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Thriving with Autism - A Parent's Guide Announcing Seminar Series "Thriving with Autism - A Parent's Guide" to commence on January 30th. Jackie McMillan, an autistic adult, will be presenting on various topics over a six-week period. Through her personal experiences, research and networking with other adults in the autistic spectrum, Jackie has learned how simple changes can dramatically improve her symptoms. She speaks about not only the challenges but the opportunities autism brings to our families and our society. Free Introductory Talks have been scheduled in Guelph and Kitchener over the next few weeks to introduce the Seminar Series (see below). Following a recent talk, one mother commented how incredibly beneficial it was to learn from Jackie's personal journey. She finally understood the reasons behind some of her son's behaviours. The "Thriving with Autism" seminars will take place on Monday evenings from January 30th to March 5th. Registration details can be found on my website: http://www.autisminterventionclinic.ca/events.php Please share this information with anyone you think may be interested in attending. This is a unique opportunity for parents, caregivers, educators and health practitioners to benefit from Jackie's extensive knowledge and experience. ...

Carly's Voice: Breaking Through Autism Arthur Fleischmann with Carly Fleischmann. Touchstone, $24 (400p) ISBN 978-1-4391-9414-0 In this unsparing but affecting account of remarkable Toronto teenager Carly Fleischmann, it's clear that while most people take the ability to communicate for granted, for Fleischmann it defines her daily struggles and miraculous successes. Early on, Carly, a twin, is lagging behind her sister, neither talking nor crawling. She is diagnosed as pervasively developmentally delayed, a spectrum of disorders that includes autism. Her doctors believe she will always be below average intellectually and eventually need a group home. For the family, this begins a decade of chaos: endless physical and speech therapy, battles with the government over health coverage, and untenable exhaustion as they try to make sense of a condition that has no cure and keep the rest of the family from fracturing irreparably. Of this time of hopelessness her father writes, "[T]his was not a life but a slow demise." After years of silence, a transformative moment occurs when Carly expresses herself by typing on her voice-output device for the first time. Finally they are getting to know her. "I felt like we were discovering the lost city of Angkor," her father writes. Although Carly's typing is sporadic at times and her uncontrollable impulses, OCD, and insomnia are ever present, the world has opened up for her. In this inspiring story, Carly has a bat mitzvah, starts attending mainstream gifted classes, and has become an autism spokesperson. Agent, Linda Loewenthal at David Black Literary Agency. (Mar.) Reviewed on: 01/02/2012 Carly's Voice: Breaking Through Autism, can be purchased by clicking here. ...

In Memory of Mr. Lindsay Moir It is with great sadness that we must inform you that Mr. Lindsay Moir passed away yesterday suddenly. Lindsay Moir founded Comhnadh Consulting in 1997, after retiring from the Ministry of Education after 31 years. His Ministry career was spent entirely in the Special Education field as teacher, principal, Program Director, administrator and Education Officer, in a variety of Special Education roles and locations. He has experiences ranging from teacher and administrator in a provincial residential school to working on many provincial committees reviewing and making recommendations on draft legislation. During his last five years with the Ministry, he had the Issues Resolution portfolio which meant that he dealt with many issues involving disputes between agencies & parents involved with their local school board, as well as drafting Minister's letters and responses. His knowledge and understanding of special education legislation are valuable tools in assisting families and agencies today. Since retiring, he had been a contract employee of Ministry on projects like special education funding validation. He continued to be a contract employee of EQAO monitoring Grade 3, 6, 9, and 10 testing as well as national and international assessments. Lindsay offered a wide range of staff, parent and professional training across the province (and beyond) to school boards, parent associations, group homes, community agencies and service providers. In addition he offered direct advocacy services to agencies and families. Lindsay was a wonderful ambassador and advocate for individuals and families living with ASD. He was a great friend to Autism Canada presenting at our 2009, 2010 and 2011 conferences. His loss will be greatly felt and he will be dearly missed. He is survived by his wife Liz and family and we extend our most sincere condolences to them. Please leave your condolences for Mr. Moir by clicking here.

Call To Action CRAHave you or your family member been audited by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)? Attention Required: Are you or a family member living with an ASD? Have you or your family member been audited by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)? ... or do you have issues trying to claim tax deductible expenses? We need to hear from you! We are in a position to bring concerns and suggestions from the autism community directly to high-ranking officials at the CRA. We need documented examples of your strife with CRA. Please keep your story short & concise (300 words max.) and email them to me at mawlam@autismcanada.org. Working passionately for change, Laurie Mawlam Executive Director NewsNews

Classroom Confronting Asperger's in the Classroom They've been called "odd ducks," "eccentrics" or "little professors." Now these often brilliant but socially awkward students, diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, are flocking to postsecondary classrooms in greater numbers than ever before. Here's how faculty are meeting the challenge. by Moira Farr It's just a gesture and a sequence of words, a private signal between James Wright, an associate professor of music at Carleton University, and his student, Maureen Pytlik, to remind her not to dominate the class question period. They worked it out together, so she doesn't become so absorbed in the discussion that she forgets she's in a classroom with other students, and that they need the professor's attention too. Ms. Pytlik, 23, has Asperger's Syndrome, and she doesn't pick up social cues as easily as other students would. Asperger's, or AS, is a neurological disorder first identified by Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger in 1944 as a cluster of characteristics exhibited by children, predominantly boys (a four-to-one ratio), on the high-functioning end of autistic spectrum disorders. The highly accomplished but socially inept Dr. Asperger thought he had it himself. The term was barely in use, however, until the 1980s; since then, it has become an increasingly common diagnosis. Like most people diagnosed with AS, Ms. Pytlik is very intelligent and academically inclined. "The quality of her work and insights is breathtaking," says Dr. Wright. When it comes to music theory, "I've never seen anything like her ability to see mathematical patterns. It's right off the scale. Her research skills are second to none." Despite her academic triumphs, adjusting to life as a postsecondary student has not been easy for Ms. Pytlik, who uses words like "hypersensitive" and "obsessive" to describe herself. She was diagnosed as a member of the AS tribe as a teenager. Bullying at school had made her withdrawn, anxious and depressed. At Carleton, though, she's blossomed into a well-appreciated member of the music program. "The department of fine arts is a nice, open environment," says Dr. Wright. "We're used to eccentrics." Used to eccentrics or not, university faculty members across the country, and in particular in the Ottawa area, are finding themselves faced with increasing numbers of students with Asperger's Syndrome and are feeling their impact on classroom dynamics. (Why Ottawa? No one knows for sure, although researchers suggest genetics may be a factor; studies have shown that in regions with a large population of people working in high-tech industries, such as California's Silicon Valley and parts of the Netherlands, a higher than average number of children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders.) "We've seen a phenomenal rise in the numbers [of AS students], from zero to 50 in five years, and we expect to see many more," says Larry McCloskey, director of Carleton's Paul Menton Centre, known for its groundbreaking work over the past two decades helping students who have disabilities succeed at university as well as educating the general campus population about these students' needs. Please click here to read the full story. ...

DSM How The New DSM-V May Affect People With ASD By Holly Bortfeld, From our friends at TACA Autism is a "spectrum disorder" of Pervasive Developmental Disorders. Think of it as a line. At one end sits ADD, ADHD and in the middle diagnoses like CDD, Rett's, Asperger's, PDD-NOS then on the far end, Autism. I have two children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. One has a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome. She fits the criteria to a tee. She's bright, quirky, verbal, able to advocate for herself, in college and will one day be able to support herself and live alone, hopefully. My other child has a diagnosis of autism. He fits the criteria too. He once received the diagnosis PDD-NOS, which we quickly learned was merely the doctor's way of trying not to scare us with the dreaded "A" word. Unfortunately, it also disqualified him for services, forcing us to go to another doctor to get the autism diagnosis. The DSM - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association - is like a giant catalog of diagnoses. It's the "bible" that lists the criteria for each disorder. DSM-IV-TR is the current version in use now. Today it includes PDD-NOS, Asperger's, and Autism. The most notable diagnostic criteria difference between kids with Asperger's and Autism is that there was no marked delay in language early in life. I know a lot of kids with Asperger's diagnoses that did have a marked delay. The criteria isn't perfect, to be sure. Asperger's Syndrome does have diagnostic differences from "autism" but in 2013, the new version - DSM-V will remove all the variations and leaving us with just one diagnosis: Autism Spectrum Disorder. http://www.dsm5.org is the website for the next version which is to be published May 2013. The proposed content, however, is already up on the website. I give you, Autism Spectrum Disorder, circa 2013.... Please click here to read more. ... Registries

Registries of Autistic Children Arm Police with Information Carys Mills Globe and Mail Monday, Jan. 09, 2012 In a panic, the mother of a teenage boy called Ottawa police. Her son, who has autism, was worked up and chasing her around their home with a knife. Moments later when police arrived, no one screamed at the boy to drop the weapon. No one approached with gun drawn. Instead, he was asked calmly about his favourite hockey team. Within minutes, the situation had cooled down enough that an officer could take the knife from the boy before taking him to a hospital. Police knew how to de-escalate a crisis with this boy last year because his family had submitted information about him - and his love of hockey - to Ottawa's voluntary autism registry, according to Zoye Coburn, a trainer and outreach worker with the Ottawa Police Service. Launched as a pilot project in 2010 through a partnership between police and the local chapter of Autism Ontario, the program was recently made permanent. It is one of a handful that have sprung up across the country since the first one began in Miramichi, N.B., about two years ago. Before the registry, there was no formal way to relay information to police about a person's diagnosis or how to defuse a confrontation. Without knowing the Ottawa boy's diagnosis and that he found hockey talk calming, police may have responded as they are trained to do in threatening situations involving a weapon - by using force, Ms. Coburn said. "Our officers are just that, they're police officers, they're not medical professionals," Ms. Coburn said. "They're not in a position to diagnose people and record it." The goal of the registry is to inform police that a child or adult may not be able to speak to them or follow commands - often the case for someone with autism spectrum disorder, a term that describes a range of increasingly common disorders that affect social interaction and communication. Police are finding themselves increasingly interacting with people in crises. Factors including deinstitutionalization of care have meant that more people with mental illness, or disorders such as autism, are coming into contact with police. Arming officers with information about a person's condition is one way to prevent harm - both to the officer and the individual. For instance, for some people with autism, sirens and flashing lights can trigger a negative reaction. "The more information our police officers have when they're responding to a call for service, the better it is for everybody," said Ms. Coburn. Some family members sign up those in their care in the hope that if they wander from home and go missing they will be found more quickly, because police have a photo as well as information about their favourite places. In Ottawa, about 300 people are signed up, and organizers are considering expanding the registry to include people with other non-verbal conditions. In Miramichi, Dianne Pineau signed up her son, Kenzie, with the local autism registry after he wandered away from daycare. "It was scary enough I wanted to register him right away," she said. Now 8, Kenzie is still prone to roaming. He doesn't have the natural fear of dangers such as traffic and bodies of water, and as he gets older, his mother also worries about how he would communicate with police. "He might not know how to respond," she said. "What do you see on TV when people see cops? They run. So he might see a police officer and say, 'Okay, I gotta run.'" For a one-time fee of $25 to join the registry, she knows her car, home and son's name are flagged to police and other first responders. Kenzie also has an ID card that he carries with him. That way, if police are ever called to her home or she's in a crash with Kenzie in the car, police will know he might react differently than other kids his age. On the form, she told police that Kenzie loves to talk about computer games and Lego Batman. He also hates leaving the house, something that emergency responders should know if there's a fire. Miramichi Constable Todd Chadwick helped develop the registry with the group Autism Resources Miramichi Incorporated. He cited a 2009 case in which police believed an autistic teenager was intoxicated. The 18-year-old was arrested and not allowed to call his mother after he was put in a St. John's lockup overnight. He had been unresponsive to an officer's questions about why he was walking in the middle of a road. He was returned home the next morning after he was reported missing by his mother, who later filed a complaint. Constable Chadwick said the registry helps to avoid this type of situation. Instead of an interaction with an autistic person "becoming a very complicated file, a liability for us, or it might be a criminal case ... we're able to reduce that," he said. Last fall, Windsor, Ont., started an autism registry after Michelle Helou wrote to police asking for their help. Her 14-year-old son Noah is autistic and non-verbal. Police had responded to her home once, thinking there was a domestic disturbance when Noah was having a "meltdown." After a bit of convincing, police left, but Ms. Helou worried about what could have happened if she hadn't been there. "[With Noah] there's no communication skills, there's very little eye contact," she said, adding he doesn't like to be touched. "He might get aggressive if he's handled wrong." Thirty-two people have been signed up so far for the Windsor registry, said Ms. Helou, who works with Autism Services Inc. Some parents initially had privacy concerns about the group having access to the information, she said, but those have subsided as people learned that only police have access to the files. "This is a win-win situation. ... It's not like labelling them, it's here to help everybody." Effect of a vitamin/mineral supplement on children and adults with autism.

BMC Pediatr. 2011 Dec 12;11(1):111. [Epub ahead of print] Adams JB, Audhya T, McDonough-Means S, Rubin RA, Quig D, Geis E, Gehn E, Loresto M, Mitchell J, Atwood S, Barnhouse S, Lee W. BACKGROUND: Vitamin/mineral supplements are among the most commonly used treatments for autism, but the research on their use for treating autism has been limited. METHOD: This study is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled three month vitamin/mineral treatment study. The study involved 141 children and adults with autism, and pre and post symptoms of autism were assessed. None of the participants had taken a vitamin/mineral supplement in the two months prior to the start of the study. For a subset of the participants (53 children ages 5-16) pre and post measurements of nutritional and metabolic status were also conducted. RESULTS: The vitamin/mineral supplement was generally well-tolerated, and individually titrated to optimum benefit. Levels of many vitamins, minerals, and biomarkers improved/increased showing good compliance and absorption. Statistically significant improvements in metabolic status were many including: total sulfate (+17%, p=0.001), S-adenosylmethionine (SAM; +6%, p=0.003), reduced glutathione (+17%, p=0.0008), ratio of oxidized glutathione to reduced glutathione (GSSG:GSH; -27%, p=0.002), nitrotyrosine (-29%, p=0.004), ATP (+25%, p=0.000001), NADH (+28%, p=0.0002), and NADPH (+30%, p=0.001). Most of these metabolic biomarkers improved to normal or near-normal levels. The supplement group had significantly greater improvements than the placebo group on the Parental Global Impressions-Revised (PGI-R, Average Change, p=0.008), and on the subscores for Hyperactivity (p=0.003), Tantrumming (p=0.009), Overall (p=0.02), and Receptive Language (p=0.03). For the other three assessment tools the difference between treatment group and placebo group was not statistically significant. Regression analysis revealed that the degree of improvement on the Average Change of the PGI-R was strongly associated with several biomarkers (adj. R2 = 0.61, p CONCLUSIONS: Oral vitamin/mineral supplementation is beneficial in improving the nutritional and metabolic status of children with autism, including improvements in methylation, glutathione, oxidative stress, sulfation, ATP, NADH, and NADPH. The supplement group had significantly greater improvements than did the placebo group on the PGI-R Average Change. This suggests that a vitamin/mineral supplement is a reasonable adjunct therapy to consider for most children and adults with autism. Trial registration number NCT01225198. The Canadian Press Date: Thursday Nov. 24, 2011 3:59 PM ET TORONTO - The Countess of Wessex praised the efforts of families Thursday as a new autism centre was announced to bring education, life training skills and research together on a central campus in Toronto. The Kae Martin Campus will be the first of its kind in Canada, organizers said, and will help put autistic children on a path toward self-sufficiency. "We hope it can be a template that can be replicated not only in Ontario but across Canada, where the private sector puts the capital to build it and the public sector puts the operating dollars in to run it," said Steve Hudson, co-chair of the Spectrum of Hope Autism Foundation. Sophie, the wife of the Queen's youngest son, Prince Edward, met students and staff and toured classrooms at the New Haven Learning Centre in Toronto's west end, where the launch event was held. "I am very impressed with the dedication and determination of the families and individuals who have committed time, energy and money to be part of this novel and compelling model of autism care and research," she said. "It is inspiring to see such a visionary model begin to come together." The countess has been a patron of causes related to helping autistic children for years. The new campus will be located in north Toronto and named for the late Kae Martin, a dedicated advocate whose grandchild was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Hudson said $25 million of the needed $40 million has already been raised. Organizers hope to break ground within 18 months and start accepting students in the fall of 2013 or soon after, he added. There is a huge waiting list and the 520 spots are expected to fill up very quickly, he said. Research will be co-ordinated with nearby institutes of higher education. "There's lots of great research going on, whether it be at York University or George Brown or University of Toronto," Hudson said. "We want to integrate those research programs into our campus. We're not looking to start afresh on research.... That dialogue is well underway, particularly with York University." Applied behaviour analysis, or ABA, is one method used to help autistic children. It is basically a one-on-one experience involving a teacher and student. But Hudson said they'd like to scale it up and see if it can be done with one teacher for every two or three -- or more -- students. This could reduce expenses from $65,000 per student, which is the current annual cost for one-on-one instruction, he noted. Autism spectrum disorder is a neurological condition that typically affects a person's ability to communicate, form relationships and respond appropriately to the environment. Hudson called autism a "huge epidemic" that affects 28,000 young people under the age of 20 in Ontario alone. The New Haven Learning Centre was started by parents brainstorming around a kitchen table about how to meet the educational needs of their children, he said. The New Haven school has 40 students.