A Site For Parents of An Autistic Child

Parents-cafe.com includes extensive resources for parents of autistic children, including a useful blog—Child With Autism. The site provides extensive information on autism—including medical updates, specific advice for living day-to-day with autism, and helpful connections to other sources of information. In short, it’s a useful aggregation of information on all aspects of autism—all geared toward parents.

Multiple contributors include parents of autistic children, experts in the field, and others. Blog posts cover a wide range of topics, such as tips on handling specific life challenges -- getting a haircut, dealing with public restrooms, and more, to educational issues Many are links to updated, autism-specific content on Parent-cafe.com. Others reach further afield.

The blog entries tend to be fairly detailed and specific, and are more educational than newsy. Recent entries – and the blogs are very active -- include an autistic sibling survey, an extensive autism resources directory, and a listing of national and local autism groups.

Missing is the back-and-forth, more conversational tone that would come from a blog that enabled open comments.  So the Child with Autism site is more of a trip to the library than a morning at the coffee shop. But it manages to convey a huge amount of autism information efficiently to parents searching for help.

From former U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. Robert Paige: “I can assure you there is no more powerful advocate for children than a parent armed with information and options.” At Carespace, we take these words seriously, and are in the process of building a platform so that all caregivers -- not only parents of children with special needs-- can gather and connect with each other. We believe that all caregivers have insights and experiences that are common among us – emotional, financial, legal, medical and other issues affect all caregivers.

Stona Fitch
carespace.com