Top Magazines for Parents of Autistic Children
Magazines can offer insight and in-depth information from people who have had similar experiences than you. Although it is not always the most convenient to get a paper magazine in the mail, many of these magazines offer blogs, forums, and online versions of their magazine that you can access right from your phone! Here are some of the top magazines that we have found that you may be interested in checking out!
Autism Parenting Magazine
https://www.autismparentingmagazine.com/
What sets this magazine apart is that it does not only provide information, it talks through real-life circumstances. Autism Parenting Magazine provides advice for sensory issues, therapies to develop your child’s potential, and real-life stories from parents with children on the autism scale. They also make it easy for parents on the go! There is an online version of the magazine and an app!
Parenting Special Needs
https://www.parentingspecialneeds.org/
This magazine is focused on giving parents the best tips and tricks while parenting a child with special needs. Topics vary from how to teach your child how to cook, sharing inspirational stories, and advice from health experts.
In addition to the content that is provided by the magazine, real parents can also contribute! Some of the stories in the magazine comes directly from parents and some of the writers for the magazine even parents themselves. This Magazine is for parents, by parents.
Exceptional Parenting
Exceptional Parenting is a magazine that focuses on news that is catered to parents of children with different disorders. There are many different inspirational and scientific articles as well as blog posts that discuss different topics about parenting a child with disabilities. In addition, every time someone subscribes, they will donate $10.00 to Autism Speaks!
The Autism File
The Autism File was founded in 1999 by Johnathon and Polly Tommey who are parents of an autistic child. The writers for this magazine are handpicked by the two of them and know what it is like to be directly affected by autism. They display their knowledge and passion for autism throughout their articles.
The Autism file is more than a family magazine, it has scientific articles that answer to some of the most important questions about Autism Spectrum Disorder. They cover nutrition, medicine and special education.
Autism World Magazine
http://www.autismworldmagazine.com/
Accessible for free through the Apple Newsstand app, Autism World Magazine is an online magazine that is written by parents, caretakers and professionals associated with autism. They also have articles written by autistic children and adults! Autism World gives stories with advice for the hardships that come with Autism Spectrum Disorder and offers in depth articles by doctors that dedicate their lives to treating Autism and Asperger’s.
Find any magazines that you are interested in? Let us know how you like it!
Laura Gaffney
Awesome list!
Florence Collins">Florence Collins
Thank you.
Jackie Brown">Jackie Brown
Thank you for this post. Here’s another for your list — one that supports parents as it is a magazine FOR kids with autism — for kids 8-12 years of age: Outfox Magazine. http://www.outfoxmagazine.com. Also, please check us out on Facebook too. The magazine is full of facts, fun, jokes, activities, as well as directed content designed to build your child’s self-esteem and self-acceptance. And we’re a nonprofit. I’ve had 25 years of experience in educational publishing experience and I am an autism mom as is my business partner. It’s been tested and we have a great team with high integrity. I’d love to know what you think!
Aaron
Autism Asperger’s Digest is a great resource for anyone! http://www.autismdigest.com
Dorian Townsend">Dorian Townsend
As a Special Education Tutor at ACCEL, this handy list of the top magazines provides relevant information to upgrade and learn more about ASD autism spectrum disorder. For parents as well as teachers, it is necessary to gradually develop social skills and peer interaction in the child. A big thank you for providing this top list.
Sandra Dixon
I don’t know who to send this to. I wrote a book called, The Shy One. It’s about being bullied ,also about a little white elephant that is different than all the rest in her heard . (The story is actually about me). I sell my books for $15 and $3 out of the sales go to the society for children with autism. I’m trying to get The Shy One into schools but school don’t seem to want to pay for them. Just over a year and a half, I have given the society in Victoria $339.00 how can I get an ad in a magazine. Can anybody out there help me get them into schools? If I had an email, I could send you a little write up about myself and I send you a picture of what the book looks like.
corinne conover">corinne conover
I was seeing if you were interested in a program I am implementing in forest hills, manhattan, and rego park communties. my non profit began 1.5 years ago with much success. I have appeared in ny post, channel new york news 1, CBS calling for interview, and 10 other publications locally along with be kind magazine in dublin and the UK. Paw it forward NY was created by me and my little dog sonny who is a rescue. if you are a physically disabled, senior citizen, or cancer patient and own a dog. we take out your dog on two walks per day for free for up to three hours. trail runs, hiking, leisurely walks, and parks with treats and fun. we also work with the patient and/or member and keep all private and confidential. some need a little conversation and communication and cheering up. we do all that too. should someone ask about the member we say “were the dog walker, they are doing just fine”. we have 68 volunteers and use 38 at this time. expanded into two communties and going to work with the Gilda’s club in nyc. strictly with their cancer patients. prior I was a special needs educator for special needs children with high functioning autism. I in fact after working with them full time as children and adults do not consider them special needs in some regards. In fact they have brilliant minds, show empathy, love to have fun and are very very smart. I like to incorporate and expand the program and who I inspire to work with special needs. they love animals, walks, and enjoying the seniors and putting a smile on their faces and making them feel good. sometimes the seniors have the only human connection that day by volunteers and its real nice all around. I was seeing if you were interested in either interviewing me about my non profit foundation or writing an article myself on high functioning autistic children and truly how their brilliant and smart minds are with empathy and working along side them showcasing the power of volunteering, empathy (which some think they don’t have and they truly do), and their love of animals.
thank you and you can see my site at http://www.pawitforwardny.com
516 554 1268
corinneconover@aol.com
Leanne Strong
I am on the Autism Spectrum, and have written a few articles for Autism Parenting Magazine. I feel that it is important for parents to hear from the perspective of an individual on the Spectrum.
Karen">Karen
Hello! Thanks for the list. 🙂
I’d also like to add Spectrum Life Magazine published by Autism Empowerment. This is an autistic-led nonprofit publication written by and for autistic and autism communities. Although the specialty is the Pacific Northwest, there is a lot of evergreen content applicable worldwide.
There are both print and online versions and you can read all current and back issues online for free at https://www.spectrumlife.org.
https://www.spectrumlife.org/currentissue
Karen">Karen
Hello!
Back in 2017, I recommended Spectrum Life Magazine published by Autism Empowerment to your list. Since recommending them, they have expanded quite a bit.
Autism Empowerment now also publishes a sister publication called Zoom Autism Magazine. This is a national and international publication that helps people see autism through many lenses.
https://www.zoomautism.org
Latest issue is Autism Around the World
https://www.spectrumlife.org/zoomautismissue20
Frank Sterle Jr.">Frank Sterle Jr.
While low-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder seems to be more recognized and treated, higher-functioning ASD cases are typically left to fend for themselves, except for parents who can finance usually expensive specialized help. But a physically and mentally sound future should be EVERY child’s fundamental right, especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter. And not being mentally, let alone physically, abused within or by the educational system is definitely a moral right.
In the early 1970s, my Grade 2 teacher was the first and most formidably abusive authority figure with whom I was terrifyingly trapped. I cannot recall her abuse in its entirety, but I’ll nevertheless always remember how she had the immoral audacity — and especially the unethical confidence in avoiding any professional repercussions — to blatantly readily aim and fire her knee towards my groin, as I was backed up against the school hall wall.
Luckily, she missed her mark, instead hitting the top of my left leg. Though there were other terrible teachers, for me she was uniquely traumatizing, especially when she wore her dark sunglasses when dealing with me.
But rather than tell anyone about my ordeal with her and consciously feel victimized, I instead felt some misplaced shame: I was a ‘difficult’ boy, therefore she likely perceived me as somehow ‘deserving it’. I was much too young to perceive how a regular-school environment can become the traumatizer of susceptible children like me; the trusted educator indeed the abuser.
Perhaps not surprising, I feel that schoolteachers should receive mandatory ASD training, especially as the rate of diagnoses increases. There could also be an inclusion in standard high school curriculum of child-development science that would also teach students about the often-debilitating condition (without being overly complicated).
If nothing else, the curriculum would offer students an idea/clue as to whether they themselves are emotionally/mentally compatible with the immense responsibility and strains of regular, non-ASD-child parenthood.
It would explain to students how, among other aspects of the condition, people with ASD (including those with higher functioning autism) are often deemed willfully ‘difficult’ and socially incongruent, when in fact such behavior is really not a choice. It would also elucidate how “camouflaging” or “masking,” terms used to describe ASD people pretending to naturally fit into a socially ‘normal’ environment, causes their already high anxiety and depression levels to further increase.
Of course, this exacerbation is reflected in the disproportionately high rate of suicide among ASD people.
As for relationships, I can be quite attracted to a woman [or girl, in my earlier years] and yet have a purely reactive, abnormal response of pulling away if she takes the unexpected initiative of getting close. It’s strange and therefore can be quite embarrassing.
Today, at age 56, I’m still non-diagnosed due to its price tag, though that status means little to me. My autism-spectrum disordered brain is, at least for me, an obvious condition with which I greatly struggle(d) while unaware until I was a half-century old that its component dysfunctions had formal names.
I’m sometimes told, “But you’re so smart!” To this I immediately agitatedly reply: “But for every ‘gift’ I have, there are a corresponding three or four deficits.” It’s crippling, and on multiple levels!
Besides the ASD, my daily cerebral turmoil mostly consists of a formidable combination of adverse childhood experience trauma, autism spectrum disorder and high sensitivity, with the ACE trauma in large part the result of my ASD and high sensitivity. More recently, I’ve discovered yet another and perhaps even more consequential coexistent psychological condition — “core shame” — that’s seriously complicating an already bad and borderline bearable cerebral-disorder combination.
A core shame diagnosis would help explain why, among its other debilitating traits, I’ve always felt oddly uncomfortable sharing my accomplishments with others, including those closest to me. And maybe explain my otherwise inexplicable almost-painful inability to accept compliments, which I had always attributed to extreme modesty.
It would also help explain why I have consistently felt unlovable. Largely due to ASD traits that rubbed against the grain of social normality thus were clearly unappreciated by others, my unlikability was for me confirmed. My avoidance of social interaction and even simple smiles at seemingly-interested females was undoubtedly misperceived as snobbery. The bitter irony was that I was actually feeling the opposite of conceit or even healthy self-image/-esteem. …
Such coexistent conditions, or what I self-deprecatingly refer to as my perfect storm of train wrecks, are real and cause me great suffering. ACE abuse thus trauma, for example, is often inflicted upon ASD and/or highly sensitive children and teens by their normal or ‘neurotypical’ peers — thus resulting in immense and even debilitating self-hatred and shame — so why not at least acknowledge that consequential fact in a meaningfully constructive way?
It indeed would be very helpful to people like me to have books written about such or similar coexistent-condition life tribulations.
Largely as a result of the abovementioned, I’ve suffered enough unrelenting ACE-related PTSD thus hyper-anxiety and depression to have known and enjoyed the euphoric release upon consuming alcohol and/or THC. However, the psychologically self-medicating method I utilized for many years was eating, usually junk food.
Many, if not most, obese people self-medicate through over-eating. I utilized that method during most of my pre-teen years, and even later in life for a couple decades after temporarily ceasing my use of intoxicants. … I hope not, but someday I might return to over-eating as a means of no longer self-medicating via two glasses of wine every night.
It all typically makes every day a mental ordeal unless the turmoil is treated with some form of self-medicating, which for me is alcohol and prescription, since the latter is only partially effective.
It’s a continuous, discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly I will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires. The lasting emotional/psychological pain from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside the head.
It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others.