Autism Acceptance - A Good Place To Start Research

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Here is another LiveBinder that I designed to help those parents who have recently had their child diagnosed with Autism. It is a great tool and it keeps your attention while diverting any worries that you are suffering from at the moment. There is some great information but not too much that will cause overload and shut down by parents and children alike. I hope this helps some parents. Please feel free to leave more links below if you feel there is something missing. For those that have been working the "Autism Scene" for a while like me, I also made a transition LiveBinder early this year that you may find some use for. I hope you enjoy!
Regards,
~ Holley

How I Calm Down During A Meltdown by Jacob Klein

Jacob's Disclosure About Autism/Asperger's from Decoration & Design

SlideShare is a social media, content creation and sharing platform. I have been using SlideShare for over six years  and it has evoled into a site that I am proud to be a part of. Slideshare, at one time onlly hosted PowerPoint Presentation. Today they also offer for creative PDF's, emails, brochures, newsletters,movies, info graphs, etc. The PowerPoint above Jacob created when he was 12 years old. He wanted to be able o share with his new teachers each yeat about his diagnosis and the symtopms  he has as well as how he calms dow. The below PowerPoint was created by me as I am a huge proponent of accepting Autism rather than working tirelessly to fnd a cure. Those who do this, in mu opinion, only miss some great strides that their children may make.

Autism - One of my Passionate Interests from Decoration & Design

This is a letter Jacob wrote about how he calms down when he is stemming or very anxious. I truly do love having this time with him because I never know what tomorrow brngs so I am finally about to make the best out of any situation that happens my way. Those people who don't practice this will only fail themselves and be a miserable person.

How I Want To Be Treated

The way I wanted to be treated. The article I read talked about autistic people on Reddit talking about how they wanted to be treated and I agree with most of the things they have mentioned. For example, I am horrid with social interactions with new people and I’m as awkward as President Clinton when he got accused of cheating on his wife and he couldn’t lie at all about it during a press conference. To put it bluntly, I’m horrible at it and I’m completely blind to people's tone of voice and facial expressions. People, unfortunately, look at me like I grew a second head and I get embarrassed and it only gets worse from there.

I also love my privacy but people don’t listen to me sometimes. When I say I want to be left alone, I mean I want to be left alone. I am a very chill person so I can’t handle hyper children running around and screaming their heads off. I like relaxing either reading, writing, or just watching youtube. People, though, just don’t have good  common sense like some students at my school. It’s quite annoying when the person I don’t like start talking to me after I said don’t talk to me over and over again.

I’m quite blunt and I’m not subtle when I say something or ask something. It’s not my personality to be subtle and people sometimes don’t like that when subtleness and being tactful is the best solution. I would be a horrible politician and political leader of a party and country; however most politicians are snakes anyway so I don’t mind very much about that. Ah, dry humor. My favorite humor of all time. Insulting politicians aside, I’m not subtle and probably never will be.

Would You Join Our Autism Project?

Jacob and I have been working on a project for Autism Awareness Month. We've made a plan to distribute different types of information in different media forms to raise awareness about Autism. We've been working together on this project which is very exciting for me. I love spending as much time with Jacob as possible.

Some things are assigned to Jacob and some are assigned to me. Other types of information are going to be completed with both of us working collaboratively. When it's all said and done we will have a lot of information for people who have the pleasure of having someone with Autism in their life.

The people we're trying to reach are parents who have just recently found out their child has autism. These parents may be scared, concerned, angry and going through a lot of emotions at the same time. I can remember that day as if it were yesterday even though it was over 16 years ago.

We want to help alleviate some of the stress that parents have especially when there are siblings involved. This can make the whole situation even more worrisome on many levels. Our main purpose is to provide these parents with current credible medical and behavioral information as well as advice, news and stories about others who are in or who have been in a similar situation. However, most importantly we want to give them help. We want them to learn about the autism spectrum and diagnosis itself through objective information as well as Jacob and my personal opinions and experiences.

Sometimes Teens With Asperger's And Social Awkwardness Gets The Pretty Cheerleder

Youth on the high-end spectrum of Autism, formerly known as Aspergers' usually has a higher degree of social awkwardness. This social awkwardness can be doubly hard if the youth doesn't get the positive response they seek. They will then resort to one of two areas - they will retreat to their rooms that are full of solitude and not face the issue of socialization or they will feel the need to dominate a conversation. They will take control of the situation which is not great either as this does not promote "a true give-and-take relationship" **Source

This video really touched me as it portrays many aspects of signs, symptoms, and issues that youth on the Autism Spectrum scale deal with on a daily basis. The first, and most enlightening, is the surprise, gratefulness, and pure joy that the boy shows after realizing what the cake question meant. The video also shows the empathy of some great high school students. It is also great to see that "The boy with Autism can still go to prom with a popular, cute cheerleader" which fills my heart with joy, pride, and hopefulness. Next, it is obvious that the young man is very surprised as if he doesn't believe what is happening. His response is one that seems awkward in some sense but, at the same time, similar to the same way a young man asked to prom by a pretty girl would react.

I decided to write about this topic because of a situation that happened between Jacob and myself. I have been designing websites for a couple of years, teaching myself as I go along. Currently, I am working on two different platforms that I have never used before. When I take on these challenges, I like all the feedback I can get especially since I am teaching myself.

So I called Jacob in the office recently to view a few different options I had developed. First, like many Aspies, he was completely honest with me. He made some remarks that I took as productive and as critical criticism but he felt bad after he told me the truth and started acting very nervous and anxious. I could see it in his body movements, eye contact, fake smile, repetition of the same sentences,  as he paced back and forth around my office, etc. Those are just Jacobs' tell-tale signs of being socially awkward. This scenario brought up some issues that I, as Jacob's parent, needed to deal with and help him overcome the symptoms he feels about being in social situations.

Transitioning in social situations for those with #Asperger's can add another layer to social awkwardness.