Challenging the Myths of Autism
Brown Bag Lunch with Jonathan Alderson
On February 6, I was delighted to have the opportunity to spend a lunch-time with about fifteen Harvard Alumni at the Wellesley Institute in Toronto and present some of the ideas from my recent book about the limiting stereotypes of people with autism. Participants were engaged. There were some probing questions and I wish we had had more time to dive into the discussion. Thank you to all who attended and to Jonathan Guss, Ada Maxwell and the Toronto HAA executive for organizing the event. For those of you who got a copy of the book, I welcome feedback (Jalderson@gto.net).
“In the summer of 2008, I had only just sketched out the autism myths I would one day write about when a storm of outrage suddenly swept the autism community. Radio talk show host Michael Savage offended a nation when he broadcast,
"I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is…” (p.221)
Like thousands of parents, I too was angered and knew that the myths of autism had to be challenged as publicly as Michael’s savage rant was. I wanted Challenging the Myths of Autism to be a resource that empowers parents with well researched information that they can engage their friends, neighbours, teachers, and politicians with. I hoped the book would do more than simply present new ideas but that parents and therapists would commit to the action steps in the ‘What You Can Do’ sections and join in an international autism manifesto for the positive welfare of people with autism.” (Excerpt from Challenging the Myths of Autism, Harper Collins 2011)
Over years of working with hundreds of families from across the globe, I have learned that our attitudes – the beliefs and feelings we hold- toward those we work with make the biggest difference. In a field that focuses almost exclusively on what to do…on what actions to take to teach a child to behave, there is much more impact we can make by first focusing on what we think and feel about those we are reaching out to help.
Challenging the Myths of Autism is available in paperback at Chapters Indigo, Coles and Book City as well as online at Chapters.ca and Amazon.ca. Jonathan Alderson graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (M.Ed. ’02) and is the founder and director of the Intensive Multi-Treatment Intervention Program. For more information please visit www.Jalderson.com.