Dave (my husband) is English and graduated from Oxford University with a degree in biology. It's a pretty major thing to get recommended for Oxford, and Dave's math teacher, an alumnus, recommended him. Not because he thought Dave was excellent at math. “You get it wrong a lot,” he told Dave about his class work, “but you get it wrong in an interesting way.” He thought Dave had a unique brain and that Oxford could use more of those.

I think about this story sometimes when I watch Billy. A unique brain. Not less, just different.

I didn't always feel this way. When we first got the autism diagnosis, I was scared and angry and all I wanted to do was “cure” my son. I thought it was my duty to find some magic bullet that would wipe the autism right out of his system. And we went through a lot of them, as you can read in this blog.

But as an autistic scientist named Lisa Daxer said in a wonderful article I read this week, autism is a fundamental part of who my son is; it's a way of describing the way his unique brain works.

The wonderful thing about this past long, hard, rewarding, exhausting, surprising summer is the close bond I've formed with both my children. With Billy, it was an invaluable opportunity to really get to know my little mystery, as he sometimes seems to me.

My focus has shifted from trying to cure my son to trying to support him, encourage his learning, and nurture those sparks of interest and passion I see in his eyes. In that way, my job is no different than that of the parent of a normally developing child. Of course, some of our supports will include some speech therapy and occupational therapy and extra assistance with social skills.

But we no longer expect to spend every waking moment in therapy. As Lisa Jo Rudy describes so well in her book Get Out, Explore and Have Fun!, our support of our son also includes taking him to the museum and the park, encouraging his interest in music and getting him lessons in gymnastics (which we hope to start soon) and swimming.

I'm not saying that it's not hard sometimes. Clearly, Billy has communication problems, and life is always going to be difficult for someone who has difficulty communicating what they're thinking. (But he'll be in good company with most men on the planet in that respect.)

Billy has difficulty responding to or asking questions. He confuses pronouns. But he can remember verbatim a story or TV show he hasn't seen for months. He easily picks up phrases in any number of languages; he can now count and say the alphabet in Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Hebrew.

Socially, he's about a year and a half behind his peers. He's learning how to share, greet people, join a game. That may always be a challenge, on some level, for him.

But he's loving and funny and charming. He's just as devoted to his family and friends -- and even almost-strangers (like the school crossing guard) who might not realize their impact on him – as any normally developing child.

And he's happy. We all are. We're not just surviving; we're thriving. Some days we're happier than others – but then again, so are most families. Happiness is a spectrum, just like autism. So is intelligence. So is fulfillment. And acceptance and understanding. "Normal” is most definitely a spectrum.

We're a long way from Billy attending Oxford, but we are approaching the end of his first of week of Pre-Kindergarten at Buck Lake Elementary. It's been a great start to an important year for us. We'll be watching his development and behavior – and the classroom dynamic -- closely to determine whether another year in the public school system makes sense – or if we should start pursuing other options. So far, we're cautiously optimistic that there's a place for Billy's unique brain in the Leon County School system.

A unique brain. Maybe that's what the world needs – or will need – to solve big problems like cancer and AIDS and world hunger and global warming. Maybe hard work and intelligence alone won't be enough. It'll maybe take someone who can see patterns and make connections that a “normal” brain would never make.

I'm not saying that autistic people are going to cure cancer. Or that the only valuable autistic people are those savants who bring some super-skill to the table. All people are valuable. We are each truly unique and special. And we are all on a spectrum.

I can still remember learning to read. It was a very exciting time. I was in first grade, and we were taught phonics with the Open Court system.

If you're around my age, you'll remember the wall cards with the letters and pictures on them, and the chant that we stood and recited every morning: “Block A, Block A ...ay, ay, ay! Beating heart, beating heart ... buh, buh, buh!” And so on.

There was a story behind the pictures associated with each sound. We started with the letter “M,” which we learned made the sound “mmmm...” The picture on the card was a girl enjoying an ice cream cone, and she was the star of the story. I can remember each picture on every card, because it made sense and had relevance to the story.

As we learned another letter, another bit of the girl's story was revealed: At one point she saw a motorboat on the water, which made an “nnnnn....” sound. And at another plot point, she encountered an angry cat, teaching us “fffff...” sound. At various points in the story, she cracked some nuts(C- and K-), knocked on a door (D-), got out of breath (H-), made some coffee (Qu-), and encountered a frog (G-), baby birds (Y-), an angry lion (R-) and apparently, a ghost (Oo-).

I have a couple of points. First of all, the story was exciting. There were ghosts! And lions! And motorboats! And ice cream!

Secondly, I was six years old. My mom had taught me how to read quite a few words before then, but the school didn't actually attempt to teach me to read until I was six.

Billy started pre-K when he had just turned three. Almost immediately, his class began with sight words.

The first word I was taught in school was “ME.” It had obvious significance for me, and I knew how to sound it out because I had been taught the “ice cream sound” (M-) and “Block E” (long E-).

Billy's first word : “the.” How do you teach a 3-year-old the significance of “the.” WHY do you teach a three-year-old the significance of “the?”

In my first grade class, after learning “me,” Mrs. Peel taught us the “knock on door” consonant (D-) and “the angry lion” (R-) and I sounded out the word “deer.” My first book: We Feed A Deer. A little light on plot, sure, but it was followed by Fire! Fire! (long I-) and one about a jewel heist on a boat (long O-) that I remember to this day.

Billy's books are called “pre-decodables” and they are the most boring stories on the planet. In fact, calling them “stories” is a little misleading. They are more like word collections.

Some of the titles are A Table, The Pond and The Cows, and they make We Feed a Deer read like an episode of “CSI: Miami.” I mean, come on, who ever heard of a children's book in which the protagonist was a TABLE?

Here is the actual entire text of The Pond:
"The pond.
He and I are by the pond.
The frog is by the pond.
The pond."

Billy's going to start his second year of pre-K next month, and he will very likely be getting the same material again. The only thing worse than studying The Pond for a week is a re-run of The Pond. I've tried getting these books back out to re-familiarize him with the sight words, but the last time I pulled one out, he just laid his head down on the table and started to weep softly.

His favorite books at the moment are Madeline, which involves crying and emergency surgery and a man with a “hurchy foot” and scars and presents and balloons (these plot twists are listed in the order of their importance to Billy), and Finding Nemo, which has sharks and a blowfish and water and a seahorse and hugs and lots of shouting.

The Pond can't compete. I'm glad he's learning to read at school. I just hope the plotless reading material doesn't cause him to develop an aversion to it.

Books are competing with more stuff than ever for kids' attention. It's never been more important to make their reading material exciting and challenging – even if they are three. Especially if they're three. Have you seen an episode of the "Wonder Pets?" Those animals get around.

For the time being, I'm spicing up The Pond with a few plot twists of my own. I hope it doesn't raise too many eyebrows in the fall if Billy explains how the giant frog at the pond ate the boy who then cried and cried until his friends, the magical fish who were cousins of Nemo, sang the theme to the “Wonder Pets” and saved the day.

Now that's a story about a pond.

If you look around our house these days, it looks more like we're digging in for the nuclear winter than preparing for summer vacation. But getting ready for a holiday period with an autistic child, a period with schedule and scenery changes galore, is a bit like going to war. The options include Extended Year Services through the public schools, a new preschool, or developing a summer program of our own to implement at home.

I don't mean to suggest that we're going to war with our child -- or even with autism, with which we've made a comfortable truce. We're battling “regression,” a term with which every parent of a special needs student becomes familiar eventually.

When the school system – most likely your IEP team – makes a decision about whether or not your child should have Extended Year Services (EYS), their concerns about regression play a big role in that decision. “Regression” refers simply to losing skills your child has attained throughout the year. (I wrote an article about EYS for the Special Needs Examiner, which you can read if you're interested in summer services, but for a variety of reasons, we decided that Billy was better off at home over the summer.)

Billy could happily spend the summer in the middle of a pile of mud with us occasionally throwing fish sticks in his direction. But we want to make sure that the stress of the summer schedule changes doesn't cause him to lose the ground he's gained in academics and life skills this year. Dave and I sat down and talked long into one night about our hopes for the summer, and eventually boiled down our goals to three simple ones:

Potty Training: If you have any suggestions at all in this area, I will pay you for them.

Sleeping: We want to get Billy out of his elaborate enclosed crib-style bed and into a “big boy bed.” Again, suggestions? How do you keep them in the bed if they don't want to stay there? Currently, he goes to bed each night at 7:30 p.m. but stays awake sometimes for an hour reciting books and TV shows and singing the soundtracks of every Charlie Brown holiday special from “Happy New Year, Charlie Brown” to “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” If he weren't in an enclosed bed, he would probably run around his room all night long. I guess we'll find out soon enough if that's true ...

Handwriting/Drawing: Billy has made HUGE strides in this area this year. At the beginning of the year, if handed a crayon, all he'd do is peel it or perhaps chew on it. Now he can write his name, copy some letters and shapes, and he really enjoys drawing.

We wanted to build on that interest and success, so we invested in a couple of different products. The first, “TV Teacher/Alphabet Beats,” is a DVD-based handwriting program recommended by his private occupational therapist. I wrote a detailed review of it here. Billy loves the little rhymes and songs, and I credit “Ms. Marnie” with teaching him to draw a spider.

When we attended his end-of-year conference at school, though, we were introduced to the program he's been using throughout the past year. A really impressive mult-sensory program, “Handwriting Without Tears” addresses what I'm told is one of the biggest problems with special needs kids and handwriting: They get frustrated because holding a writing utensil is difficult for them, so they can develop an aversion to handwriting and just refuse to do it.

“Handwriting Without Tears” doesn't even require them to touch a writing implement until they're ready. Instead, they learn to form shapes and letters first with wooden pieces and then Playdough. Then they move on to magnetic letters on a magnetic erase board before eventually moving up to a slate and tiny pieces of chalk. There's an easy-to-follow teacher's (or parent's) guide and a workbook with fun pre-writing exercises in it.

Despite all the pieces and parts, “Handwriting Without Tears” is actually less expensive than the “TV Teacher” program. For a complete set, both are going to run in the $100 range. However, you don't have to buy every piece at once.

We're going to use a hybrid of the two over the summer. Billy likes to watch the DVDs and draw along with Ms. Marnie, so we'll let him have that as a reward. And for 5-10 minutes each morning, we'll work with the tools in the “Handwriting Without Tears” program.

Who knows? Maybe by the end of the summer, maybe Billy will be writing this blog for me. Wish us luck! (And I'm serious about those potty training ideas – PLEASE post them here!)

We made a few changes to the website over the weekend. I say "we," when I actually mean that Dave made changes to the website while I did 45 tons of laundry. That is apparently what "we" did instead of taking down the "Happy Birthday, Princess" decorations, which are now in danger of becoming a permanent part of our interior design. Well, my birthday is in May so I suppose I could just have the world's first 39-year-old Disney Princess party.

At the right, you'll find a list of the most recent blog posts, as well as what people have had to say about them (under "Comments"). If you want to make a comment, just press the "New Comment" button under a blog post and let me have it!

"News" is a new section we've added, because I got tired of searching for "Autism" and "News" every day, and Dave found this cool site that would let me stream it all directly to my blog.

And on that note, Friday is World Autism Awareness Day, a kickoff to April being Autism Awareness Month.
I know I'm opening a can of worms here, but I have to say that I'm kind of ambivalent about the whole "awareness" months and days and ribbons. Not that I think any of it is bad. I just don't know if that's the best use of money and energy.

We could have a thousand people in Tallahassee get together and do a walk for autism awareness. And that would make a great photo on the front page of the Democrat. And we could all wear ribbons that look like puzzles ... and then what?

While we're doing a walk-a-thon, school budgets are getting cut and there are already fewer speech and occupational therapists servicing more autistic kids in the school system than ever. Or not servicing them, because they just don't have time. Billy, luckily, is getting exceptional services from his school system, but I know that there are backlog of kids in schools across the country, waiting to be evaluated before they can even begin to receive treatment. I've spoken to their worried, exhausted, frustrated parents. Believe me, they're aware.

We can raise more money for research, but if we keep researching the same thing over and over again (vaccination-autism link, which has been studied more than 20 times by the CDC alone), then how much progress are we making? I cringe at the thought that Autism Awareness Month is going to bring a host of new opportunities for Jenny McCarthy to preach her hysterical non-science to unsuspecting crowds.

And sometimes "awareness" seems like a consolation prize: We can't cure it. We don't have the funds to adequately treat it. Researching it is a political snakepit. So we're going to hold a rally, name a month, and make everyone aware of it.

As I write what sounds, even to me, like a cynical, smug excuse for doing nothing, I can hear a little voice in the back of my head asking, "So smarty-pants, what are you going to do? What's your big idea?" For some reason, this voice always sounds a little bit like Pee-Wee Herman.

I didn't have a plan when I started writing this, but now I've kind of talked myself into a corner, and I'm going to make a commitment to you: I'm going to call and write to every local, state and federal government official I can find until I get some answers as to why we don't have more therapists in the school system, and an expedited system for getting kids into treatment. For many families school-provided therapy is still the only autism treatment to which they have access.

I'm going to share the information I get with you and maybe, together, we can all figure where the logjam is and who I need to call or write to next month. Because as much as I'd like to think that Yoko Ono, our new World Autism Ambassador, is going to get everything sorted out by April 30, I'm pretty sure I'll still be making phone calls by the time the November mid-term elections roll around.

I'm totally open to hearing the opposing point of view about the necessity of Autism Awareness Days and the important strides that have been made because of them in the past. I'd be happy to find out that I'm completely wrong on this one, because I want to think that the time and money that's going into promoting this is well worth the effort and resources.