Making kids more aware of autism
by Beth
March was a busy and rewarding month for me in my role as a children’s book author. In one month, my Seeing Eye dog Hanni and I visited five elementary schools, two libraries, one health education center, one teacher education center, and appeared at one author-illustrator night.
A lot of the schools we went to prepared the kids ahead of time for our visit. They highlighted books about blindness, held reading sessions, did activities to give the children an idea what it might be like to be blind, or how they might assist a person who is blind.
So I was thinking: why not do this with autism?
It seems so much attention is given to making adults more aware of what autism is … wouldn’t it be good for kids to be more aware, too?
From my experience, I can easily imagine people with autism — or parents of children with autism — visiting classes to teach the kids about autism, explaining what it’s like to have autism. Classes could prepare for the visits by reading books ahead of time. Amazon.com features a terrific Listmania list for folks looking for children’s books about autism, and a fair number of the books on that list are available at our Easter Seals and Autism bookstore. Every time you order a book through our bookstore, a portion of that sale will go to Easter Seals.
One book in our bookstore that would be particularly useful during a classroom visit: The Friendship Puzzle, Helping Kids Learn About Accepting and Including Kids with Autism. Katy Neas recently reviewed this book on our Easter Seals and Autism blog.
The voice of the book is a typically developing elementary school girl — the story is about her journey to understand the new kid at school who has autism. The book presents information in a kind and factually accurate manner and offers activities that kids can do with kids with autism.
This would be a perfect book to recommend before a classroom visit about autism. Those of you who have autism or have a loved one with autism should consider visiting classrooms to teach kids about what it’s like. You’ll be surprised about how curious the kids are — and what fun you’ll have answering their questions.