Joanie Calem Family Artist in Columbus on te%
He Didn’t Think He Could, But He Did….
Well, he did it. My now 26 year old son with autism graduated from Art School, with a BFA in 2D Animation. The adventures and the learning were endless, and priceless. He is someone who learns from doing, who understands reality through his experiences, and works endlessly to figure out what conclusions he should draw from life. The ambiguities of typical American university life were a little crazy-making, and the journey pretty darn bumpy at times. But he did it. … Continue reading
A Question of Balance
In Jewish folklore, there are many stories about droughts, which makes sense, since the Jewish people originated in the Middle East, where the rainy season is fairly short, from October to March, followed by the rest of the year when it doesn’t usually rain at all, and the water that fell in the winter needs to be strictly conserved to last for the whole dry season. If the rainy season is poor one year, that makes water conservation even more … Continue reading
Type A Achievers Meet the Speed of Autism OR The Tortoise and the Hare?
Remember those early days of the Corona shutdowns, back in March? Now many things are reopening, and it is almost hard to remember what we were experiencing back then. Many of my friends had written about how the “shelter-in-place” rules had provided a welcome and most unexpected opportunity to have their adult children at home for an extended period of time. Others bemoaned that their kids specifically chose NOT to come home, trying to be responsible, afraid that as millennials … Continue reading
Musings After A Zoom Seder in an Autism Home – April 2020
For anyone not familiar with Jewish Passover Seders (Seder is a Hebrew word that means “the order of things”, and is the name for the traditional ceremony that Jewish people perform every year on the holiday of Passover, which follows a specific order), there is an annual precious part of the Seder where the youngest participant recites what are called the four questions (really one question with four different answers.) The question is “What makes this night different from all … Continue reading
A person’s right to fully participate in all aspects of society….
Shepherding children to adulthood is a bit of a whirlwind. The school years are often one long race from morning ‘til night. But as any parent of both a neurotypical child and a child with autism can testify, there is great variance in the nature of whirlwinds… both my husband and I realized early on that our parenting style changes dramatically depending on which offspring we are with at any given moment. Just a mundane example: Looking back at the … Continue reading
Standing At Sinai with Everyone…
I love spring. I love the warmth, the sense of new life, the sense of rebirth after the winter. But for families with kids with special needs, like mine, spring is also a time of unique challenges: lots of holidays full of potential for sensory overload; lots of end-of-the-school-year events; the school year routine changes, and summer, though optimally a time for relaxing, is often harder to negotiate even than the school year, simply because the day-to-day schedule is so … Continue reading
Thanks-giving and Compassion-giving
Though our world and Western society are forever changing, and many people bemoan the loss of “the good old days,” the annual American tradition of Thanksgiving is coming, as it does every November in the United States. The name of the holiday serves its purpose well: to remind us to give thanks for our blessings. And in Judaism we have a wonderful “first thing in the morning” blessing of giving thanks every day… giving thanks that we woke up and … Continue reading
Autism Awareness, Passover, Easter and Miracles?
This year, as occasionally happens, Passover and Easter are both on the same weekend. Passover starts on Friday night, March 30, and Easter is on Sunday, April 1. While each holiday is celebrated by different religions of course, both holidays focus on historical events, and both holidays tell of miracles, miracles that are central to the narrative of each holiday. (Yes, I know that there are disagreements amongst historians about whether or not the events relayed in each of these … Continue reading
