I caught the end of the a story on Morning Edition on NPR this weekend as I was traveling with my family. Through StoryCorps, Joshua, a 12-year-old who has Aspergers Syndrome, interviewed his mother. If you need a heart-warming "fix" from one special mom of a special kid, try this out! -- listen in.

Joshua had a interesting list of questions, many not surprising from a child with Aspergers. Some questions like "Do you have any mortal enemies?" and his observation that he was responsible... more

Parents of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder frequently get taken to task for calling their children "RAD kids" or "RADishes". While these terms personally make me cringe and I'm not sure I've ever called my child either, I tire of the criticism being leveled at parents already under a great deal of stress.

I wonder if parents of children with other disorders are held to the same standards. I've recently come across quite a bit of literature referring to "apsies" -- i.e. children and adults with Asperger's Syndrome (a high functioning form of autism).... more

I stumbled across this article from the Science Daily website: Treating Autism 'Right The First Time' and remembered I had heard about this before. Upon reading the article, I realized that Pivotal Response Training (PRT) is a behavior-intervention pioneered by Robert Koegel and Laura Schreibman at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Koegel and his wife, Dr. Lynn Koegel were keynote speakers at a recent autism conference in Atlanta that I attended. The presentation dealt with PRT, but focused mostly on Dr. Lynn Koegel's experience on Super Nanny in an episode where the family had a young autistic son.... more

I took the plunge yesterday and signed Lulu up for 10 sessions in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (or HBOT as it is referred to) is an emerging intervention for treating a variety of immune disorders and other things. You may have read how they put the surviving miner in West Virginia in a hyperbaric chamber to detoxify his body...that is the basic premise.

Sitting in a chamber for an hour, your body is exposed to oxygen under pressure. This causes more oxygen to enter your bloodstream and cross into your tissues. Wounds heal faster. The oxygen also causes toxins to release and new cells to grow. The oxygenated blood crosses the blood/brain barrier and... more