Said NBC’s chief medical editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, during a recent Today show segment on Missouri families seeking insurance coverage for autism treatments:
“The burden right now is on the parents and I think most Americans would say that’s not fair because the goal has to be intensive treatment early and get these kids into mainstream school.”
Certainly many families struggle (and then some) to pay for therapies for their children (though thinking about autistic children solely in terms of the “cost to society” emphasizes that they are “burdens” and overlooks all they can contribute, if given the chance). But while integrating …read more

Charlie kept saying this very phrase—-”You know you have the answer“—over and over as we drove home from the beach last night. He had a big smile on his face; he’d been calling out the name of his teacher and favorite instructor (as aides/paraprofessionals are called in my school district) over and over. It was a squelcher Sunday—over 90 degrees—-but Charlie and Jim had still gone for an hour-plus bike ride (with a stop for sodas in an air-conditioned convenience store), and a trip to the ocean was more than called for.
It was nearing 4pm by the time we had …read more

It’s the perennial problem: Is it better for autistic students to be educated at public or private schools, in the district or out? From Union City (CA) to Noblesville (IN) to Atlantic City (NJ), school districts are confronting issues like these: Should they hire their own in-house autism consultants? Or seek the services of highly regarded professional from outside agencies? Should a district create its own in-district program, where autistic students are educated in the same schools as their same-aged students, and where there are ready opportunities for inclusion, and where autistic students attend school in the community they …read more