It's official! Remember back in November when I said we were writing a book? It's out now, available in stores, on Amazon, and even on Audible!! (WHAT???) We still can hardly believe it. THANK YOU to everybody who already pre-ordered - your early sales helped our publisher, Tiller Press at Simon and Schuster, sell more copies to area distributors! If you haven't had a chance yet, you can now pick up your copy today! This book has been over a year in the making, and represents a lifetime of lessons learned, creative ideas, and major insights when it comes to communicating on the autism spectru ..read more

Here is another of our blog posts for Psychology Today! 5 tips for autistic parents to make playing with the kids feel more like PLAY and less like WORK - check it out here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-say-next/202102/autistic-parents-is-playtime-the-kids-wearing-you-out #Parenting #ASDinsider ..read more

Larry and I co-wrote this blog post for Psychology Today - Read it here. #Communication #ASDinsider #LoveLife ..read more

It brings me great joy to share that we - my husband and I - wrote a book! =) Together, we are writing about our learning and growth through our shared experience of Autism - me from my ASD perspective and my husband from his "neurotypical" perspective. Our lives have been and continue to be an incredible, challenging, and rewarding journey, and we are thrilled to have the chance to share with others some of the wonderful discoveries we have made along the way. Judging by the Cover: Pre-Order the Book The book, called What to Say Next: Successful Communication in Work, Life, and Love with Aut ..read more

One of my most frequent memories of childhood and adolescence - and even into young adulthood and still sometimes to this day - are the seemingly random, sudden, and all-encompassing epiphanies I experience (rarely now, but still) when it comes to words and concepts we use in every day life. A "crosswalk" is called a "crosswalk" because people use it to "walk" a"cross" the street. *mic drop* 0_O Mind blowing, right? Or get this one: We refer to car engines having a certain amount of "horsepower" because before we had cars, we had buggies on wheels powered by real live actual horses - using "h ..read more

A while ago, I wrote a post about the myth that people with autism don't have empathy. In reality of course, autistics DO have empathy, we just express it or come to it in different ways than most people. In that post I touched on the fact that, actually, many autistic people experience too much empathy - feeling so deeply the pain or joy of others that we can get lost in that emotion. In the case of very strong feelings from others, we can even lose touch with our own thoughts and emotions. We can lose ourselves. Emotions with Nowhere to Go Often, this over-empathy also comes with a lesser ab ..read more

I'm reading Liane Holliday Willey's memoir Pretending to be Normal again! What a treat. I wanted to highlight it for you with some of the valuable insights I gained in absorbing Liane's words and sharing some of her experiences. Adult Diagnosis -- First Comes the Child Liane, like many other adult women these days, did not discover her own ASD until her daughter began to show signs. This is similar to what happened to me. With my son exhibiting some of the same challenges I had learned to cope with at a young age, we finally began to open the door to the possibility that he and I both might be ..read more

Excel spreadsheets! Cropping photos to look "just so." Listening to the same song or reading the same book over, and over, and over, and over again. And again. Fun!! Yes? Maybe not for you... =D But my idea of fun isn't the same as a lot of other people. I mean, sure, we all have our own unique ideas of what fun is to us - but you will agree that there is a much smaller percentage of the world that finds delight in breaking out the old Microsoft Excel software and plunking in some data to work with. It could be any data. It could be something as highly useful as crafting a daily schedule for ..read more

Ok this one sounds like it might get technical. "Special Interest?" What, now? It won't. Simplicity is the key, folks. Especially right now, my brain has very little space for getting technical, and I'm sure your brain needs some breathing room, too. #COVID19 So what, exactly, is a "special interest?" Without getting technical, let's dive in. Here's how a few autistic people recently described what defines a special interest to them: "It's like being in love." "When I can't stop thinking about it and even though I go about my usual day, I somehow seem to find it everywhere and in everything ..read more

Here comes spring (and not far off is summer!) - and soon the world will open back up again after COVID-19. With new horizons will come the opportunity to seize moments that will never come your way again - especially after months of quarantine, don't take those moments for granted! Even when life is fairly normal and not full of novel coronavirus, I am the opposite of spontaneous. I need plenty of planning, advance notice, strategizing, and I thrive best with routine. This has a lot to do with my autistic brain. I have to do all of my thinking manually, rather than relying on automatic proce ..read more