It All Started With a Turtle

I'm weeks behind on my New Things in 2019 posts, but I couldn't let April end without my annual post for autism awareness month. As most of you know, my middle child is on the spectrum. She is celebrating 2.5 years of continuous employment at our local library. Here are some facts from the Autism Society:

About 1 percent of the world population has an autism spectrum disorder. (CDC, 2014)

• Prevalence in the United States is estimated at 1 in 59 births. (CDC, 2018)

• More than 3.5 million Americans live with an autism spectrum disorder. (Buescher et al., 2014)

• Autism services cost U.S. citizens $236-262 billion annually. (Buescher et al., 2014)

• 35 percent of young adults (ages 19-23) with autism have not had a job or received postgraduate education after leaving high school. (Shattuck et al., 2012)

• In June 2014, only 19.3 percent of people with disabilities in the U.S. were participating in the labor force – working or seeking work. Of those, 12.9 percent were unemployed, meaning only 16.8 percent of the population with disabilities was employed. (By contrast, 69.3 percent of people without disabilities were in the labor force, and 65 percent of the population without disabilities was employed.) (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014)

Although my daughter is employed, her position only allows 15 hours a week. We've looked into trying to find her an additional part-time job, but nothing really seemed to be a good fit. One day, a little over a year ago, I ran across a few websites where you could get paid to write. One thing Middle Child has always been good at is writing. I suggested she look into it and she started submitting various short stories to websites. Last summer, she heard back from a periodical who was interested in a story, but was in transition with editors, so it fell through. About a month later, she heard from another publication that said she was a finalist for one of their books. I did a little googling to make sure everything was on the up and up and then I helped her fill out the legal paperwork. The publication?
 

You can imagine the excitement in being published in a book series that everyone has heard about. The library made a very big deal about it and our hometown newspaper even wrote an article about her. She gave autographed copies of the book to friends and relatives, which really made her proud. We took her to a Barnes & Noble and had her pose in front of the section where her book was located, holding one up.

 

She is on a roll because this month, a local Autism Society accepted an autobiographical piece she sent in to for autism awareness month, which they featured on their website. She has found a lot of encouragement in these successes. Which brings us back to second grade, when she started writing stories. Her teacher had the class write their own books, based on the story, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. In May, the class had an author's tea, where parents were invited to hear the children read their books. I cracked up when my daughter read her version, entitled If You Give a Turtle Tortellini. To this day, she loves her tortellini and her creativity is flourishing!

***To protect her privacy, I have purposefully not used the version of the book that my daughter's story is in or details about her story. Thank you for understanding.***