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.

There needs to be a lot more emphasis on what a child CAN do, instead of what he cannot do.

When I was younger, I didn't even realize the way I think visually is different.

I'm a child of the 50s. I was expected to have table manners. There needs to be some expectations for behavior. I'm seeing some children today, they don't push them enough.

Lets get into talking about how autism is similar animal behavior. The thing is I dont think in a language, and animals dont think in a language. Its sensory based thinking, thinking in pictures, thinking in smells, thinking in touches. Its putting these sensory based memories into categories.

Now there are a few things with a shelter - like with noise control, don't face dog runs facing each other that tends to encourage barking. The problem you've got is that the kind of materials that absorb noise are difficult to clean. One of the biggest problems in the design of animal shelters is that animals are barking and it's like the sound of a jet plane taking off.

You have got to keep autistic children engaged with the world. You cannot let them tune out.