Quotes About Autism

Much like the deaf community, we autistics are building an emergent culture. We individuals, with our cultures of one, are building a culture of many.

The autistic personality is an extreme variant of male intelligence.

No creo que yo sea autista porque Dios pensara que mis padres necesitaban un desafío o que yo necesitara un desafío. Creo que es como si yo fuera un bebé y me cayera una piedra encima y me rompiera la pierna. La causa habrá sido un accidente. Dios no ha impedido el accidente, pero tampoco lo ha provocado.

The books said that the problem with autism was in the brain, and that made me feel like a faulty computer, something that should be sent back or scrapped. All the interventions, all the training, were like software designed to make a bad computer work right. It never does, and neither did I.

I worry about a lot of things, though, when I think about Marjory. Is autism contagious? Can she catch it from me?

Presuming that a nonspeaking child has nothing to say is like presuming that an adult without a car has nowhere to go.

If we can't start by seeing an autistic child as inherently capable, interesting, and valuable, no amount of education or therapy we layer on top is going to matter.

The child who lives with autism may look "normal," but his behavior can be perplexing and downright unruly.

have become not just advocates, but emissaries. Being an autism parent today requires not only stamina, curiosity, creativity, patience, resilience, and diplomacy—but the courage to think expansively and to dream accordingly.

My autism is part of who I am, not all of who I am.

For teaching to be effective, you must be heard, and many children with autism hear better with a picture.

Adults often think that fair means impartial, equitable, unbiased. Family rules, school rules, and team rules apply to each sibling, student, or teammate equally. But autism un- levels the playing field. It potholes the field. All things are not being equal. So our thinking on the subject of fair must change. Here it is: Fair does not mean everything is equal. Fair is when everyone gets what they need.

Cognitive and social learning cannot break through to a child whose world is intrusively loud, blindingly bright, unbearably malodorous and physically complicated to navigate.

DSM-IV unwittingly contributed to three new false epidemics in psychiatry—the overdiagnosis of attention deficit, autism, and adult bipolar disorder.

We wear 'Autism' on our shorts to raise awareness and show support for other families dealing with autism.

I sometimes think I might be autistic because I like to know - I need to know - my beginnings and my ends. I don't have to be in control of it, but I need to know what's going on.

When you've grown up always knowing that there's something that seemed to be different about you from most people - and not being able to understand until my mid-forties that what we were talking about here was autism - I've had to learn an awful let about myself and what I can and can't do and what I can or can't cope with.

Autistic children are very difficult to take care of, especially severely autistic ones. When I was 4, I had almost no language; when I was 3, I had none at all.

When our son's autism was diagnosed at the age of 2, there was no clear prognosis. We didn't even know if he'd ever learn to talk. But we found talented people to work with him and he improved, slowly at first and then more rapidly.

I suspect that among parents or siblings of a person with autism there are higher rates of talents in systemizing.

A lady emailed me that her child had been diagnosed with autism and that hearing my material on the subject had helped her. To me, it just means that I'm making the right decision in talking about this.

The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic, because you keep learning, you keep learning how to behave. It's like being in a play; I'm always in a play.

Perhaps the most surprising recent finding uncovered by the large collaborative effort on the genetics of schizophrenia is that some of the same genes that create a risk for schizophrenia also create a risk for bipolar disorder. What's more, a different group of genes that creates a risk for schizophrenia also creates a risk for autism spectrum disorders.

A placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomised trial of boys with autism found that two to three servings of cruciferous vegetables a day improves social interaction, abnormal behaviour and verbal communication - within a matter of weeks.