Autism Awareness

April 2 was Autism Awareness Day, so this post is a few days late. Autism is something I've been reading a lot about lately. One of my cousin's (he's really more like a baby brother to me) is border-line autistic. He's a senior in high school now and is very high-functioning. He's a very smart kid, he's just is a little off sometimes. He doesn't have very good conversation skills and is very very socially awkward. It's really hard to talk to him. I can only understand about half of the things that come out of his mouth. Lots of what he says in nonsense. He talks mostly about cartoons. He's like a a 10 year with bad manners. The worst thing about it is that his parents ignore it like there's nothing different about him. They never took him to classes or anything of the sort. It makes me so sad and upsets me when I think about it. He was such a good kid growing up. He's very sweet and considerate. Classes could've helped his development so much. He gets frustrated and very easily upset, especially when he's talking to people. It's very hard for him to express himself. Because of this, he gets frustrated when he's trying to talk to somebody and they can't understand what he's saying. So if he's talking to me and I say to him "What did you just say? Can you say it again?," he'll just say "Nevermind. Forget it" and start rambling again about something else. Recently I found out that another one of my cousin's has been diagnosed as autistic. He's three years old. He hasn't started speaking yet, which is why his parents were getting him tested. He can say "hi" and "bye" but that's pretty much it. Thankfully, his parents are taking him to classes two times a week.

This whole autism thing is pretty scary. It seems like more and more kids these days are being diagnosed as autistic. I saw this article on CNN the other day that I found it pretty interesting. Hopefully they can find out what causes autism. I know it will be awhile from now. I do what I can to help. Have you ever heard of Good Search? It's a search engine powered by Yahoo! With every search you do, money gets donated to an organization or school of your choice. I use it as my search engine and I've designated my organization of choice to be Cure Autism Now. You should try it too. Pick an organzation you like and help them out too.