Hello, my name is Portia Iversen and I have just recently joined MySpace. My husband Jon Shestack and I started the Cure Autism Now foundation (CAN) about 11 years ago and I recently published my first book (my kids and husband hope it will be my last because it took me three miserable years). The book is titled ‘Strange Son’ (please visit: www.strangeson.com). It came out January 2nd from Riverhead Books and I have been in the midst of promoting it, mostly through radio interviews.
My attention has been focused on autism and especially autism research ever since my son Dov was diagnosed at the age of 21 months. Dov is now 14 years old, he is non-verbal and quite severely affected by autism, but I discovered that he had normal cognitive ability when he was 9 years old and he learned to point at letters on an alphabet board and in this way he began to communicate with us. Until then, we hardly knew him because he was almost completely unable to communicate.
I learned this communication method from Soma Mukhopadhyay, and her son Tito. They were both living in India (their homeland) when I first heard about them in the year 2000. At the time, Tito was about 12 years old and the amazing thing about him was that although he was severely autistic and exhibited all the behaviors of the disorder, he had a high IQ, could read and write and communicate. I realized at once that Tito could be an incredible window into autism because he could tell us about his perception and his experience of the world. I asked CAN to sponsor Tito and his mother Soma to come to the US so that Tito could meet with researchers. They arrived on July 4th, 2001 and we began our journey around the country visiting neuroscientists who studied and interviewed Tito. Later Soma worked with my son Dov and he too began to communicate. I tell the story of this journey in my book ‘Strange Son. You can read excerpts and hear audio clips from the book on my website: www.strangeson.com. There are also videos and photos of the people in my story.
Best wishes to all, -Portia
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2 comments:
` That's awesome! Looking at the video of that girl, I can see how the parents could be so frustrated. How does Soma do it? Now the girl can spell with letters on a board!
Hi Portia. I'm glad you found my blog. (walkedwithangels.blogspot.com) Don't know if it will help you any but I put a rather long post in response to your comment regarding Asperger Syndrome. My E-mail is bobcarver2@yahoo.com if you wish to contact me.
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