Tonight, my son Ethan will join several other students from his school district to speak on a panel to teachers, administrators, parents and other members of our community. I am very excited, proud (and just a slight bit nervous) about the event. Ethan loves the spotlight, so I know that he will enjoy speaking to everyone about how Asperger’s Syndrome impacts his life. This panel is the brainchild of our school district’s lead In-Home/Parent Trainer. I love that she asked herself, “Who better to learn about 'Autism Awareness' than from the students who live with it every day?” Simply brilliant! I shared an invitation with friends, family, neighbors, therapists, Ethan’s teachers & doctors and other local parents raising children with ASD. I’ve been very touched by the interest level and number of people taking time out of their evening to come learn more from Ethan and his panel mates.
Ethan and I have worked together over the past several days to review a set of prepared questions (for which Ethan dictated answers and I typed as quickly as I could). Most of his answers were just about what I expected them to be. Further, most of them were painfully short (so I gently prodded for additional details). However, I was surprised when Ethan more or less chose (respectfully) not to answer a question; he said it was “too personal.” Wow. Too personal? This from my little guy who has been such an open book with teachers and classmates (strangers in the grocery store even) about how autism and Asperger’s affect him?

Ever wondered what Interactive Metronome (IM) therapy is or how it might benefit your child or client with an Autism Spectrum Disorder? This guest blog, written by Mary Jones, shares the story of a boy named Ryan who experienced great progress through the help of IM in a private therapy setting and within the home. Our thanks to Mary for sharing Ryan’s story.
RYAN’S JOURNEY THROUGH ASD
By Mary Jones
Ryan is an 8-year-old boy with an energetic, all-encompassing, endearing personality paired with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Raised by his grandmother, Ryan had been seeing me for conventional Occupational Therapy sessions for several years. He loved, craved, sought out and engaged in movement activities at every given opportunity and playing freely within a Sensory Gym was the highlight of his week. He could spin and not get dizzy, climb with never a sign of fear, crash with no sense of danger and his ‘engine’ continued apace from dawn to dusk. I had tried, using all of the clinical management and traditional therapy tools to influence Ryan’s control of his regulation and behavioral skills, with limited to inconsistent results.

Last March (2011) as World Autism Awareness Day approached, I wrote a post – Autism = The New Normal? Here’s what I wrote at the end of the post:
“As April approaches, I say bring on the awareness and bring on a ton of added acceptance for individuals living with Autism Spectrum Disorders, too. Please. But, let us not forget for a moment that we (as a society) need to focus on prevention in a big way. While we don’t fully understand what is 'causing' Autism Spectrum Disorders, we do know there are likely environmental and genetic components – probably working in tandem to create this group of symptoms we presently label ASD. These kids are often very physically ill in a variety of ways, have impaired communication skills, struggle with gross and fine motor skills, experience significant social challenges, and must learn to live with developmental delays, repetitive behaviors/focuses and often cognitive challenges. Autism is exhausting. Autism is expensive. Autism takes a heavy toll on families. And yet, Autism is continually increasing…
This spring, my prayers include thanks to God for the many blessings present in my life, but I’m also praying for future, unbiased studies which will address Autism causation and prevention. We need answers and guidance.
Autism may very well be the new 'normal' if we don’t turn things around soon.
Do you feel the same nagging sense of urgency?”
Now, as I reread my words on the heels of the CDC’s announcement last week that 1 in 88 American children (and 1 in 54 boys) lives with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (up from their last estimate of 1 in 110), I feel a sense of urgency more than ever before.

This guest blog post, about how compounding pharmacies can be a tremendous resource for families raising children with ASD, comes from Ashley Dick, who is a practicing compounding pharmacist and co-owner of PharmaCare Compounding Solutions in Tennessee.
Helping the Medicine Go Down: Addressing the special needs of ASD patients
By Ashley Dick, PharmD
For the parents of a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the many difficulties that come with caring for their child can cause significant stress and frustration, to the point of being overwhelming. Often amplifying these feelings is the fact that the very characteristics of the condition make it exceedingly difficult to treat the symptoms or simply help the child to feel better. Because of the extreme sensory and dietary issues experienced by many ASD patients, traditional forms of medication or nutritional supplements are either difficult or impossible to administer, but there is a solution through pharmacy compounding.

If you missed Part 1 and Part 2 of this guest blog series by Jennifer Dodson about her son, "M," (a handsome and smart little boy with Asperger’s Syndrome) who pursuing a professional acting career, I encourage you to click over and take a look.
Professional Acting with Asperger’s Syndrome: Part 3
By Jennifer Dodson
I often share M’s diagnosis and personality quirks with members of the Production Crew and fellow cast members. I do this AFTER he has booked a job and only when it seems appropriate or necessary to do so. He is different and there are better ways to speak to M than others. For example, when a Director understands that M is very literal and there is mostly black and white and not a lot of grey in his interpretations, they can direct him better. It seems that most adults like to give weighted options to children. For example, if you say, “M if you would like to try it this way…” M will most likely tell you “no.” After all, you did just give him the option to decide if he wanted to do it that way!

This is the final part of my interview series with Dr. Julie Buckley, author of Healing Our Autistic Children. (Click to read Part 1 and Part 2 of the series.) I want to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Buckley for writing about and presenting on this topic in a way that has profoundly changed my perspective and approach to life. I hope that you will enjoy and take something powerful away from this interview series.
LAW: Part 2 of your book is dedicated to guiding parents through biomedical treatments with their child’s doctor; please share a little bit about the standard steps to biomedical recovery.
JB: The hard part about autism is that there is little that is “standard” about the approach we use. It is a highly individualized process – each child is unique in their genes, in their environmental exposures over the course of their short lives, and in the manifestations of the disease process. It takes a careful eye observing, and careful ears listening to a parent to find a starting point for working toward recovery.

As I mentioned in Part 1 of my interview with Dr. Julie Buckley last week, I met Dr. Julie Buckley at the National Autism Association annual conference in the fall of 2010, but I was already familiar with her work. Her book, Healing Our Autistic Children, is one of my favorite books for parents raising children with ASD. In the book, Dr. Buckley shares very personal experiences (as a mother and Pediatrician) about how and why autism is a treatable medical disease. Also, the two times I’ve heard Dr. Buckley speak at NAA, I was greatly impacted. See my post about Caring for the Caregiver HERE inspired by Dr. Buckley’s presentations at NAA the past two years.
LAW: Please share a little about “The Big 3”: Inflammation, Oxidative Stress and Toxicity.
JB: When I teach families about the big three – toxicity, oxidative stress, and the chronic inflammatory response, I use the Venn Diagram approach that Sid Baker, MD and Liz Mumper, MD taught me. We know that autism, classically defined, is at the center of the intersecting circles, where behavior abnormalities, communication problems and social skills challenges intersect. But we also know that physically, autism lies at the intersection of three big problems – gut disease, immune dysregulation and methylation chemistry disturbances. It is these physical problems that give rise to the behavior/communication/social skills problems Leo Kanner observed. And even more fundamentally, it is the “Big 3” – toxicity, oxidative stress, and the chronic inflammatory response – that allow the physical things (the gut disease, the immune dysregulation, the methylation chemistry disruption) to get started, and then those physical things give rise to the behavior/social skills communication problems…it starts to feel a little bit like that old childhood song “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly…”

A couple weeks ago we introduced you to Jennifer and "M" in Part 1 of Jen’s series about Professional Acting with Asperger’s Syndrome. I’m happy to bring you Part 2 today…Part 3 coming in a couple weeks. Enjoy!
Professional Acting with Asperger’s Syndrome: Part 2
By Jennifer Dodson
In my last post, you were introduced to my son M who is an actor with Asperger Syndrome. After getting started in the theater as Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol, M continued to love acting so much we got him a Talent Agent and started going on auditions and booking jobs.
The first time M was on a film set I knew this was going to be a great journey for our son. It was summertime and we drove to Austin for M to be in a short film as a child at a birthday party. Five hours of filming the same pool scene and not once did my son complain or get distracted. Even with the migraine headache he ended up with and the rush trips to the bathroom when the Director would “cut” for a minute so he could throw up did not cause M to lose focus or to want to quit.

In case you missed it on our Facebook page yesterday, there was some talk about preparing for Thanksgiving. I posed a question to our FB friends about how everyone will be celebrating…traveling, staying home, hosting, etc. In my house, Ethan absolutely loves to help me bake anything sweet and has become a real whiz at cracking eggs lately! In the thread, I was asked for my GFCF Cornbread Dressing recipe, so I wanted to share it here, too.
This recipe is from my maternal Grandmother (who was a tremendous cook and baker), it later became my mom’s (who is also amzaing in the kitchen and converted many of her mom’s recipes to be GF many years ago). When I started cutting casein from Ethan’s diet, Grammy’s recipe transformed once again! The result is below. If you give it a try, let me know what you think. (I apologize in advance for the lack of precise measurements – especially in the dressing recipe…I’m a “taste it as you go” kind of cook most of the time!)