ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the history of autism from the point of view of parents, and attempts to place within it some of the observations people made as the children grew: observations for which the reigning behavioral, cognitive, and social narrative about autism, as well as the reigning diagnostic manual, could not find a convincing place. It focuses on how people with autism interact with and make sense of their environments over time—by "seeing movement"—and explains those observations in dynamic ways and link them to a number of positive approaches that parents, teachers, and people with autism themselves are finding successful. The modern movement approach proposes that the lists of behaviors used to define autism and related disabilities may originate not as inexplicable failures to respond appropriately to external stimuli, to be addressed by painstakingly breaking down, rehearsing, and chaining the "correct" actions, but in challenges to reafference.
