Autism Conference 2

Has it really been a week since I've posted? Time flies.

The MAAP Conference on Autism was really quite helpful last weekend. Wife and I learned a good amount of information from the medical, educational, and social points of view. We met many very interesting and warm people. We also had the pleasure of hearing Temple Grandin speak at the conference. She is the author of Thinking in Pictures and several other books on both autism and animal behavior (she has a Ph.D. in the area, which is truly remarkable for anyone, let alone someone with autism). She autographed our copy of Thinking in Pictures. We asked her to dedicate her signature to our son. Someday whenever he starts reading he'll have a really special treasure from this incredible woman.

Naturally we're exhausted and are pretty much on overload from the entire discussion of autism. Nevertheless it was time well-spent. We finally have a good view for what our son's future looks like based on numerous others we met who are living relatively normal, successful lives with autism. It will be slow going for a while, but one promising thing we learned is that the symptoms our son struggles with now will only improve with time. This was VERY encouraging to us; I think this would be harder if Autism was degenerative in nature.