How Was Your Autism Awareness Month?
Autism Awareness Month has flown by…and I mean flown. For us, our month was spent dodging debris, inhaling dust, and listening to my parents argue about where they put the remote. We remodeled our entire first floor and spent over two weeks listening to sawzaws, pounding hammers, construction workers cuss, and air compressors.
I barely got any of my normal writing and work done much less anything extra. I literally ran errands looking for new lights (okay, that was fun), searched for the perfect granite countertops (not so fun), and spent thousands of dollars at Lowes (because we all know Lowes does not support Big Brother).
I have been, however, trying to keep up with my Google favorites and I feel like I have been missing out on something. I don’t feel like it’s been Autism Awareness Month but rather that it was an Autism Awareness Day. People all over the country celebrated the day with activities, productions, wise and introspective blogs but where did the rest of the month go?
Thomas over at The Gluten Free/Casein Free Diet Experience agrees stating that Autism Awareness dropped off the media scans after Autism Awareness Day. CNN.com execs originally stated that they would have coverage all month but of the 82 autism articles I could find only one is post April 3 (on April 14) and only 20 are from the first week of the month.
What is odd about that? I wrote earlier in the month that I believe everyday should be Autism Awareness Day, that everyday children with autism should be recognized for who they are, how special they are, and the talents they possess. So, either we need to start looking at our children everyday for who they are or we need to make sure that we plan events all month long, not just one day during an entire month.
I know that the public needs to see our children shine everyday…that they need to be introduced to differences so they are not frightened by atypical behaviors, so they know how to handle our children everyday, so they learn to love our children the way we do.
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