Autism and the online world

Growing up, I always thought when someone mentioned the word, "Autism"...it conjured up the ideas that were similar to the movie Rainman...or Awakenings.

In short, the idea in my mind was that of someone who was so far gone into their own world - they couldn't communicate outside their mind.

Needless to say how short sided I was in my thinking, and also how the message of Autism was expressed to us through the media.

Autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning that although there are people like those portrayed in movies like Rainman...there are also those who are High Functioning...and able to speak like a "normal" human being.

It's a wide variety of Autistic traits that somehow gets categorized and labeled as something that can be rather limiting.

When our son was first diagnosed with a label on the spectrum, I didn't know what to do, or how to take it.  The reality was I didn't know what it really meant to raise a child who has Autism.

Then my search online began to learn about the disorder...and there's a lot of sites online that discuss various treatments of Autism...from Speech Therapy, Occupational therapy...to stem cell research.

But, what I wanted to know is what these researchers wheren't able to tell me...

What is life like dealing with Autism.

You know, the daily stuff.  What should I expect?  How can I explain to my family?

Now, I've been an online blogger for over 5 years - so I know all the sites out there online.  You know, the social blogging sites like ning or facebook, etc...

But after die hard searching over a timespan of about 2 years....I didn't find a site that I didn't have to sign up to read stories about.  After all, in order to read any autism stories on ning, you have to sign up and join that particular blogging community.

The same was being dealt with in regards to various Autism sites.

I don't know about you, but giving my e-mail address to countless sites became a bit overkill.  Let alone the e-mail subscriptions that subsequently I'd end up cancelling.

What I found are some good sites, and some good information.  The reality was it didn't answer all of my questions in such a way that I could just point family to those sites and say, "hey, take a look...this is exactly what we're dealing with."

There is an importance when trying to share about Autism and making people aware - that one must share their story.  In that open availability of sharing, it allows people to "get it"...without strings attached.

I found one blogging community site that "get's it"....it's called Autisable.com.

What blogging sites have you found that help you openly understand Autism from those that deal with it?