Visiting Chuck E. Cheese’s can be a very heady experience for a kid — what with the singing animatronic animals, flashing lights, rambunctious kids, hot pizza (and occasional all-out brawls among the adults). For a child with autism it can be more than exciting — it can be overwhelming, which is why some Chuck E. Cheese’s locations will host a series of monthly “Sensory-Free” events. [More]
autism
Target Store Will Offer Quiet Shopping Hours For Autistic Customers
By 12.9.16
What makes a good shopping experience for some folks is not always ideal for others. That’s why a Pennsylvania Target store is setting aside certain hours on Saturday so autistic customers can shop in peace and quiet. [More]
Applebee’s Forgot To Pay Prep Cook With Autism For A Whole Year
By 10.23.15
How can someone work part-time for a national chain restaurant for the better part of a year and not receive any pay? What happened to a young adult in Rhode Island was a unique situation where the employee worked in an unpaid training program through a state-funded nonprofit, then was supposed to be moved onto the payroll. Only he never was. [More]
Mother Of Autistic Boy Claims IKEA Discriminated Against Her Son
By 2.13.15
IKEA has three prongs to its stores’ playroom policy — a height restriction, a potty-training requirement, and no adults. A Kansas mom says this last rule is discriminatory to her son and other children with autism who require the presence of an adult caregiver. [More]
California Pizza Kitchen Manager Starts Chain Of Kindness That Extends To Corporate
By 4.24.14
When a family with four kids stopped off to eat at California Pizza Kitchen, disaster was looming. Their 13-year-old son, who has autism, was upset and on the verge of a meltdown in the middle of a crowded restaurant on Valentine’s Day. As the mother dreaded what would happen next, the manager came to her rescue, treating the family as if nothing were out of the ordinary. [More]
Parents Of Autistic Kids Sue Disney Over New Waiting Line Policy
By 4.10.14
In an effort to discourage some ethically questionable visitors who had been hiring disabled “tour guides” (or who pretended to be disabled themselves) in order to skip long lines at Disney park attractions, the company instituted a policy change last October. Rather than moving directly to the front of the line, these guests are given tickets that tells them when to come back so they don’t have to endure a wait in line. But some parents of autistic children have sued Disney over the policy, saying it goes too far and violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. [More]
Study: Obese Moms Birth Kids With Greater Risk Of Autism
By 4.11.12
Science continues to scramble for reasons that children become autistic. The latest straw to which researchers are grasping is that children whose mothers were obese during pregnancy have an increased risk of autism. [More]
Study Linking Vaccine To Autism Was Fraud, British Medical Journal Reports
By 1.6.11
Blasted almost as soon as it was published, a 1998 study linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism has still managed to scare off hordes of anxious parents from fully vaccinating their children. Now a new investigative report published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) goes further, saying that the study was not only rife with error, but outright fraud, committed for financial gain. [More]
More Research Proves Vaccinations Don't Cause Autism In Kids
By 9.14.10
Read a few misleading articles and it’s easy to jump to the ill-informed conclusion that vaccinations put infants at higher risk of becoming autistic. Research continues to strike down the harmful rumors propagated by a controversial British doctor. [More]
Insurance Covers Meds If Your Kid Is Clumsy, But If He's Autistic, He Owes $24,000
By 3.24.10
Nine-year old Nico owes $24,000. If he was just clumsy, he wouldn’t, but because he’s autistic, he’s got to cough it up, according to the insurance company—and the collections agency that keeps calling him every day. [More]
Dateline Weighs In On Autism Vaccination Debate
By 9.1.09
The raging debate on whether the MMR vaccine causes autism in children comes down to this — nearly the entire medical community is on one side, while controversial British doctor Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy are on the other.
Police Chief Orders Crying Autistic Child And Mother To Leave Restaurant
By 7.14.08
Gail Martin was having a meal at a restaurant in Jackson, SC. when her 4-year-old autistic daughter Alyssa began crying, WIS10 reports. Gail then heard a man yell at her from across the room who told her leave the restaurant. This man was neither a callous restaurant employee nor a drunk bar patron, it was the Jackson Police Chief, Dennis Rushton. “He said, ‘You need to pick her up and you need to get out of here now,'” Gail said. Details, inside…
Apple Store Manager Calls Autistic Guy A "Freak"
By 1.31.08
Joshua’s MacBook was splitting along one side—you could push it back together, but after a few minutes it would start to separate again. When Joshua, who has Asperger syndrome, tried to get it repaired at his local Apple Store, he ran into all sorts of problems. First there was a two-hour wait to see an expert, then an assistant manager walked up and said, “I’ve seen you in here a lot with that laptop, what’s wrong?” Joshua explained, and pointed out that he had a meeting to attend that evening and needed his laptop to take notes, so he was hoping to have it looked at in person.
“I’m sorry if I seem on edge or anything, I just…. I’m born with this”… The assistant manager then says “It’s okay. It’s the Monday before a full moon. There will be plenty more freaks like you before close“. And tells me to calm down.
New Device Tells You When You’re Being Annoying
By 3.31.06
Good news for Luke Johnson! Thanks to an intrepid MIT scientist, a new device will soon allow even the most clueless social reject to know when others find him boring or irritating.
Freaks, Geeks And Aspergers: “Don’t Tell Women They Look Fat.”
By 3.29.06
Are you a highly functioning autistic with severely impaired social skills? Yeah, so are we. And, like many of our fellow Aspergerians, we’ve often taken time out from building Rube-Goldberg-like fusion reactors in our Mom’s basement to lament our poor success rate with the ladies. Even for the normal man, saying the right thing to a woman is a game of Russian Roulette, only instead of a bullet in the face, you find your testicles under heel to a grinding stiletto. But what if you can never manage to say the right thing?
