We’re All In This Together




New Ground Publishing Company
In Conjunction with Take One Digital Media
Announces its Production of an Educational and Awareness-Building DVD Entitled

We’re All In This Together
Understanding the Humanity of Autism

This video represents the first in a series that explores the challenges that caregivers and people with autism endure as they learn to understand each other. As we explore our commonality, we see that at any given moment, the human brain is always – in some degree – either Autistic or Artistic…. Fixated or Free… Stuck or Creative. Today, in 2010, as we’re told that 1 out of every 100 children are on the Autism Spectrum, many of us shudder in fear and hope that autism doesn’t arrive on our doorstep. But we don’t always realize that it isn’t autism that arrives at our door; it’s a person who happens to have a brain that processes information differently from us. This person can arrive at our day care centers, our schools, restaurants, grocery stores, places of worship, community events – anywhere that human beings meet together. The immense challenge for someone with autism is that the person has to figure out how to use an autistic brain to function and adapt to “our” world. The journey begins in early childhood when person with autism, like all of us, has to let others know what he/she needs – from a complicated world

that’s easily misunderstood. Yes, we can spend time seeking to eradicate the cause of autism, but we cannot allow our vision of finding a cure to detract us from our need to support the toddlers, children, teenagers, adults, and elderly with autism who currently live with us every day.

It’s easy for us to get busy with treating autism, but in doing so, we can sometimes forget to treat the person with autism – as a person. Applied Behavioral Analysis is seen as the main treatment for autism, but when seen in its simplest terms, ABA is merely a way of understanding that people behave according to how they are treated – by others. We want people with autism to change, or at least develop more functional skills, yet in order for that to happen effectively, it is us – the humans with the non-autistic brains – who are being asked to change first. We are being asked to change the way we think about, react toward, and respond to someone who continues to misunderstand us – and who may even physically harm us, or themselves, in the process. Ironically, the person with autism is struggling with the exact same dilemma. Over many years of being forced to remain compliant, often at a cost of being traumatized in the process, a person with autism may settle into repeating maladaptive behaviors and destructive habits, just as any human being does to get by day after day, year and after year.

Human resiliency (defined as: the ability to recover quickly from setbacks) isn’t limited only to those who have a non-autistic brain. In fact, perhaps we aren’t using our non-autistic brain any “better” if we aren’t willing to imagine that there is another way of teaching or supporting or even coping with a person with autism. The gift of autism may very well be that we are all, indeed, in this together. Most parents of typical children cannot imagine the intensity of the “extreme parenting” that family members endure when caring for children with autism. However, all parents intuitively understand that their children need to discover how to “get along in the world” meaning, for the most part to express an ability to recover from setbacks… to whatever degree is possible for them… in order to continue to take full advantage of life’s opportunities.

In our DVD, “We’re All In This Together - Understanding the Humanity of Autism”, we will illustrate the journey real parents, families, professionals, paraprofessionals and other caregivers take as they develop constructive and effective supportive relationship skills supportive of people with autism. Rather than focus on making the person with autism different, these caregivers come to see people on the autism spectrum as they are… and go from there in supporting them to be the person they already are. Isn’t that what effective parenting is anyway?

With all the talk about children with autism, we forget that those very children will become adults with autism. Not all adults on the spectrum are destined to receive lifelong Social Security Disability benefits. Some may and some will become part of our workforce, and become valuable contributors to our society. While it is true that early intervention can play a significant role in shaping positive development in people with autism, it is not the only stage that requires or guarantees progress. Just as every human being builds awareness from experiences in the developmental stages of infancy,toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood experiences in every developmental stage impacts the way an adult with autism lives his/her life. Knowing that we are adults for many more years than we are children, we intend use our DVD as a platform to illustrate that a toddler with autism is a toddler first, a child with autism is a child first, a teenager with autism is a teenager first, an adult with autism is an adult first, and a person with autism is a PERSON first.