I’m sharing correspondence from Michale John Carley I think you will find useful. – Greg Wood
I’m on Day 4 after returning from Asia and I still can’t get my sleep schedule back. How I can be so lucky in adapting when I travel, yet so lousy at it when I get home?…beyond me. But I’d like to share a little about the gig I just had…11 days. 5 presentations, 3 media appearances, 2 site visits, 1 keynote, 8 million selfies, and numerous conversations, meals, and hours on a plane later, I want to congratulations to all new friends of Malaysia, a country made up of parts Muslim, Chinese and Indian culture who, perhaps due to that diversity, were made for such an embracing of the concept of neurodiversity in their first-ever autism initiative. Not that I’ve (or anyone has) witnessed every nation’s launch of this kind, but it’s easily the first that I’ve seen that wasn’t based on a tragic, medical, or disease model. It was positive at its core, and shone a light on their country’s individuals on the spectrum under the context of what they can do, not what they can’t. Congrats to AIM (Autism Initiative Malaysia), NASOM, EO, and Oasis Place KL. Oh, and…Wanna see a cool, 30-second clip of the closing ceremony? Click
here. FaceBook users can also access some (mix of posed and action) photos
here.
Soon I’ll have a
large article on autism and travel (no relation to the Malaysia trip) to share, and after that, Autism Without Fear will begin its new life at
Sinkhole, but for now please enjoy a reprint of my column from the Huffington Post this past January, “
Packer Protests, National Anthems, and Why Despite His Autism, Green Bay’s Greg Clark Exemplifies All Veterans.” It is being reprinted for Exceptional Parent Magazine’s wonderful special edition for military families (thank you, EP!). You can read it in the lovely advance spread version by clicking
here.
Oh yeah…other articles. Just a few…
• Longtime GRASP Chicago member, Jon Evans, is the guest on
a long interview with the GEM network. What’s beautiful about this podcast episode is that you can hear the host learning as the interview travels on.
• Big thanks to Spectrum Life Magazine for reprinting
my large piece on Autism Peer Supports in (or why they’re not in) Schools. Thanks again to Exceptional Parent Mag for allowing the reprint.
• In this day and age, how parents still get hoodwinked by the nonsense described in
this NPR piece…is beyond me. Can diagnosing clinicians not suggest any sane treatments to help out, please???
• Australian buddy, Prue Stevenson, uses her Taekwondo black belt and spectrum ingenuity to create some fun, video performance art. Watch
the video!
Yours, y’all.
Michael John Carley
Author, School Consultant, Founder of GRASP