Carly Fleischmann - autistic girl who is just amazing...

So, I don't know if any of you caught 20/20 on Friday night, but there was a girl named Carly, 14 yrs old, who is severely autistic. Her story is amazing, I am so impressed by her for all that she is doing for autistic children and their parents, advocacy, and education. I strongly suggest everyone check out her story, especially if you know anyone with autism or an autistic child. She has given me so much insight, and so many things to think about regarding my own child.

Here is some of the Q&A from her blog:

pamsfan1 asked: So many people don’t understand autism. We have been advocating for our son since he was diagnosed.

Carly:
A lot of times its not that they don’t under stand its that know one has educated them. The only time an autistic person is on the news is when something bad happens. Or one day a year to raise awareness for autism. But autism day should be every day. People like Larry king Oprah and news stations around the world should publicize it every day. That’s the only way we will get people to learn.

jhannah asked: Am i the only person with a child who dips pizza in hummus? Danny’s autistic so i guess that makes it OK, LOL!

Carly:
Its funny you should say that. A lot of times when autistic children and adults eat food, we have a hard time with textures and smells. It can be a little over barring some times. We block these things out buy adding dips to mask the problem. I like dipping my pizza in mustard and at camp I dip my food in ranch dressing.

Caringchildren asked: Whats it like being a silent observer of things going on around U? When you found your voice did it open the world to you?

Carly:
Being able to hear things that people don’t know I hear or no I’m in the room but don’t think I hear it is cool some times. But some time you don’t want to hear things that you do. Spelling has helped open some of the world to me but has also cased some problems.
In a world of silence communication is everywhere. You just have to know how to look.

Momtoalltweets asked: What thing about being autistic do you like? What’s the worst thing about being autistic?

Carly:
I like when I shock people because they think just because I’m autistic I am not smart. The worst thing is not being able to control my self even though I know what I am doing is wrong.

Healher, AlternaMom, Gfcf4autism, pddnosfamily asked: What is audio filitering? Can you explain audio filtering?

Carly:
Audio filtering is what we do when we take in too much audio information. Its why so called experts say we cant process information. But we are processing the information but we are weeding out all the incoming sounds and it can takes a long time.
Think of a autistic person like a I-pod. We take in over a hundred sounds a minute. Lets call them songs for the ipod. you down load all your songs on to it and get put into different categories. In order for us to understand sometimes when we are overwhelmed we have to categorize all the sounds. We label the ipod. That is the run on sentence that we say over and over again. It could also just be a word or sound that we use. Audio filtering can take up to a week to weed through all the sounds and information we are processing.

A lot of the sounds I hear people tell me they cant hear them because they can focus on one sense at a time and it blocks out all the other incoming sounds.

My answer to that is:I was once told a blind man wanted to be deaf and a deaf man wanted to be blind. But its always better to be your self.

Link to her blog: http://carlysvoice.com/

Link to CTV story (Canadian channel): http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080215/carly_writings_080215/20080217/