As of this posting it is ( Read more... )

There seems to be a bit of graduation inflation going on. Coworkers have been going to their children’s kindergarten and 8th grade graduations. A patient recently had a preschool graduation, complete with mortarboard, tassel and gown. Of course, I cooed over the picture and I congraduated my co-workers. But I can’t help thinking that preschool ( Read more... )

OK, listen up. I’m going to tell you the one absolute thing about autism and autistic people. This is true of all people accurately diagnosed with autism and all other autistic people who may not be diagnosed with autism or with anything, for that matter ( Read more... )

I went to a talk this week on intersex conditions. Actually I went to a talk and a workshop. The talk was largely aimed at pediatric residents and addressed some of the recent research in the field. The talk presented a good overview, mostly of information which was not new to me but was likely new to most of the audience. The workshop was ( Read more... )

My prior Blogging Against Disablism Day posts are (2006 - locked), (2007 - locked) (2008 - locked) , (2009), (2010), (2011), (2012), and (2013)Ablism isn’t in my spell-checker. Neither is ableism, disablism or disableism. If there’s another way to spell it, I’m not aware. Actually, they aren’t in any of the spell-checkers for the ( Read more... )

I grew up watching Mr. Rogers. I watched as a young child and continued watching well into adulthood, but I think the time he meant the most to me was during junior high. I would come home from school and turn on the television in time to hear Mr. Rogers tell me, and children everywhere, that “people can like you exactly the way you are.” Those ( Read more... )

There’s a push to get people to stop using the word. The “R” word. The word that is used in a derogatory way to describe people diagnosed as having intellectual disabilities, which we used to call mental retardation, and that is also used to put-down people, things, ideas and all other manner of nouns. The push comes from Special Olympics, a ( Read more... )

Cara, who blogs brilliantly at That Crazy Crippled Chick, wrote a piece this week on disability binarism. It went viral, and rightly so. Read it, if you haven’t yet ( Read more... )

A non-clinical colleague asked me that recently, “What are some good meds for ADHD?” Her child was taking one and had some improvement in symptoms but also some side effects. She was wondering if they should consider a switch ( Read more... )

This is my submission for the "This is autism" flash blogI wake up in the morning and check my livejournal, a certain set of blogs that are updated daily, the CNN headlines and the MSN online crossword puzzle. Sometimes the order varies, and sometimes I don’t have time, but by and large, this is my routine and I stick with my routine. I like ( Read more... )