Today, April 2, is World Autism Awareness Day. In late 2007, the United Nations decreed that April 2, 2008 would be the first World Autism Awareness Day to coincide with National Autism Awareness Month, which is recognized every April. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1 in 110 children in the United States is on the autism spectrum. I am the mom of two of these children.
I was an attached parent prior to the time that my children’s autism symptoms presented and I’m an attached parent still today. I actually thank my attachment parenting style for helping me understand my children a bit more. Now this is not to say that mothers of children on the spectrum that don’t practice attachment parenting don’t understand their children but for my children, and me, my parenting style has been a tremendous help.
I’ll be sharing more of my story in an article that will appear later this month on The Attached Family online but I also want to share a bit of it here with you, the readers of API Speaks. My youngest child, now six, was diagnosed with classical autism the day before her third birthday. She had very little language and most of what she had was echolalic and not functional.
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