Boaz Yiftach, freedigitalphotos.net

It’s so hard to watch some school videos about autism, when I know how much better these students’ lives could be, with the right information and support.

You see us rubbing our foreheads a lot when we’re having a bad day. The inflammation in the brain waxes and wanes, and when it waxes, it’s profoundly irritating, frustrating. There’s nothing you can do quickly about that irritation except chew things, suck on things, and, unfortunately, express that irritation through behaviour.

But there are things which can be changed in the external environment to reduce this inflammation, and there are things to supplement in the diet that will reduce this inflammation also.

How do you create programming about how to help, to reach educators who are already straining to carry the curriculum and the understandings of autism they’re working with, when these aren’t necessarily a complete  or up-to-date model?

The tendency seems to be to cling like mad to the training and research they’ve been exposed to, from a state of overwhelm on the part of the educators.  How can we support these educators better?  How can we supply the information they, and the parents need, to get the kind of results that those of us who’ve emerged from the fog have achieved?  The science is there, finally supporting our experiences of what helps and hurts; how do we get it out to those who can do something beautiful with it?