And pardon me– but boo hoo– your kid has no friends. That sometimes happens even if you aren’t autistic– especially in grade school. I can’t tell you how many perfectly lovely people I’ve met (autistic and not) who didn’t really have “true friends” until later in life. Face it, most kids are dicks and they’re going to be dicks no matter what organization is weeping and bleeding for ‘the cause’. Autism Speaks is not going to make little Timmy stop beating little Erik’s head against the wall because he doesn’t like the way Erik prefers to talk to the birds rather than the other kids on the playground. Timmy will just wait until the teacher isn’t around to preach at him and do it anyway.

Nevertheless– I wish your son the best and I hope he does well in life and has many friends once he gets out of school and around real human beings.

onto the autism speaks, did you know over half of the children diagnosed with autism every day have some sort of language delay, maybe not non verbal but some have repetitive speech, which sometimes may cause those “normal” people to not understand or want to understand the children with autism that have the repetivtive speech. Autism speaks doesnt say everyone that has autism has to form together and give them money, however for the families that have children with autism, autism speaks is more about getting the word out there that these children need to be treated like every other child with autism.

with all that being said i believe that autism speaks has to many mothers and fathers and doctors that have done research on autism and no one that has autism… my 14 year old son comes home daily telling me how he feels nothing inside his heart because he doesnt have any friends, when in fact he has friends…just not true friends. these children that are becoming adults and adults who have been diagnosed should be very involved with what these organizations are doing, they probably would all benifit from it