Lydia is a blogger who is in her twenties, and who is a Christian. She loves the Food Network, her cat, and writing. She also happens to have autism. Her blog can give you some insight into what her life is like. Parents can buy her book, which gives her thoughts about raising a child who has autism.
Not all parents of children who have autism will automatically have a good understanding about the needs of their child. Parents who don’t know much about autism are going to need some education about what autism is. They will need advice about how to parent their child, and could benefit from some insight about what it can be like to have autism.
One way to do that is to start reading blogs that are written by adults who have autism. Previously, I’ve pointed out the blog of Lisa Daxer. She is also in her twenties, and is a biomedical engineering major at Wright State University in Ohio. She also happens to have autism. Lisa’s blog is called “Reports from a Resident Alien”. Lydia’s blog is called “AutisticSpeaks”.
Read a little bit of both of these blogs, and you can easily see that people who have autism are as unique as people who don’t have autism. There is a misconception out there that everyone who has autism is “the same”. This is far from the truth.
Lydia has two books published that can help parents of kids who have autism. One is called “Living in Technicolor: An autistic’s thoughts on raising a child with autism”. This book is a collection of some of her poetry, blog posts, questions and answers, and recipes.
There are links on her blog that will bring you to where you can purchase this book, as well as the Kindle version of it. She has a goal to sell 150 copies so that she can raise the money she needs in order to bring her service dog home.
Her other book is called: “Interview with Autism”. This book has answers to 40 questions that parents and clinicians frequently have about people who have an autism spectrum disorder. There are links to where you can purchase this book, and to where you can get the Kindle version.
The subtitle of her blog is “Not despite autism, but because of it”. I’ve read through some of her blog posts about a variety of interesting topics. The most recent blog discusses the impact of Medicaid cuts on the availability of services for kids who have autism. Previous posts include: tips for teachers, how chatter affects her ability to focus, and some thoughts about what “normal” is.
Image by Peter Dutton on Flickr