Author Archives: Laura

I'm a fifth generation Californian and live in the San Francisco Area with my husband and three sons. My oldest, Matthew, is autistic and I've been writing about my experience raising him from babyhood to young adulthood for about 4 years. I've read my stories on NPR and published them in magazines, newspapers and anthologies, including Voices of Autism. My book A Regular Guy: Growing up with Autism is available at Amazon.

Explaining the autism experience in 6 words

As many of you know,I am a big fan of the 6 word memoir project, and asked Larry Smith, it’s creator, if I could run another 6 word memoir contest on my facebook autism page. The top 25 (I was the judge) won a signed copy of my book A REGULAR GUY GROWING UP WITH…

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iPad for Autism: Selecting the best apps

“The iPad wasn’t designed with autistic children in mind, but, anecdotally, the results are seemingly miraculous,” say’s well known technology bloggers (and Apple Critic) John Gruber. There is a lot of buzz in the autism world about the many ways that the iPad helps children with autism, for good reason. As Ashley Harrell of SF…

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Comic relief, autism style

It was one of those weeks when the phone rang constantly, and each was a “crises” call. My 24 year old son Matthew, who has autism, was on a bad roll. “Matthew lost his wallet, Matthew is calling a girl obsessively, Matthew called 911 because a girl hung up on him, Matthew needs this, Matthew…

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Autism: Living with the looks

I was at Barnes and Noble the other day and believe that I witnessed an autistic meltdown. A father was in line with his teenage son when the woman in front of them sneezed loudly. The noise took the teenager by surprise, and he covered his ears and yelled “too loud, must leave, too loud”…

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NEWS FLASH: Raising a child with special needs causes marital strain

According to a study by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Waisman Center, parents of grown children with autism are more likely to divorce than couples with typically developing children, according to new data from a large longitudinal study of families of adolescents and adults with autism. Uh, oh. The study, published in the August…

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What are you reading?

I have been updating my book recommendations on my website, and would love your input. What are you reading? I’d love suggestions from the “Special Needs” Category and from the “Reading for fun” Category which for special needs moms is about 2 minutes before we fall asleep at night! Here are a few of my…

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Leveraging quirky talents

Psychotherapist Janet Lawson of Mill Valley, California worked with many teen and young adult clients with social/communication challenges and had an idea. Wouldn’t it be more effective to facilitate social interaction by showing instead of telling? “Rather than mandating social interactions or creating artificial social situations, I wanted to help my clients enjoy naturally occurring…

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Battles not worth fighting?

“I’m ready,” said Matthew. He stood before me in a long sleeve plaid shirt, khaki pants and dress shoes. It was 103%. To top off the look, Matthew had cut his bangs too short and tried to hide the botch job with a semi-comb over. He had patches of toilet paper soaked in blood all…

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Summer Book Club: Cowboy and Wills by Monica Holloway

As promised, I am back to discuss Cowboy & Wills: A Remarkable Little Boy and the Puppy that Changed His Life by Monica Holloway, a book that I chose for an ad hoc summer book club. I loved it so much that I dove right into Monica’s first book, the critically acclaimed Driving With Dead…

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Summer…Grrrrr

Don’t you just want to scream when you hear parents say how much they LOVE summer? “It is so wonderful to have NO schedule for a change!” they say. Those of us with children with special needs know that life without a schedule is hellish. I’ve worked hard over the years to set up a…

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