Claire Scovell LaZebnik Quotes

We've been blessed with four beautiful children. Michael, he doesn't have much of a problem anymore. He is high functional, probably because of early intervention.

Autistic children are very difficult to take care of, especially severely autistic ones. When I was 4, I had almost no language; when I was 3, I had none at all.

Mom worked with autistic children.

My brother was diagnosed with autism at age 2. At the time, I was young, so I didn't really understand what it all meant. The doctors thought there was a possibility my brother wouldn't be able to speak - he was diagnosed on the severe end of the spectrum.

Kids don't talk like adults, but kids on the spectrum don't necessarily fall into the same patterns of speaking or have the same interests as other kids their age.

Autism is a complicated illness, and children with a variety of treatments and non-treatments show improvement over time, which is all to the good.

With the incredible rate of growth of autism diagnoses in New Jersey, it is critical that we support the research, education, and access to services that individuals on the autism spectrum and their families need.

If you have a 2 or 3 year old who is not talking, you must start an early intervention program. The worst thing you can do with an autistic 3 year old is to do nothing.

My son was diagnosed with autism. He's OK, he makes eye contact, but he doesn't talk. He needs eight hours a day of very intensive school, and you wouldn't even believe me if I told you how much it costs.

There is a tremendous range of children with a PDD label.

I did want to acknowledge and confirm the fact that my son does, indeed, have an autism diagnosis.

One in 150 kids is autistic these days. The autism spectrum is growing.

When you take a drug to treat high blood pressure or diabetes, you have an objective test to measure blood pressure and the amount of sugar in the blood. It is straight-forward. With autism, you are looking for changes in behavior.

What do we know about autism in 2013? Autism symptoms generally emerge before age three and usually much earlier, often as language delays or lack of social engagement. Recent research suggests that autism can be detected during the first year of life, even before classic symptoms emerge. Indeed, the symptoms may be a late stage of autism.

Some teachers just have a knack for working with autistic children. Other teachers do not have it.

The government is slowly waking up to the scale of the personal tragedy of delayed autism diagnosis.

By looking at autistic kids, you can't tell when you're working with them who you're going to pull out, who is going to become verbal and who's not. And there seem to be certain kids who, as they learn more and more, they get less autistic acting, and they learn social skills enough so that they can turn out socially normal.

If you have a 2-year-old who is non-verbal, don't wait until you get a diagnosis at 4. The child needs one-on-one teaching with an effective teacher now. This can be a grandmother or a teacher or someone from the community. Grandmothers are especially great. There are a lot of grannies around. Go to your church for help.

One advantage to having a kid on the spectrum: they tend to be rule followers. Socially, things are harder for them than most kids.

I decided to study special education and fell in love with working with individuals with autism. That's what I planned to do with my life.

It's very important for the parents of young autistic children to encourage them to talk, or for those that don't talk, to give them a way of communicating, like a picture board, where they can point to a glass of milk, or a jacket if they're cold, or the bathroom.

Children between the ages of five to ten years are even more variable. They are going to vary from very high functioning, capable of doing normal school work, to nonverbal who have all kinds of neurological problems.

I have an obsession with books about kids with Asperger's syndrome.

I've been interested in autism since I've known about it, which is more or less since I've been writing.

One big question that's come up is: Has autism increased on the mild side of things? I don't think so - they've always been here. Some of this is increased detection.