
At School Social Stories
Local Autism Support Groups
Parents Engaging Autism Quinte (PEAQ), an autism parent support group, meets once a month on the first Tuesday of the month (no meetings in January, July and August) at Kerry's Place, 189 Victoria Avenue, Belleville at 6:30 to 8 p.m. If you have questions or suggestions for autism topics that are important to you please go to our FaceBook account and post your suggestions so that we can invite appropriate autism professionals to speak at these meetings. There won't be any meeting in December but we are taking local families supporting individuals with moderate to severe sensory challenges to the Christmas Event at the Children's Safety Village half an hour prior to the event being opened to the public.
Autism parent support group meeting hosted by Mental Health Agency, Trenton and Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC) meeting is on the Second Thursday of the month from 6 to 7:30 p.m. If you have require any further information please contact Marya Peters for more information at 613 392-2811 ext 3953 or email marya.p@trentonmfrc.ca
For info on Community Living Prince Edward County Parent Support group, contact Resource Consultants @ 613 476 6038
Central Hastings Autism Support Group meets in Madoc at the Recreation Centre. Contact Renee O’Hara, Family Resource & Support, 613-966-7413 or Tammy Kavanagh, Family Resource & Support, 613-332-3227

Sunday, September 20, 2009
Understanding the vulnerability of ASD individuals
Here's a scenario of mindblindness or lack of theory of mind, defined by autism expert Dr.Simon Barry Cohen. A child on the autism spectrum is walking on a side-walk along a street and he sees a group of boys on the other side of the street looking over and gesturing towards him. The group decides to cross the street, their gestures, facial and body expressions clearly indicating their intent to do harm to the boy. But if the boy happen to see them crossing over, he would have noted only just that - that a group of boys were crossing the street. He could and would not have read their threatening body language and therefore, would not have been able to foresee the danger he might be facing.
Summing it up is a quote by Geoffrey Cowley's article "Understanding Autism," in Newsweek,
"What, ultimately, makes autistic people different? How do they experience the world? Twenty years ago no one had much of a clue. But a burgeoning body of research now suggests that the core of all autism is a syndrome known as mindblindness. For most of us, mind reading comes as naturally as walking or chewing. We readily deduce what other people know and what they don't, and we understand implicitly that thoughts and feelings are revealed in gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice. An autistic person may sense none of this."
In it for the long haul...
