My Mission . . . . . My Passion Autism, PDD, Asperger's; they are becoming familiar terms these days. Autism is a spectrum disorder, it ranges in severity across a wide range of conditions, like the colors of a rainbow. No two autistic individuals may experience exactly the same symptoms. It is not a disease, it is a set of neurological differences that make a person unique. The thing is that other people don't recognize it, they think that when they see a child in a store throwing a tantrum that he or she is just a rotten spoiled child. It's not too bad when they are "about 2", but when they are bigger it's a different story. What frustrates me most is how unforgiving they can be, I really think that if someone that was "obviously" handicapped in some way and was having trouble and taking say, too long in line, or being seen getting frustrated because their wheelchair was stuck in the mud - would they be viewed as spoiled? No, they would probably get some level of understanding. When an autistic child cannot communicate his needs - he screams, that's just the way it is. Basically I guess it's just the tried and true "judge ye not, lest ye be judged". You cannot judge people by their actions, they can't always help what they do. Mitch also has some repetitive behaviors, he flaps his hands and kind of "revs" his entire body up and down - he does this when he is excited or bored, playing. He also does hands signs that we refer to as karate moves when people ask "what is he doing", he does this when he is bored or frustrated and needs to calm himself down. This is called "stimming" or self stimulation. My whole "point" is that autistic children and adults are just like you and I, they have feelings, emotions, thoughts, intelligence and LOVE! They just may not learn, absorb or express things the same as we "neurotypicals" do. They try so hard to fit in to our world, we can help with understanding, patience and compassion toward people who are just "different". Why not look into their world? Do they really HAVE to always fit into the world as we know it? As far as I'm concerned the world is not always that great. I had wondered for a while if Mitch was autistic, but of course I've already mentioned that I believed all the stereotypes, I didn't know what autism really was. That is why the more I read and talked to other people I realized how few people DO know the real truth of autism. That is what has driven me to create this site. I want to make people aware and help people to understand what it's all about. Of course I have some selfish reasons for this - my main purpose in life is now to help Mitchell be the best he can be, he is special, unique and has some beautiful qualities - I want to celebrate his differences. I want people to accept him for what he is and his qualities that make him who he is are the same as autism. I have come to consider autism as nothing more than having a child that has brown hair when I thought he would have blonde, it's not bad - it's just different.