Today I was welcomed into my son’s 3rd grade class (in public school) to read a picture book called “Understanding Sam and Asperger Syndrome” (by van Niekerk and Venter) and share some important information with the students. My husband and I requested this opportunity about a month ago because Ethan has been having some pretty huge challenges with classmates regarding friendship and social issues and we want to do everything possible to give Ethan (and his classmates) the tools they need to be successful in working through these complications. We are very open with Ethan about his diagnosis and the reason for many of his struggles and as a result he is also very open with others in his life so we felt this was a natural next step. During the pre-planning meeting with school staff held to discuss today’s visit, I was also told that we could send a letter home with the kids to help inform parents! I’ve been really excited as I have prepared for this opportunity and I absolutely loved spending 20 minutes with the children today.
For reasons not conveyed to me, the school staff chose not to send my full letter home with the students and decided instead to send an abbreviated version. While the abbreviated version listed some important information (and is of course a good start – for which I am appreciative), it didn’t convey a large portion of what we felt was significantly important...
With that stated, I hope that my letter in its entirety might help some of our readers here. It is printed below.

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…”

Last fall I met Dr. Julie Buckley at the National Autism Association annual conference, but I was already familiar with her work. Her book, Healing Our Autistic Children: A Medical Plan for Restoring Your Child's Health, is one of my favorite books for parents who work tirelessly to navigate the challenging waters of raising children with ASD. In her book, Dr. Buckley shares very personal experiences (as a mother and Pediatrician) about how and why autism is a treatable medical disease. It is well-written, easy to read and filled with tremendous information which helped equip me to be a better mother and caregiver to Ethan. Also, the two times I’ve heard Dr. Buckley speak at NAA, I was greatly impacted. See my most recent post about Caring for the Caregiver HERE. I hope you’ll enjoy Part 1 of our interview series. Let us know what you think!
LAW: Dr. Buckley, Please tell us a little about yourself and your personal and professional “interests” in Autism Spectrum Disorders.
JB: My professional interest in Autism developed as a direct result of my personal interest in Autism. My personal interest in Autism developed involuntarily and very abruptly when my daughter regressed profoundly at the age of four.

Every now and then I appreciate a good surprise. Not a “Surprise! Happy Birthday!” with-20-of-your-closest-friends kind of surprise…I prefer more simple, organic surprises. This week I read a compelling chapter book written from the perspective of a girl with Asperger’s Syndrome. Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine is a refreshingly well-written and powerful award-winning book that caught me by surprise, simply because I had no idea it existed.
As a children’s book author I like to stay dialed in to what is happening in the children’s literature market, especially when it pertains to a topic so near and dear to my heart, but life has been so hectic over the past year that I haven’t stayed as closely tuned-in to the market as I like. So until I came across the title (and blurb) in Ethan’s Scholastic Book Order earlier this month, I didn’t know that this tremendous book…this character…this story...were all waiting patiently out there for me to find them. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Mockingbird.