“ACT Today! for Military Families” will provide $5,000 grants to military children with autism for therapy and other family supports. These vital treatments and support services will help military children with autism achieve their highest potential.

Autism impacts 1 out of every 88 military children, With treatment, children can make significant gains. Only 7% of military children with autism are receiving some level of ABA therapy under the military health care system, TRICARE.

ACT Today!, which accepts grant applications year-long from families seeking assistance, was alarmed to see that many of the requesting families were military service members. Believing that our country has an obligation to support and care for military families who protect and serve our nation, ACT Today! is committed to make a difference. ACT Today! hopes, with your help, to give $850,000 in grant money to these families.

Military families sacrifice so much. It is time we gave back.

How will the 250K be Used?
$5,000 grants for more than 50,000 families

VOTE NOW

Thank you to Rich for leaving a comment on my site, I have now added the TALK Institute and School to my Pennsylvania Autism Schools page. I love it when readers take the time to inform me of new schools or changes at existing schools as it makes my task of keeping this site updated a bit easier so thank you once again.

The TALK Institute and School is located in Newtown Square and it serves children on the autism spectrum as well as those with apraxia and other language disorders.

Here is a quick blurb about the school directly from their site:

The TALK Institute and School, formerly the Magnolia School, is the nation’s most progressive center for the education of children with autism and language disorders. As teachers, therapists and researchers we are at the forefront of a new, more accurate and person-centered understanding of autism — one that presents autism as a sensory-based movement disorder profoundly affecting language, social interaction and praxis.

I recently read through a study that looked at not only the prevalence of childhood bullying of adolescents on the autism spectrum but also the perception of bullying acts by the child on the spectrum. Yes, children on the autism spectrum, including those with Asperger’s Syndrome, do experience a higher rate of childhood bullying. However, there are also perception problems.

Children on the autism spectrum often have difficulty with Theory of Mind. This difficulty causes some children to misinterpret bullying acts as non-bullying in nature.

I recently wrote an article on the topic for Suite 101, here is an excerpt:

Although the study showed an increase in childhood bullying among those on the autism spectrum, the teachers reported a higher rate of bullying than the students did themselves. Children and adolescents on the autism spectrum as well as their typically developing peers are reporting a lower rate of bullying than their teachers.

Read the entire article: Children with Autism Face More Bullying.

Walk Now for Autism, a series of fundraising events that are part of the Autism Speaks organization, has raised more than $27 million in donations for its 2009-2010 events. The events not only raise funds for autism research but they also help to raise autism awareness.

The following Walk Now for Autism events are scheduled for California and Florida in 2010.

Read more at Suite101: 2010 Walk Now for Autism Speaks: CA and FL: Raise Autism Awareness at Fundraisers in California and Florida

Without going into the mercury/vaccine/autism debate, or my feelings on the matter, I wanted to share a new article on the topic. The article, Mercury levels similar in autistic, normal kids, is a Reuters article that discusses the results of a study from researchers at the University of California, Davis.

The researchers at the University of California, Davis, initially found that children aged 2 to 5 with autism had mercury levels lower than other children because the autistic kids ate less fish, the biggest source of mercury that shows up in the blood.

But when the data were adjusted for lower fish consumption, blood-mercury concentrations among the autistic children were roughly similar to those developing typically. The children with autism had mercury levels in line with national norms.

The 2009 National Vaccine Information Center Conference will be held from October 2-4, 2009 in Reston, Virginia. The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is a non-profit education organization that was founded in 1982 to help advocate for vaccine safety. The first NVIC conference was held in 1997 and featured a variety of presenters included Mark Geier MD, PhD, Andrew J. Wakefield, MD, and organization co-founder Barbara Loe Fisher.

The 2009 NVIC conference speaker list includes the following distinguished professionals:

• Bob Sears, MD
• Barbara Loe Fisher
• Joe Mercola, DO
• Andrew Wakefield, MD
• Peggy O’Mara
• Dan Olmsted
• Kim Stagliano

The conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Reston, Virginia. For more information about the 2009 NVIC conference, call (703) 938-0342.

Jenn graciously declined the books and so I went back to the random.org Random Number Generator. This time it came up with #14, which is Candice. I’ll be emailing you now Candice, congrats!

I came across the website of an organization by the name of AHEADD – Achieving in Higher Education with Autism/Developmental Disabilities. Although my two are young, only five and seven, I often think to the future. Will they want to go to college? Will they be able to go to college? Will they succeed in college? The good thing is that these are parents of children without a developmental disability also ask themselves.

The mission statement of AHEADD states:

Mission – Individualized and Ongoing Support
Currently, accommodations in higher education lack consideration of characteristics that affect the ability of certain students to achieve their potential. While college accommodation plans provide excellent in-class assistance, students with Learning Disabilities, ASDs, AS, NVLD, and ADD require far more comprehensive, individualized, and ongoing support to address difficulties in the areas of organization, social skills, and communication. AHEADD’s mission is to establish and maintain best practices which fill this void in a manner that
respects students as adults, complements the traditional college accommodations plan, and maximizes use of existing campus resources.

As AHEADD grows to meet the needs of a growing number of students across the country, it will continue to set the standard for exemplary support of exceptional students. We also intend to provide this support in consideration of families’ financial burden.

AHEADD currently charges a fee of $4200 – $5350 per student, per semester. We consistently research and pursue opportunities to reduce the out-of-pocket cost for our clients. In addition to securing public and private subsidies for our clients, AHEADD families can reduce the tuition costs by utilizing an FSA and a tax credit available to cover educational costs related to students with disabilities. We continue to petition universities and governmental organizations for funding and believe that these sources of funding may ultimately sustain the support provided through AHEADD.

For more information, visit the AHEADD website.

I have had the fortunate opportunity to virtually meet a rather charming young man, Cale Irwin, via Twitter. Cale blogs at Spectrum Siblings about how he copes, loves and thrives as an Aspergic teen. I asked Cale if he would submit a guest post for my blog and what he has written is a great message for parents and perhaps a glimpse into the future for many of us.

I sat down to talk to a professor lately about doing some summer research. Here were her requirements for lab assistants:

1) A complete devotion to the topic. A willingness to devote 4-6 hours daily to combing the literature and taking copious notes.
2) A willingness to forsake Friday and Saturday night parties to come to the lab to work.
3) An ability to spend work periods isolated from social interaction; i.e. not texting, calling, or inviting over others while working.
4) An acute memory for detail; an ability to notice slight changes in the appearance or behavior of the rats.
5) A strong sense of cleanliness and a need to return everything to its proper place when research is completed.
6) An ability to convey information in a factual and direct manner.

Why is this relevant to you? Because the professor could have said “I want an autistic student” and would have conveyed the same needs.

Many autistic characteristics seem to stand in your son or daughter’s way when attending preschool through high school. You worry about things like, How can I help him broaden his interests? and How do I get her interested in her peers? and When will he stop fixating on that pendulum and look at how cool the clock is as a whole? And these are problems in a school which offers 9 different classes a day, including one specifically devoted to interacting with peers (i.e. recess).

But in college, and the world of research, these traits stop being deficiencies and become advantages. Employers will scour the applicant pool looking for kids just like yours; kids with their unique blend of talents and idiosyncrasies that will perfectly match the need of the company or institution.

When the diagnosis of autism first comes down, many parents are crushed. But that’s partially because they’re only looking at the here and now, at how their child is different from most and how that creates a chasm between them and their peers. But with time, they’ll begin to see that this separation runs both ways; that what the autistic child might be lacking in social graces the neurotypical child is lacking in perceptive ability and dedication.

One of the keys to understanding autism is to look at the world from a new perspective. And when examining the capabilities of your autistic child, this change in perspective is exactly what’s called for.

Cale can be found on Twitter @Frogger11758.

All of the summer camps that I have listed on the site are in the United States but I am noticing that more visitors from Canada are landing on my site. When looking for special education summer camps in Canada, I kept coming across Camp Kirk. Camp Kirk is designed to meet the needs of children aged 6 to 13 that have learning disabilities, ADHD, incontinence/bedwetting and some children on the autism spectrum. They are not equipped to accept children who require one-on-one supervision or who have a history of aggression or violent behavior.

Children may attend one or more of the following sessions scheduled for the summer of 2009:

SESSION #1: Saturday, June 27 to Monday, July 6, 2009
SESSION #2: Thursday, July 9 to Wednesday, July 22, 2009
SESSION #3: Sunday, July 26 to Saturday, August 8, 2009
SESSION #4: Wednesday August 12 to Tuesday, August 25, 2009

All sessions are coed; the fee for the first session is $1,680. The final three sessions have a fee of $2,240 per session.

The camp is located at:
115 Howden Road
Scarborough, Ontario
M1R 3C7
Canada

For more information, contact Camp Kirk at 1-866-982-3310.