Notre Dame Disability Awareness Week

Notre Dame Disability Awareness Week 2004 Events:

Monday March 22nd	Tuesday March 23rd	Wednesday March 24th	Thursday March 25th	Friday March 26th
Wear your silver ribbon! Pick up your free silver awareness ribbon at the LaFortune Ticket Desk or at Center for Social Concerns. 5:15p.m. Mass, Basilica of the Sacred Heart	Disabilities at ND 8p.m. Reckers, Notre Dame Psychology Professor Kathy Gibney will facilitate a panel discussion with students with disabilities. Free Smoothies.	Theology on Tap 9:30p.m. Legends, Notre Dame Biology Professor Michelle Whaley and Psychology Professor Kathy Gibney will co-facilitate a Medical Ethics discussion- abortion based on amniocentesis results, stem cell research and extraordinary life support.	Autism Lecture by Patricia Stacey 7p.m. DeBartolo Hall Room 101 Free Admission. There will be a book signing after lecture. The book will be available by cash or check.	Wear your silver ribbon and share with your friends what you've learned about people with disabilities.

Patricia Stacey, author of the book, The Boy Who Loved Windows, is a Creative Writing Professor and former staff member of the Atlantic Monthly. Read her article, "Floor Time" as it appeared in the January/February 2003 Atlantic Monthly. Listen to Patricia Stacey being interviewed on NPR this past November 3rd.

About the book:

DA CAPO Press
In 1997, writer Patricia Stacey and her husband, Cliff, learned that their six-month-old son, Walker, might never walk or talk, or even hear or see. Unwilling to accept this grim prognosis, they embarked on a five-year odyssey that took them into alternative medicine and the newest brain research -- and toward a new and innovative understanding of autism. Finally their search brought them to pioneering developmental psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan, who helped them save their son and bring him into full contact with the world. This enthralling memoir, at once heart-wrenching and hopeful, takes the reader into the life of one remarkable family willing to do anything to give their son a rich and emotionally full life. We follow as they struggle to elicit the first sign that their son is connecting with them, and share in their fears, struggles, tiny victories, and eventual triumphs. The Boy Who Loved Windows is not only a compelling and inspiring story for parents and professionals who care for children with autism and other special needs, but also a stunning literary debut. It will captivate anyone who cares about the lives of children and the passion of families who put them first against huge odds.

Publisher's Weekly
Former Atlantic Monthly staffer Stacey makes her debut with a sharply observed, deeply personal account of her son Walker's metamorphosis from a worryingly unresponsive infant to an intelligent, normally functioning child. Living in the leafy college town of Northampton, Massachusetts, Stacey documents her harrowing experiences as a mother, as she and her husband, Cliff, quickly realize that Walker is not a normal, happy baby. Walker fails to respond to his parents, eats very little, is unable to express emotion and spends much of his time staring at windows. Stacey works night and day to try to reverse Walker's diagnosis of possible autism, trying every conceivable treatment and specialist and obsessively educating herself about new trends in the neuroscience behind the disorder. She realizes that Walker blankly stares out of windows not because his senses are dulled but because they are overwhelmed; Walker is hypersensitive to the world and cannot cope with the constant rush of stimuli. Child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan recommends his controversial "floor time" strategy for Walker: several hours of rigorous playtime between parent and child per day, emphasizing interaction. The time, money and stress involved in maintaining an intensive schedule of treatments for Walker from his eighth to 20th month soon show their toll on the Stacey family, as funds run dry, the parents grow further apart, and less time is available for Walker's older sister, Elizabeth. Stacey in particular becomes increasingly nervous, obsessive and exhausted from her constant battle to improve her son's life, but the result is stage-by-stage breakthroughs. Some readers will want less personal and medico-historical detail and fewer in-depth treatments of the various therapies and sessions, but Stacey keeps the focus on her own understanding, which ultimately sustains the book. (Sept. 15) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Book review

	7p.m., Thursday, March 25, 2004
	DeBartolo 101, University of Notre Dame
	Free Admission, Open to the public