Toronto
Is there no commentary on the largest allocation of $15,000,000 to one group? I find the lack of review surprising.
Susan Pugsley, Windsor, Ont.
Punishing the government for handing out $32 million dollars to legitimate cultural groups is like punishing children spending $1 on candy without asking their parents. The notion is silly. To a government spending billions of dollars every year, $15 million is simply pocket change. To expect a government to track every dollar is to expect a citizen to track every penny - something simply impossible. To punish a good government for this is simply absurd.
Frank Zhao, Toronto
So (immigration minister Mike Colle) resigns but he is running for re-election in his own riding? I expected a complete resignation from the Liberal party and won't accept less. What I would like to see is a law where the Ontario people can take him to court and make him give us back our money.
Diana Delgado, Toronto
It is unbelievable that multicultural groups get these huge grants while Christian groups usually get nothing. Our church once asked for help in setting up a youth centre for at-risk youth. We were actually told that it was a great project but not something the government would fund. The project never happened.
Hillar Alkok, Oakville
Just blatant vote buying on behalf of the Liberal party at the expense of the tax payers.
Craig Molineux, Mississauga




FROM A listmate

July 27, 2007 GLOBE AND MAIL (METRO) PAGE: A6 (COLUMN)
POLITICAL MISCALCULATION
McGuinty must shoulder blame for the whole sorry mess
MURRAY CAMPBELL
It took a while, but the first wheel finally fell off Dalton McGuinty's government.
Harinder Takhar remains in cabinet because he withstood allegations that he was "egregiously reckless" in the way he handled his business affairs. David Caplan was able to bluster his way through the controversy surrounding insider fraud at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.
But Mike Colle couldn't survive a damning report that concluded he shovelled $32-million to multicultural groups in the province with barely a nod to standard administrative procedures.
The flip thing to say is, as a colleague suggested, that Mr. McGuinty has finally lived up to his promise to phase out Colle by 2007.
But Liberal strategists will be in no mood for humour today, because Mr. Colle's resignation could scarcely have happened at a worse time. We are just 11 weeks from the Oct. 10 election day (surely Mr. McGuinty must now be regretting his zeal for fixed election dates), and there is hardly any time to repair the damage caused by the minister's resignation.
Once again, the Premier will have no one to blame but himself.
The furor over the year-end grants to groups seen to be friendly with the Liberal Party began last April with a story that the Bengali Cultural Society received $250,000.
The story had legs because one of the organization's executives was vice-president of the riding association of Liberal MP Maria Minna.
The next day, we found out that the Iranian-Canadian Community Centre was given $200,000 just three weeks after it registered as a charity and that its directors included a Liberal candidate in the coming election.
The opposition called for Mr. Colle's head. Instead of acceding, the government embarked on what Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory characterizes as days of "denial, ducking and stonewalling."
The grants issue dominated Question Period until Mr. McGuinty could stand it no more and recessed the legislature three weeks early, a few hours before Mr. Colle was scheduled to be grilled before a legislative committee.
The Conservatives asked about 270 questions in that period. They received no answers and, worse, were on the receiving end of insinuations that they were motivated by racist attitudes.
There's a rule in politics that a minister should step aside when he or she becomes the story. The Premier, perhaps emboldened by his success in staring down attacks on Mr. Takhar and Mr. Caplan, broke this rule. He could have dealt with the controversy by kicking Mr. Colle out of his cabinet last April with the prospect that voters would soon forget.
Instead, he allowed it to build momentum and now, with voting day on the horizon, will have to deal with what Auditor-General Jim McCarter said is the reasonable perception that political favouritism underlay the whole sorry mess.
Mr. McGuinty said yesterday that the process Mr. Colle followed was "clearly inadequate," but he shouldn't have needed Mr. McCarter to tell him that. Anyone watching the minister squirm during his daily grilling by reporters would have come to the same conclusion.
In the coming weeks, you will hear a lot from opposition politicians about the cricket association that asked for $150,000 after it was invited to apply for funding and the next day received $1-million. It had so much money that it spent $20,000 to throw a celebratory dinner (at which Mr. McGuinty spoke) and then socked away $500,000 in five-year, investment certificates.
Parents of autistic children or those running bake sales to buy school textbooks will scratch their heads. And thanks to Mr. McGuinty's faulty political instincts, they won't have time to forget before they head to the polls.
mcampbell@globeandmail.com
700 words / mots.
---------------------------------------------------------------------


FROM A LISTMATE

Some don't go to religious schools for religion


Letters to the Editor
Jul 26, 2007 12:07 AM
Re: Province must keep public funds in public schools, editorial, July 19.

As an autism/behaviour consultant, I found this editorial lacking in depth and knowledge of the situation of families raising children with special needs.

This article contradicts itself; first it states, “Religion has long since been removed from the curriculum at our public schools ...”, yet states Catholics having a school board of their own, funded by tax dollars, is OK.

The reasons for this inequality are irrelevant.

Canada is supposed to be a country in which all people are treated equally. This is clearly not the case.

The real issue here is many children with special needs who go to religious schools do not necessarily attend the school for the religious aspect.

Parents send their children to private schools because standard school boards are not meeting the needs of their children.

School boards are spending millions on special education, but it is not the amount of money spent, it is how the money is being spent.

Parents go to meeting after meeting, with many promises made for changes to help their children, but, very often, years go by with no actual action happening.

The money spent on “training” staff for specific challenges, such as autism, is often used for one or two-day seminars.

This is insufficient to enable teachers to meet the needs of children with complex challenges, particularly when class numbers are so high.

Educational assistant hours are constantly being decreased, which reduces the chance for children with special needs to meet their full potential.

Parents who spend the most on therapy for autism are “punished”, as their children are then “too high functioning” to qualify for maximum educational assistant hours.

Parents of children with autism face financial ruin to provide the therapy their children desperately need.

These families deserve to be supported for the extreme sacrifices they make for their children.

An assistive device costs the same in a public or private school.

In many cases, parents, whose child has tried to make it in the regular school system without success, move their child to a private school, where the child makes progress.

It is shameful to say their tax dollars cannot go to the school where they are having success.

If standard schools cannot provide for the needs of a child, then those parents’ tax dollars should go toward the school that is having success with their child.

That is the bottom line.

Karen Kalpin DSW
Newmarket




FROM
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/CityandRegion/2007/07/24/4363388-sun.html

Autism program boosted
Tue, July 24, 2007
By CP
SARNIA -- A college certificate program in Ontario is being expanded to train more therapists to treat children with autism spectrum disorder.
The expansion of the program to three more colleges brings the total number of participating colleges to 12 across Ontario.
The program is being introduced at Fanshawe College in London, Lambton College in Sarnia and St. Clair College in Windsor.
Children and Youth Services Minister Mary Anne Chambers says the target enrolment is 220 students by 2008-09.
Chambers made the $596,000 funding announcement near Sarnia at the site of a summer camp for autistic children.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/07/23/ot-autism-colleges-070723.html

Ontario to expand autism therapists training
Last Updated: Monday, July 23, 2007 | 4:05 PM ET
The Canadian Press
A college certificate program in Ontario is being expanded to train more therapists to treat children with autism spectrum disorder.
Three more colleges will soon begin offering the program, announced Children and Youth Services Minister Mary Anne Chambers Monday at a Sarnia-area summer camp for autistic children.
The program is being introduced at Fanshawe College in London, Lambton College in Sarnia and St. Clair College in Windsor, at a cost of $596,000.
That brings the total number of participating colleges to 12 across Ontario.
Chambers said the target enrolment is 220 students by 2008-09.
From an American Listmate

Genie In a Bottle
by Shelley Hendrix Reynolds

For a very simple reason over the last six years, I have clung to the hope that my son Liam was insulated from the emotional distress that can envelope a child when their parents divorce. He has autism.

For once, I had hoped that his exceptionality was a perk, protecting his innocence and preserving his heart. I was wrong. Very, very wrong. With his nonverbal days behind him and his growing conversational skills he can express himself, just like any other child that experiences divorce.

His message this summer? He desperately misses the unified family that he once had. His questions and comments mirror the conversations I have had with his younger sister throughout the years. Is it his fault? Why can't we get back together? Why did you get a divorce? Did you love daddy? Did he love you?

In the early morning hours of September 11, 2001, my ex announced that he was moving out. I always found it ironic that the microcosm of our marriage crumbled on that specific date. While he was pulling out of the driveway, I turned on the television and watched the first tower fall. Life is too short. Take a deep breath and move on.

It didn't take long for our three-year-old daughter, Mairin, to exhibit distress as the War of the Reynolds commenced with intense fighting, the upheaval of shuffling between different living arrangements and screaming at one another to stake claims on personal and community property. The skirmishes in the last months of our marriage were nothing compared to the nuclear fallout of our family's final destruction.

Sweet Liam handled it all in stride. No temper tantrums. No meltdowns. Just a gentle acceptance of an enormous change in his little life. I was so relieved. His flexibility with our rapidly changing family dynamic was clearly a blessing given the typical rigidity he displayed whenever his routine varied.

Finances were tight. For a drowning family, therapy was a necessity but almost a luxury I could not afford for each of us. Emotional triage was required to make ends meet.

Liam had his various therapies to continue to learn to communicate by connecting two words together, to learn his colors and to interact with his peers. Mairin was savvy enough to exhibit her best behavior and hide behind the "everything is ok" wall she had constructed. No matter how many art materials her chipper therapist broke out during the sessions, Mairin would paint a happy picture and then fall apart on the way home, telling me everything I had just paid someone $90 an hour to hear.

For years, I had attended Liam's sessions to stretch our dollars by learning the methods of his various occupational, speech and behavioral therapists and trying to implement them. In that same manner, I realized that I could be more effective by spending half of my own session discussing Mairin's difficulties and getting advice to help her adjust from week to week instead of relying on a stranger to connect with her for one hour every two weeks.

Mairin always had a gift for language and is a wise, old soul. Even at the age of three, she would sit and have significantly complicated conversations with me about the changes in our family and life in general. She was a sea of questions that I would answer as best I could to help her navigate the new emotions in her life.

Not once did I ask my therapist for advice to help Liam adjust. On the surface, he seemed fine. He never said a peep.

Six years later, with a lot of persistence and hard work on everyone's part, Liam expresses himself well. We have long since moved beyond basic communications of frustrated gesticulations, wants and needs to higher planes where he effectively discusses his feelings and thoughts. They aren't the same kinds of conversations I can have with Mairin but they are real and they can be deep.

More often than not, these moments are often punctuated with language that requires the skills of Sherlock Holmes to connect the dots. Sometimes our talks are full of singsong language. Sometimes he uses scenes from movies, and the dialogue from them, to get his point across. Sometimes you have to know him on a very personal level to pick up on his references. But he can do it and has enough perseverance to be certain that you understand what he means.

Out of the blue the other day in the car, Liam told me that it made him sad not to have two parents in the same house like Timmy Turner does on the Fairly Odd Parents. He explained that he remembers when we all lived in the same house, what that house looked like and described events that happened there that I had long forgotten. To hammer his point home, as soon as we got in the house, he ran upstairs and dug through my photo albums in my closet. He found a picture of his dad and me when we were seniors in college -- smiley, happy, just engaged. He thrust it into my hand and said, "See! You and daddy loved each other."

For the first time, I sat him down and explained that we weren't able to work things out. Sometimes mommies and daddies cannot pull it together no matter how hard they try and they get a divorce. His lip quivered. He said, "But I am getting better so you and daddy can get married again." I explained that we still care about each other but that we are not going to get back together and are moving on with our lives. One day, we might get married again, but not to each other. Huge tears rolled down his face as he starting moving toward the backdoor. As he turned the handle, he looked back at me and announced that he was going to go to India to find a genie lamp and make a wish.

It was clear that he was recalling Disney's Aladdin movie to assist him in expressing his feelings. His face, the hope reflected in it was too much -- it broke my heart. What hurt more than that is that I have consistently ignored his emotional issues with regard to our divorce for six years because I couldn't "see" them on his surface even though they were right there. His silent struggle and pain have existed with the same level of intensity as Mairin's.

In every other aspect of his life, I knew and believed that he was absorbing information, that he was learning and growing. Even when I had no proof, when there was no eye contact or glimmer of recognition, I have always had that faith. I have always believed that when I told him how smart, wonderful and handsome he was that he knew what I was saying. Somehow it was bolstering his fragile self-esteem even when he couldn't speak a word. He was in there. Even if he couldn't utter a sound he was listening to the all the things that I told him. I have always talked to him like I would have talked to him if he hadn't had autism.

Why did I let something stop me when it came to this one issue?

With the divorce rate in the autism community verging on 70 percent within the first five years of diagnosis and 90 percent within the first 10, parents are faced with a multitude of special challenges with helping everyone adjust to the unfamiliar.

All children in this situation deserve the love and the respect for their parents to sit down and explain to them what is happening to their family and why, to the extent that it is appropriate for their age, or level of development or maturity. Children with autism are no exception. They need just as much reassurance that it isn't their fault. They need to know that they are loved, unconditionally. They, too, need help to navigate the storms that life brings.

Just because you can't see the storm beneath their surface, it doesn't mean it isn't there.



To post comments, visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shelley-hendrix-reynolds/genie-in-a-bottle_b_57189.html .



High school education for kids with special needs ‘in evolution mode’
Wednesday, July 25, 2007 -- Natalie Miller
While past trends shifted kids with disabilities into segregated settings in high schools, times are changing, says a former high school principal.
It’s easier for high schools to place teens with special needs in special education classes, but more and more parents are demanding an inclusive environment for their kids, says Lindsay Moir. Fortunately, younger administrators and school principals, generally, are becoming more open to accommodating parents’ and students’ requests.
“Five years ago, that was a trend,” says Moir, experienced educator and www.oacrs.com columnist, about special education.
He understands why. “High schools are less equipped to handle kids with special needs,” he says. Because students are educated in multiple subject areas by multiple teachers the environment isn’t as conducive to being inclusive as the elementary school system.
“But the world has changed,” says Moir, “especially after exposure to inclusive education in elementary school. There’s a tension there. Although the problem is still there, more and more high school principals, younger administrators and teachers are more susceptive (to integration).”
“I’m seeing creative people who are doing it, but it’s still not enough. We’re kind of in evolution mode.”
Toronto-area parent Lillian Wagman earlier shared concerns with www.oacrs.com about her sons with special needs being pushed in the direction of special education. For Wagman, and parents in her situation, Moir suggests finding examples of inclusive education that work and presenting them to the school staff.
Moir says parents should connect with other parents who have, in conjunction with their child’s school, made inclusive education work. He suggests the Integration Action for Inclusion group (http://www.integration-inclusion.com) as a starting point.
“High schools haven’t caught up with parents’ expectations. Often it doesn’t happen because (educators) don’t know how” to make it work, says Moir.
“Show them where it’s being done and who’s doing it well.”
http://www.oacrs.com/article.php?sid=11&aid=673


Autism program funded; ONTARIO PUTS $596,000 INTO COLLEGE PROGRAM TO TRAIN THERAPISTS

SHAWN JEFFORDS
Local News - Tuesday, July 24, 2007 @ 16:00

Ontario Liberals will pump $596,000 into a newly created Lambton College program to train therapists for autistic children starting this September, MPP Mary Anne Chambers said Monday.

The minister of child and youth services and training, colleges and universities told a crowd at Point Edward's Bridgeview Public School, which houses an autism summer camp, that the province needs to train more people to work with autistic children to cut long waits for therapy.

"There is no simple solution," Chambers said, noting the wait list has reached 900 children.
"We have to build capacity. We knew we didn't have enough therapists in the system."

Autism spectrum disorder is an illness of the brain that affects social, creative and communication skills. To help bring more qualified therapists online, the province will fund three new programs across southwestern Ontario, including the one-year certificate course at Lambton College. The government estimates enrolment will reach 220 students across the province by the 2008-2009 school year.

Chambers also announced $530,000 to help fund summer camps, like the one at Bridgeview Public School.

The local camp, which teaches children life and social skills and helps them retain their schooling over the summer break, operates on a shoestring budget. It will receive $16,000 from the government, enabling it to hire one additional staff member.

"I'm thrilled to see this program receive the funding," said Cheryl Dart, camp co-ordinator for the Autism Ontario Sarnia-Lambton chapter. "There is a need for it. As it stands now, we're full and I've had to turn people away."

Chambers lauded parents of autistic children who have fought hard for services, but she would not discuss a long legal battle with parents who sued the government over its refusal to fund intensive behavioral intervention therapy for children over six, which has cost Ontario taxpayers $2.4 million.

"When you know what is right you should never give up," she told parents at the announcement. "I thank all of you for being strong advocates."


From a Northern teen with Asperger’s Syndrome

WHATEVER IT TAKES


The Needs of Children and Youth with Asperger’s Syndrome: Family and Service Provider Perspectives

RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS WANTED
for a study on
Asperger Syndrome

WHO: mothers of children with Asperger Syndrome

This research involves obtaining the stories of mothers and service providers about the needs of children with Asperger Syndrome.

This will involve a face-to-face (or telephone) interview with mothers and a separate interview with service providers who work in the area.

The interview will take about one hour to one and a half hours, and will take place in a location convenient to you.

All reasonable out of pocket expenses for being in this study eg., meals, babysitters, parking. An honorarium will also be provided.

If you are interested in hearing more about this study, would you please agree to let us release your name and phone number to one of the research assistants on the project who can tell you a little bit more about it?
Or if you prefer, please contact:

Laura Pietrangelo (lpietrangelo@mukibaum.com
Karen Conte (kconte@yahoo.com)
Katherine Boydell at 416-813-8469 (katherineboydell@yahoo.com)


From a Listmate:
NMT Study Seeks Participants
ARI-supported study provides free sessions of non-invasive therapy
The NeuroModulation Technique Research Institute is currently recruiting children ages 5-10 with a diagnosis of autism in 24 cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico to participate in a study to determine if NeuroModulation Technique (NMT) is effective in reducing maladaptive behaviors and increasing adaptive behaviors in children diagnosed with autism.

This research is partially funded with a grant from ARI.

Participants must have had a formal diagnosis of autism for at least one year and meet other eligibility criteria. Children accepted into the study will receive 12 sessions of NMT, twice a week for six weeks. All assessments and treatments will be provided at no cost to participants. NMT is a safe, gentle and non-invasive therapy that has been used to improve functioning in a variety of areas.

Complete study information
Study registration at clinicaltrials.gov

If you know parents who may be interested in having their child
participate in this study, please pass this announcement on to them.


By request:
My name is Marti Veliz and I’m a volunteer with the Autism Ontario – Toronto Chapter. The chapter will be holding its annual Ride, Stride and Glide for Autism Cycle on September 23rd at the Thistletown Regional Centre, 51 Panorama Court, Toronto . We at the Toronto Chapter are inviting everyone from the Autism Community living in the GTA and its surrounding communities to come out, join us and participate in our annual event. It is a family oriented event we will have bouncy castles, activities for kids and a free barbeque lunch. For more information about participating, or volunteering for this event I can be contacted at cycle@asotoronto.org or mjveliz@rogers.com. Please circle this date on your calendar we look forward to seeing you on September 23rd!
Thanking you in advance.
Regards,
Marti Veliz
Autism Ontario – Toronto Chapter
2007 Cycle Organizer

From a listmate

NATIONAL POST July 21, 2007 PAGE: A19 (LETTERS)
Shameful spending
Re: Ontario Reveals Legal Fight With Parents Of Autistic Children Cost $2.4M, July 18.
Whose interests are served when the province spends an outrageous sum and wastes seven years fighting against families struggling to give their children a fighting chance to be productive members of society? Even if the province had decided to direct that sum toward therapy for children with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), 240 lives would have been made immeasurably easier.
Money cannot make an autistic child "better," but the responsible allocation of our tax dollars to assist children and families is one of the fundamental reasons that we all pay taxes.
Randy E. Spiegel, executive Director, Zareinu Educational Centre of Metropolitan Toronto, Toronto.
_____________
July 18, 2007THE EDMONTON SUN (FINAL) PAGE: 21 (NEWS)
Red tape hangup
Mom can't get extra help for autistic son
JEREMY LOOME, LEGISLATURE BUREAU
Alberta's labour shortage left Lorna Robb's autistic son without educational help. Now she wants the province to make good with a little summer school.
The Strathcona County mom says her five-year-old son Connor has been without his nine-hour-weekly aide since April, when the aide left the agency the Robbs access via their provincial Project Unit Funding. The agency couldn't find a replacement.
"There's probably a hundred areas that I could scrounge government money from if they'd let me run their chequebook like I run mine," says Robb.
After it determined the family simply couldn't find another aide, the province doubled the home-schooled boy's speech and occupational therapist time from one hour to two hours each per week. But when Robb asked if Connor's unused aide funding could in part be spent on keeping that extra help until the fall, she was turned down flat.
PROGNOSIS
"If you look at any research or writing on autism, the earlier and more intensive the intervention, the better the long-term prognosis for your child is," she said.
Robb is frustrated the government can't make exceptions to hard funding guidelines when, she says, its mismanagement of the provincial economy has contributed to the shortages that plague her family.
Alberta Education spokesman Kathy Telfer said she couldn't discuss specific cases but any change to a funding arrangement would be up to the local school board or the agency delivering the service.
Liberal education critic Jack Flaherty, a former school superintendent, said hardship cases should be flexible. A departmental review of funding for special needs kids going on this summer would be "ideal" to address the question, he said.
"It's a very legitimate concern when the problem is entirely out of the parents' control," he said. "You have to have empathy and understanding for parents who feel that their child has lost that educational time and now needs to catch up."
In the meantime, Robb is going to start taking courses so that, as a last resort, she can learn how to mentor autistic kids and try and address her son's condition.
"The money is there, it's just a matter of getting it. What does it matter if the money is spent in July or in April? It matters that a little boy gets the help he needs or at least the next best that we can do."
ILLUS: photo Lorna Robb sits with autistic son Connor, 5. Robb's efforts to get extra specialized help for her son through the summer have fallen on deaf government ears.
__________________________
From THE OBSERVER
http://www.theobserver.ca/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=618991&catname=Editorial&classif=


Where is the transparency?
Editorial - Thursday, July 19, 2007 @ 16:00

For a government that came to office promising openness and transparency, the provincial Liberals have been a major disappointment.

The latest gaffe is its stubborn attempt to conceal how much it spent fighting a lawsuit filed by parents of autistic children.

Using the province's so-called Freedom of Information law, New Democrat Shelley Martel had asked the government for an accounting of the bills racked up fighting a lawsuit that sought intensive autism therapy for children over the age of six.

Instead of co-operating on a simple request, the Liberals dug in, choosing to fight a ruling from Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian to disclose the information.

It all backfired this week when the Superior Court of Justice ruled the costs should be made public, forcing Attorney General Michael Bryant to admit more than $2.4 million has been spent on the seven-year court battle, much of it on lawyers.

The government had argued the legal bills were covered by solicitor-client privilege, but stonewalling to limit political damage seems a much more likely motive.

As Martel aptly pointed out, what the government spent fighting the case could have funded treatment for 50 autistic children for a year.

Cavoukian was also delighted with the ruling, calling it a big win for anyone who believes what government spends on certain legal actions should be public information.

Isn't that just about everybody?

By fighting Martel's request, the Liberals turned what would have been a blip on the news cycling into an embarrassing and potentially damaging story.

This is, after all, the party that promised voters more openness and transparency in government.



FROM Google Alert
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2007/07/17/autism-legal.html

Ont. government will release legal bills in autism case: attorney general
Last Updated: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 | 4:25 PM ET
The Canadian Press
The Ontario Liberal government will not appeal a court ruling that requires it to disclose how much it has spent fighting the parents of autistic children in court, Attorney General Michael Bryant said Tuesday.
On Monday, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice rejected the province's request that it not be required to release how much it has spent fighting the lawsuit, brought by parents who wanted the government to cover the cost of intensive autism therapy for children older than six.
Bryant said the government intends to abide by that ruling and make the costs public within 15 days. He said he couldn't reveal the amount immediately because the numbers still have to be compiled.
"Normally with these requests for information they're asking for information the government already has, [but] in this case we don't have a record with aggregate numbers so we're going to have to create that."
New Democrat Shelley Martel had filed a request under the province's Freedom of Information law in 2004 to find out the cost of the province's legal bills but the government twice fought that disclosure.
Martel had argued the legal costs were a matter of public interest, because they would reveal how much money the government wasted on lawyers rather than providing treatment for children.
"For over three years now they have stonewalled me; they have refused my requests to have this information released," Martel said.
"My sense is the reason the government [appealed twice] is because the amount of money here is quite significant and they don't want the public to know."
Crown lawyers had argued the government's legal bills were covered by solicitor-client privilege and shouldn't be disclosed.
"It has always been the position of the attorney general that solicitor-client costs are privileged information, and not just for this case, but for all cases," Bryant said.
From Autism Ontario


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