Every year when April – otherwise known as Autism Awareness Month – rolls around, I ask myself, “Awareness? Awareness of what exactly?” Most times I forget my own advice and try to find a “one-size-fits-all” answer to the question. (My advice: there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all for anything.) Some times I just bail on the question altogether.
This year I decided to try something different. Instead of trying to go “big picture” awareness, I’m going to focus on one aspect – a theme, if you will – of autism awareness. A consistent theme throughout all the various incarnations of this blog, not to mention my life as the parent of an autistic son, has always been that autistic people are just people like everyone else, with the same unique needs and desires as anyone else. It seems fitting that I use that as my theme.
Everyone is different, of course. The challenge with autism is that autistic kids and adults are different in a different way, a way that many people are not familiar with and – more importantly – not comfortable with.
So, for the next month I am going to revisit and repost some old articles and write a few new ones to build on this theme. I will also be looking around the web for others talking about the same theme. If I can make just one person more aware that autistic people are just people like everyone else, I will consider my efforts a success.
Of course, I’m expecting to reach more people than that.
no straight lines 
What a wonderful idea! A full fledged discussion about people with Autism being people. I thoroughly enjoy my children on the Autism Spectrum. They are so pure and direct. I wan’t sure if there were other people who agreed.
Thank you!
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Mylinda,
Thank you for stopping by. Don’t worry, you are not alone in your thoughts.
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I am Principal of a Special School named Chaithanya, situated at Palakkad, Kerala, South India. In our school there are 15 children with autism. All are different. I very much agree with your idea. If we understand them it is easy.
Thank you.
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