Perfect World Cover

A Perfect World (A Father's Quest to Unriddle the Mysteries of Autism) by David Cohen

RANDOM HOUSE

David Cohen's remarkable book is both a journey and a story of home. After his three year-old son Eliot is diagnosed with autism, he travels the world to meet leading autism researchers, educators and clinicians. But the heart of the book is his moving meditation on family and what really makes a good life.

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‘Uncategorized’ Archive

Thank you Bill Sutton, Thorndon Primary School principal

Bill Sutton, the principal at Thorndon Primary school, retired last month after 45 years in education and over two decades at Thorndon School. New Zealand has about 2500 schools and principals are appointed and leave every week, so why is this retirement worth commenting on?
It’s because he’s just the principal you want your local school [...]

Posted in Autism, New Zealand, Schooling, Uncategorized by Hilary Stace on November 25th 2011, no responses

National Standards and Autism – an update

Just before Christmas 2008, the act establishing National Standards testing in education (as well as bigger fines for truancy) was rushed through all its stages in parliament by the newly elected National Government, without any scutiny from the select committee process. 
Soon after that I was in the local supermarket when I saw the Member of [...]

Posted in Uncategorized by Hilary Stace on October 7th 2011, 2 responses

Five Things We’d Like People to Know About Adults on the Spectrum

Reprinted from http://strangeringodzone.blogspot.com/ 7 August 2011 with permission from the author Penni Winter.
Paula Jessop, a Kiwi aspie and friend of mine, was preparing a presentation on ‘Adults with ASD’ recently, and asked us aspies on Facebook, what were ‘The Top Five Things We Want People to Know About Adults on the Spectrum’. The resulting discussion [...]

Posted in Asperger Syndrome, New Zealand, Uncategorized by Hilary Stace on August 19th 2011, 4 responses

How Arie Smith-Voorkamp is helping us become a more inclusive and connected society

About two weeks after the destructive Christchurch earthquake of 22 February 2011, a newspaper report showed the badly bruised face of a young man they called ‘the face of looting’ who had been caught stealing light fittings from a damaged property and had been remanded in jail. The Minister of Police herself responded with comments [...]

Posted in Uncategorized by Hilary Stace on July 12th 2011, 6 responses

Kate’s Story

This is an updated version of  an article in the Parent to Parent National Newsletter Autumn 2011.  Thank you to Kate for sharing her story and Parent to Parent for permission to reprint. Kate is from Southland and is involved with Parent to Parent and Autism New Zealand.
 
2009 started off beautifully for my family. I gave birth [...]

Posted in Autism, New Zealand, Parenting, Uncategorized by Hilary Stace on June 20th 2011, 1 response

Autism entrepreneurship

For the last three years I have been working on an academic thesis about how autism policy could be improved if people with lived experience could be brought into the process as experts. One of my hopes for the future is for autism enterprises run by and for autistic people (with support from NTs like me as required) who [...]

Posted in Uncategorized by Hilary Stace on May 31st 2011, no responses

Stories: A Tale of Two Services

Our youngest child was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes over the weekend, which naturally has rather upset the whole family and will take some time and effort to get used to. But while the memory of these first few days is fresh, we think it might be useful to account for some of the very [...]

Posted in Uncategorized by Russell Brown on April 15th 2011, 8 responses

ASD in New Zealand – update

Russell Brown and Mike King had a lively sesssion on Asperger’s Syndrome on Radio Live last night. Russell namechecked humans several times so I thought it would be good to provide an update of ASD policy and initiatives. It was obvious from the callers that there are still significant regional differences, and finding support for ASD [...]

Posted in Uncategorized by Hilary Stace on June 14th 2010, 5 responses

Story: Sean

I will start with the happy ending. In the last month our son, Sean, age 16, has competed in a music contest receiving a superior rating on his solo piano performance. He also competed in a choir solo and group performance receiving two superiors. He arranged two pop songs for piano then played and sang [...]

Posted in Uncategorized by Russell Brown on March 23rd 2010, 1 response

Marcus’ Story

 Our son Marcus was born after a long and arduous but seemingly straightforward delivery. Birth is traumatic at the best of times, but the following day was pretty traumatic too. Around midnight I received a call from my wife tearfully telling me that Marcus had been having seizures, and had been rushed into the Newborn [...]

Posted in Autism, New Zealand, Parenting, Stories, Uncategorized by Hilary Stace on February 4th 2010, 6 responses