Today is Autism Awareness Day. Many people of faith are wondering how they can welcome, engage, and serve with persons with autism. Here are 7 tips, from my faithful autistic family to yours. Keep the format and ESPECIALLY the social routine for entering the learning time/space consistent and predictable. For instance, my Sunday school class always includes the children leaving their parents at the door, walking all the way across the room to the prayer area, and having the option of placing flowers or a felt candle in the prayer area. That routine eases the anxiety of children on the spectrum, because they don’t have to wonder what to do when they get to class. They have a built-in routine to participate. Another example…
writing, autism, & theology as a mother of joy
Posts from the “conversation” Category
How the Murry Family Taught Me to Parent My Children with Autism The gift of great stories is that they are there when you reach for them, laying a bedrock of trust in an uncertain world. When I first read A Wrinkle in Time, I gaped in disbelief at the kindness, competence, and acceptance displayed by Meg’s mother. Though I thought at the time that she was more fairy tale than role model, Mrs. Murry quietly took up residence in my aspirations. Here was a brilliant woman who was also a dazzling mother, never giving into the temptations to let the children fall prey to their weaknesses or to let them hide or waste their strengths. Parenting was Mrs. Murry’s heart work as much…
Starting any homeschool is a matter of looking up your state’s requirements and setting up your school. But once you have a homeschool registered, how do you teach your autistic child at home? School has different goals for kids with autism than for neurotypical kids. A regular school will seek to inform children with academic skills, with some coping skills added as supplement. An autism school will be first and foremost therapeutic, with academics supplementing an autism-specific curriculum. Neurotypical kids will focus on acquiring a set of academic knowledge. Autistic kids will focus on healing their brains and connecting to the world around them. They will also pick up the academic knowledge they need, but taking care of that special brain and body comes…
Decision fatigue is probably the hardest part of being a special needs parent, followed by the stress of constant vigilance. I hear people tell me that I should “take care of myself,” and that I should pray, and I see the images they invoke: a woman getting a massage or pedicure or going on a long hike by herself without getting attacked or falling into a ravine, who, after the rigorous hike or relaxing massage during which she did not worry that her children with nonverbal autism were overwhelming their caregivers and cutting a path of destruction through the house out of anxiety over her absence, or just out of the salon and smelling chemical-fresh, will make some 40 prostrations in an ornate chapel…
The Myth of the Genuine Christian (and a lesson for children)
Summer Kinard
Posted on March 22, 2017
Years ago when I was a teaching assistant at Duke University Divinity School, I noticed a recurring theme in student papers: the search for the ideal conditions to form a genuine Christian. Real Christians might be formed with special polity or liturgy or study groups or music, the seminarians proposed. Maybe if an entire civilization were Christian and devout, the odds of being a real Christian would be higher. Maybe if we preach better or teach better or build our houses and streets differently, we can find real Christians among us. My favorite course to TA was on the Rwandan genocide, not because of the immense suffering we explored but because it wrecked every fantasy of the genuine Christian. Chief among the horrors of the…
Categories: advice, christian, conversation, faith, life lessons, Orthodox Faith, thinking out loud, Uncategorized
One of the earliest ways Christians spoke about salvation history –that is, how God works in history –is with the idea of creation as the household of God. In this household, everything was set in order, and the children were both treasured and expected to grow up to be like their Father. When I came to the ancient Christian faith, I found myself comparing the lessons I learned with my experiences at my great-grandma Granny’s house. Ancient Christian faith is a time-tested way of life, and it resonated in my memories of the way we did things in Granny’s house. Memory is always overlaid on places. The ancients knew this and developed a system of remembering thousands of minute details by imagining them in…
Categories: christian, conversation, faith, family, Orthodox Faith, spiritual formation, Uncategorized, vintage faith
If you have compassion fatigue, this post is for you. The biggest mistake that people make with almsgiving is applying corporate law to their reasoning. There are lots of types of charitable giving. There’s philanthropy to community organizations, stewardship of church life, tithing outright to religious organizations, fundraising, supporting far flung ministries and relief. They’re all good things, but they aren’t almsgiving. For the sake of almsgiving, organizations do not count as people. Now that that’s out of the way, you can focus on what almsgiving really is and why it matters. In seasons of fasting, almsgiving can be especially important. I talked about what almsgiving means in my life with Angela Doll Carlson on her Ancient Faith podcast, The Wilderness Journal. Check out…
