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Art for Autism help needed and info given
14 years ago
http://www.artistryforautism.weebly.com Is a webpage for my new project that I am undertaking to help my son and others like him. Thought you might like to know what I have been up to lately. Posted a journal from my phone that didn't work so finally got on to post this. donations of traditional art and crafts and of course monetary donations are very much appreciated. A new art show will be scheduled when there is enough art ready and I will make a etsy shop thing for it next week for art I have made that goes to this cause. I am in the miraid of paperwork to make us an official nonprofit . Thank you and any advice and love is appreciated.
I am now 18 and getting along brilliantly in life (I'm going to university this september!) and it's all because I got the support that I needed, otherwise I doubt I would have finished secondary school.
Nice idea and I applaud you for it, but what is needed even more currently is help for adult autistics, there are hundreds of charities for autistic children and lots of focus on cures. Your son will one day grow up and you will find that once he hit's eighteen? That's it, there's nothing out there and virtually no research has been done into helping autistics as adults, much of the paltry help for autistic adults is either almost impossible to get or wrong. Many autistic adults end up consigned to the bin of life, their job prospects are zero. Autistics have one of the worst job ratios of people with disabilities.
Not to mention please read some blogs written by adult autistics, I reccommend ballastexistenz which you can find here: http://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/about-2/ and square eight: http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/ , autistics are not locked in our own little worlds, we do communicate and connect, we just do it differently to you. The only "wall" much of the time is that neurotypical parents and others around an autistic child expect certain forms for communication and so they often miss an autistic's communication efforts because they're not looking for it.
Autistics don't need to "find their voice", neurotypical people need to learn how to listen. We do talk and tell people things, they often don't listen simply because we do it differently.
Also you might want to make your site disability friendly when running a disability charity. The header in particular is hard to look at for an autistic, the bright clashy colors are painful, remember our senses are more sensitive than yours, you might think it's bright but to me, it's like looking at sun glare.
Also the greyish text is not good for people with visual difficulties. It's too light and would blend in with the page for some people.
Also please, try to avoid the tendency to cutesify or pedestal the people you're trying to help. A lot of neurotypicals do this to us, talk about us but never to us. Groups like Autism speaks have never had a single autistic on their staff. They have also done little to nothing to help actual autistic people. Please don't fall into that trap.
I wish you good luck with raising the money though.
PS: btw, be careful, there are a lot of quack doctors out there like Wakefield who peddle false cures or who lie about the condition for personal gain. Some of the "new" treatments are actually dangerous and have had fatal results, chelation is one of these.
And diet therapy sometimes works because gluten intolerance is also mistaken for autism. This treatment analyses both half of the brain first with an lei to find if one is underdeveloped then advises exercise and therapy to work that half if it is. Aaron has had the annalis already and is in need of treatment. And we have seen improvement with just the preliminary exercises. Also had the plan and treatment and MRI approved by his neurologist beforehand.
Thank you so much for the advice on the site. I forget that some autistics are input sensitive. Since mine seeks input and lives bright colors. I will fix the letters and fade the logo when I get home Tuesday. And thank you for the info on adults I will change it to one individual I never planned on just helping children. You are right though there is not much help we can help them get because there is not much out there.
There's a limit to how much someone who is not autistic can know about adult autism having never experienced it for themselves, also knowing two adults with it isn't really a wide selection, that's why I encourage you to read blogs written by autistic people because there's a lot of variance between us and your son may change a lot as he continues to grow. Especially since some of the wording on the site was sliding over into the kind of things a lot of NT's say about autistics.
Sounds like your doctors don't really understand autistics if they think that one, for many of us not wanting to talk much is because it's often exhausting to handle a conversation, with all the things others expect, and the way people talk to us is often like a barrage of information, we drown in a sea of their words so much that we have little time to devote to giving them ours. I was an often silent child myself.
Actually a certain percentage of autistics are also gluten intolerant and having an upset tummy is just another input which can put pressure on us. So the improvements are due to not feeling yucky anymore more than anything.
People can be intolerant to gluten and symptom free for years, and stuff like Celiac does not cause autism like symptoms, that's another of those claims that have been made over the years which can't be backed up in a lab at all.
Good luck with the treatment though.
*hug*