Help!!! Giving an autism awarness talk tomorrow.........

[CwtchesAndCuddles]

and have been ill all week and not prepared anything yet!

Talking to a mixed age group from my church - I need to keep to basics and get across the message of how different everyone on the spectrum is. They all know my ds who is 6, very sociable, poor communication and severe learning difficulties. I want to ensure that they understand he is just one example of someone with autism and not go away thinking autism = my ds.

If anyone has any helpful tips, or powerpoint resources they are willing to share I would be very grateful.

Say exactly that! Maybe give some examples of famous people on the spectrum.

and good luck very brave of you to give a speech

I saw a fantastic analogy of differences between people. I'll go look it out for you.

Here it is

Thanks for that!

Ok a bit extreme - but what about "Welcome to Beirut" I think that it's also important to explain parents and carers bewilderment and pain and this for me, does that beautifully. We are not chosen saints, well equipped for the task we are ordinary people doing the best we can.

I'd also talk about sensory issues, I gave a talk to teachers at my ds school and did practical examples of what a person on the spectrum might experience.
For noise I used a stereo and tv on loud volume and had 3 mobiles ringing - the teachers had to listen to me speaking in a normal voice and try to follow instructions.
I bought an electrical shocker thing from a joke shop (it was for children, so no teachers harmed) to show how people might experience touch issues
Light - blind folds and once removed bright torches flashed on and off - but not directly in the eye. I also flashed the torches in their peripheral vision while they talked and more often than that they lost their train of thought.
Smell and taste was harder. With smell I talked about early pregnancy when senses are overwhelmed with hormones and asking them to think about how they/gf/dw were. I explained that, that was how people on the spectrum probably felt.
For taste - they had to list their hated foods and how they'd cope if most food was like their most hated food.

I also gave them bubble wrap, didn't say anything and watched as they all picked it up and over the course of the talk they all had a little pop, this helped when discussing compulsion.

I found getting people up and interacting with people kept their interest and made them understand better. Whether they retained who knows?
I'm not sure if I've made this worse, I did have a month to prepare. Sorry if I've made it worse

maybe touch on the subject of myths about Asd?

I just had yesterday a long chat with somebody who thought that autism equals socially weird, no eye contact, highly intelligent, mathematically gifted boys/men.

Frizzcat

Love your examples and will incorporate some of those tomorrow!

Myths about ASD will be high on the agenda (ds has severe learning difficulties and asd - I don't find it helpful to be told such and such has a son who is in Oxford now, just give him time!)

Hope it went well

Thanks for all the help.

It went very well and was quite informal with lots of questions and answers. A lot of those there have offered to be ds "buddie" in Sunday school and kids club and were genuinely interested. They are drawing up a rota so that someone is always there to support ds so that dh and I get a break and ds gets to do something away from us.