welcome and purpose

I am the mother of 1 Asperger's and 2 high functioning autistic children. I have joined many support groups since my middle son's diagnosis some 10 years ago. I found this very frustrating as most of the parents and most of the dialog surrounded kids at the lower end of the spectrum. This blog is for those of us with kids within the PDD/PDD-NOS who are labeled "high functioning. " I have found that HF kids are both blessed and cursed, blessed in their potential, cursed in that they often function well enough to "get by". I have learned the importance of being a strong and educated advocate for my children. No one, no matter how well meaning they might be, has the emotional investment I have for my children's future success.

This blog is intended as a place where information may be shared by parents, professionals, and educators who need help, or want to help others in understanding the diagnosis, the law as pertaining to an IEP (individual educational plan) and support when every strategy tried seems to have failed. I am seeking my own support group, so that we as parents might not only survive our "exceptional" kids but learn and grow doing it.

Today my daughter had an altercation with one of the neighbor kids, I am always amazed that this HF child can go out side, water plants and singing and inspire such rage from a neighbor girl. Of course my daughter is the one with problems and therefor the cause of all the problems. I do have a concern for the mother of this child, her youngest is also a HF child and I just wonder if she will fill the same way when her son is the one blamed by those parents of the "normal Kids".