Did you know that one in every 100 New Zealand Children has an autism spectrum disorder?In order to raise awareness of this issue, Autism New Zealand is holding Multicoloured Mayhem Day on 2nd April this year.
When Steven started mainstream school there were 4 kids at his school that had ASD(Autism Spectrum Disorder). For a small country school of a couple of hundreds students that was more than enough ASD students for the school, now he is into his 4th year at school and there are two students with ASD. This year is the first year that the school has done anything for Autism awareness and I think its fantastic. Lets get the word of autism out there so that people understand that when a child is screaming in the middle of the supermarket it doesn't mean that that child is naughty or the parent has no control over their child, let us understand that that child may have ASD and cant cope with the flickering of the lights or the noise of the beep for every item being scanned, lets understand that these child find it VERY hard to cope and understand our world. Take time on this day to think about those affected by autism, the child and the families.
Thanks to the help from Louise Williams the Franklin ASD Support group now have a website. So if you have the time go and check it out, I have added link on the sidebar for the website.
2 comments:
Four in a school - we have seven children with ASD in our kindergarten currently and have never had less than three and at one point we had nine. Due to the huge waitlists, we have only two children with an ESW...and one of our PM kids is really high needs - lies down in the water troughs, no speech, very little muscle tone...We have already done up a board to celebrate world autism day and in the hope it helps to educate parents.
Wow - I've learnt so much through your blog about autism and I knew very little before I started lurking. Thank you for sharing.
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