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Saul3903
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09 Apr 2014, 10:00 pm

I scoffed at it last year, but this year I've realized that dedicating a month to educating people about Autism is a wise thing to do.

I'm not really sure who decided this, or if it's even honored outside of Southern California in the United States, but apparently April is Autism Awareness month over here. It seems pretty arbitrary, since my college is convinced that it's Sexual Harassment Awareness month and all my artsy friends are pushing National Poetry month. I've only written poetry two or three times and I have yet to sexually harass anyone or be harassed myself, so I focus on Autism.

My day job is directly related to Autism. I work at a day program for adults with disabilities, and this includes working with people who have autism. This week we (the staff and the clients) are decorating blank T-shirts to raise awareness. The truly disheartening thing is that none of the staff was even sure how to spell the word "autism", and they seem to have no insight or education about the condition. I'm kind of shocked, I just transferred to this office and I would think that, if anybody, my coworkers and I should know more about Autism than the average person.

I used to get irritated at every "awareness" month, or week. Now I realize that, if my colleagues are clueless about autism, I can only imagine how little the rest of the world knows. This year I'm going to put in extra effort to give the world a little more education. If you live in an area that supports Autism Awareness month, I would encourage you to do the same.

Thanks for listening


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Mike1
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10 Apr 2014, 7:59 am

Instead of having all of these different awareness months, I think there should just be one month called Awareness Month. The problem isn't that people aren't aware about autism, it's that they just don't really care about anything that isn't directly relevant to their own lives. It only becomes relevant to their lives during the designated months of awareness, and even then, it's only relevant because they enjoy the social aspects of "group awareness". They only try to become "aware" because they want to hang out with other people who are also "aware", and feel good about themselves while doing it. They don't really care about anyone beyond their own acquaintances. They'd have a harder to trying to turn Awareness Month into some social game though, because it doesn't suggest anything specific. In order to participate, they'd be forced to seek out specific things to be aware of, and hopefully become more aware while doing so. If we could just teach people to exercise awareness on a regular basis, it wouldn't be necessary to point out anything specific. Real awareness is a choice, not something that people give to you.



Liblady
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11 Apr 2014, 1:41 pm

If you want to know what you can do to spread awareness, perhaps your closest ASAN (Autism Self Advocacy Network) chapter could help you. I'm only too aware of the problem in Alabama and with the lack of resources have resolved that I will have to join up and help found my own local chapter of ASAN, if things are going to get better for the adult ASD community here as well as myself. Here's contact info. for the chapters ASAN lists in California:

California
Los Angeles/UCLA
Chapter Leaders: Sarah Pripas
[email protected]

Sacramento
Chapter Leaders: Andy Voss and Zachary Miller
[email protected]



Liblady
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11 Apr 2014, 1:51 pm

Oops, missed the San Jose Chapter. here's their contact info.:

San Jose
Chapter Leader: Mark Romoser
[email protected]



ValentineWiggin
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11 Apr 2014, 2:20 pm

Good on you for doin' some edu-catin'!


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15 Apr 2014, 7:58 pm

I made some people aware of autism this month. They don't believe me. I'm supposed to put such matters in a box i guess, and now one of them doesn't like me very much. Ooh well , no big deal. It's just another old controlling narcissistic type friend. He has self to worry about.

Last year I tried to make a sociopath aware of autism. That didn't go over well either.