Speaker 1: Hi everyone. I'm Jenn Eggert, of Lakikid . Ask an autism mom, you can join me every Monday at 1:00 PM eastern to meet other parents. Share your insights and learn tips and tricks. Now, today I'm actually going to be kicking off autism awareness month with some amazing uplifting news. If you've ever wanted to watch our show with your child, today would be the day. So please remember like, share, comment, every like, every share, every tag, every comment means the word to us. So please invite your friends, share it on your timeline, show us some love. We appreciate it greatly. Now, as you know, today begins April, April is autism awareness month. Now you all know, that for us to autism families, we want people to not only accept our child, children, but understand them and love them for who they are. So that is going to be our goal for this month to spread not only awareness and acceptance, but Love and kindness towards our children.

Speaker 1: So I want to welcome those of you watching live on Facebook, on Youtube, listening to our podcast. We are on Amazon live now. I think we're on 15 different podcasts stations so you can catch us almost any way that you want that is easy and beneficial for you. So welcome everyone. Let me just see Tanya. Good morning and good afternoon, Christina. Hi Amber Beth. Hi Chris. How you doing Good Morning Jason and Meg and Angela and Melinda and Nathan and Angela White. Good morning everyone. I can't wait to share today's show with you. Like I said, wow. Do you ever wanted to share one of my shows with your children today would be it. Why is today the show you want to talk to your kids about because one in 159 children are diagnosed with autism in the United States. 159 that's a big number that is on an epidemic proportion. So what I want to show today is

Speaker 1: how autism is not necessarily going to stop your child from being the most amazing version of them that they can become. But first I want you to talk about our sponsor. Everyone knows Lakikid is our sponsor. My shirt, it's okay to be different is my favorite shirt I own. And it comes from lakikid. com and you can go there to look up shirts. We actually, Jason and I and Miguel, spent the weekend redoing our store and we have added more tee shirts. We have added, we're adding hoodies, coffee mugs, tote bags, cell phone cases.E eventually we do plan on doing hats. We were just not quite there yet, but we have tons of awesome things at lakikid.com brand new. You've never seen these things before. Literally Jason and I designed them on Saturday. So everything's brand new. Now here's the exciting part. If you watch my show to the very end today, I will be doing a giveaway for one t shirt for our viewers. And Trust me, these t shirts are great quality. I Love them. They're looking at, they're bright, they are about acceptance, about Love. They are wonderful.

Speaker 1: So if you're listening to us today, I'm Jenn from ask an Autism mom, and I'm actually going to be discussing 10 very successful people who happen to have autism now before I get into who they are and information about them. Oh yes. Just a note from lakikd , we haven't finished all the product roll outs yet. There will be more products coming probably every day and by the end of the week we should have most if not all of our products up on our site. So keep checking our site daily cause you never know what you're going to find. Now when we dive into the topic, I want to explain something. First of all, autism does not mean you cannot live a full and enjoyable life. You can have a great life. It doesn't matter that you're autistic. Now for April and autism awareness month, I want to highlight some amazing people who have really shown the world that autism can't stop them. Now the show is about 30 minutes constants in Mary. You're yes, the quality is great. Now before I get into my 10 favorite people, many of you probably saw, I posted a blog in the last couple of weeks and I have talked about it in group. I met Temple Grandin last this last month. Now in March,

Speaker 1: Temple Grandin has multiple degrees. She has created a more humane way to slaughter cows, which leads to less stress on the animal and is a huge autism advocate. Not only is she all of those things, she's a university professor. She now is in her golden years, so she's backing away a little bit more from the teaching and the bovine research and really becoming an autism advocate in autism speaker. She was born in the days in the 50s when autism was not widely known.

Speaker 1: So,her mother was told to institutionalize her because she was nonverbal at the time, but her mother refused. Like many of us, her mother knew her child and decided to let temple grow up and be all she could be. Little did she know that some what, 70 years later. Temple is a huge advocate for those like her. She has an amazing talk. She show slides of an autistic brain versus a normal brain and explains how different they are and I'm telling you, the autistic brain was lift up with bright colors and it was amazing and the neurotypical brain break colors, but it was not nearly as lift up. So that toll tells me that people with autism are, their brains are incredible. What is going through their brains is incredible.

Speaker 1: Now she is more than just a public speaker. She actually connects with parents. I did the meet and greet where I got to sit down and talk to her and let me tell you, she asked me why I was there and I explained I was there both to listen because of lakikid . But I was wanting to meet her because I was a mom to a little girl. She told me never, ever, ever let my little girls stop, keep pushing her because little girls with autism often fall through the cracks. Now her mother's had one philosophy and life and it worked phenomenally well for her. Her mother always stretched her just outside her comfort zone. So everything she did was just outside her comfort zone. And look at her now. She's an accomplished speaker. She's a university lecturer. She has patents out on different designs for bovine health and what not.

Speaker 1: She is one of the top, people with autism who have succeeded in life, to have all of that behind her name. All those doctorial degrees, all these things. She succeeded. She never let autism stop her. Now next I have, and I know I'm going to mess up this name even though Jason, helped me with it. Sat oshi Tajiri , he is the creator of Pokemon. Many of us know Pokemon. Pokemon is a huge, huge thing in Japan, but also in the United States and Canada. POKEMON has exploded worldwide. He has created characters, video games. T there's movies, there's books, Pokemon books, there's trading cards. My son growing up had all of it. He loved Pokemon, but Satoshi Tajiri had autism. He created these characters that became a worldwide sledge is sensation and there's so much to his actual creation. Like I said, there's cartoons, there's books, there's everything plush. it's loved by children and adults. How many adults do you know that play Pokemon Go? Again, that was all created because of a man with autism.

Speaker 1: Now, the third one I have is Daryl Hannah. She is an actress who's diagnosed as a child and went on like I said, to become a famous actress. She not being a fan of being in the center stage. She has now pulled back from acting and focuses her effort on advocating for the environment. Next we have Dan Harmon for those of you who watch Rick and Morty or have watched the cult favorite community. He is the creator. While doing research for a character on the community. He realized that he actually had a lot of the autistic traits and then sought diagnosis as an adult all because he wanted to research a character who had autism. So he shows he is very well known in, like I said, the cult favorites of the community and Rick and Morty. I know my son loves Rick and Morty and so does my husband, so he is another one that has not let autism stop him.

Speaker 1: He didn't even know he had autism until he was an adult. Next, we have a huge, huge franchise that was started by one man. Many of you have heard the name Dan Akroyd. If you haven't heard the name Dan Akroyd, you have heard of the show Ghostbusters. The Ghostbusters franchise was actually created because Dan Akroyd was obsessed with police officers and ghosts. So he ended up taking his love of police officers and ghosts and his love of writing, putting them together and making a screenplay, which later became the Ghostbusters movie. And as you know, Ghostbusters is now huge, very, very popular. They did remakes of a female version of Ghostbusters recently, so Ghostbusters is very widely known now. Now someone to talk about a singer. She here is where you're going to see some challenges. Courtney Love, she was diagnosed as a child with mild autism and she freely admits that her social skills are less than average, but she has a successful singer, although most of her fame in the later years has become because of her sensationalism. She married Kurt Cobain who was, who died of suicide. She is very well known for crazy antics. She pulls off a lot of those antics. S he actually attributes to her impulse control and well lack of impulse control that she gets from being autistic.

Speaker 1: Now I have someone that if you haven't heard from him, I wonder if you're living under a rock Mozart, Mozart, is composer Wolf Gang, Amadeus Mozart. Now I know that he was born before, autism was diagnosable and known, but they feel that he had autism high functioning because he had difficulty keeping still and then an ability to cope with live music, which is interesting. He had an inability to cope with live music, but he became one of the most well known composers in the world in history. S o again, he's one of the most legendary composers of all. Next we have Andy Warhol . He's an acclaimed artist known for his repetitive, style. He suspected to have autism due to his inability to handle social situations is inclinations to use the least amount of words possible when speaking and even his own occasional difficulty in being able to recognize his friends.

Speaker 1: Now he's one that all of his art has a repetitive style. Like many of our kids, he repeats and repeats and repeats. Now, number nine is pretty amazing. He opened up a lot of doors and opportunities for the future. He again was not formally diagnosed because he was born and died before autism was a diagnosis, but they believe that Albert Einstein was autistic. This belief is due to social development issues, experience during childhood that prevented him from interacting normally with others. He was actually once expelled due to his inability to pay attention in school. He later became one of the greatest minds in math and science. He's best known for the theory of relativity and the equation Equals and z squared, which foreshadowed the development of atomic power and the atomic bomb. Now my last one is kind of interesting to me. A nd I'll explain why. It is a, about a man who did not know he was autistic until he was in his seventies people.

Speaker 1: And he is very, very famous. Have you heard the name Anthony Hopkins I know I have. He's in the movie Hannibal. Silence of the lands.H e's extremely well known. He was diagnosed with autism in his seventies and he acknowledges that now looking back on his life, autism really did impact his life, but he was still able to become extremely successful. So as you can see, autism has created some amazing minds that we have left, huge, that have left huge marks on the world around them are an example that autism does not have to be the thing that limits your child. Find your child's love and let them go free to soar and explore. Most of these people had parents behind them that let them go. They put them in the world and said, go and be successful and be amazing. These parents push their children to be the people that they became. And as you see, they're extremely successful. Now I want to share your success stories. If you have a success story about your child, please let me know and I will share it with the group now.

Speaker 1: So let me just go to the comment section real quick. I agree. Pokemon is a huge worldwide hit and that most kids love, as his Ghostbusters. Most people don't know about Courtney love, but she is now actually becoming more and more public about it as her antics from about five to ten years ago are coming out as being worse than they were. She's explaining that she has no impulse control because she was autistic.

Speaker 1: Now

Speaker 1: Christy, I know that most people didn't realize it. Dan Akroyd did have autism, but he was formally diagnosed from what I have read in multiple sources. Christine, I love that your daughter loves Mozart. Mozart had a vision and his vision was very different than any other composer of his time, any of any composer in the world and any time. And I honestly believed that his music is so different and so timeless and so still famous and popular today because his brain worked differently. It's saw between the lines. I watched one of my favorite movies this weekend. P patch Adams and in a scene he was in a mental institution and the man kept holding up his fingers and saying, how many fingers do you see how many do you see And every time someone said for he would laugh hysterically and called them crazy. Now imagine this like us being non-autistic we see one, two, three, four. Well, what if like this man on Patch Adams, our children see what we don't see. They see through the fingers. They see one, two, three. So like that taking that into account, Mozart's saw in the music, things that we could never dream of seeing. And I believe that's what made him such a timeless, amazing, amazing composer.

Speaker 1: Tanya, I love that you're watching the show and using that time for your child as a distraction. Yes, Angela. Mozart was until he was four or Mozart's where Albert Einstein. Let me get that correct. Albert Einstein.

Speaker 1: L ots of Pokemon favorite movies. I know since a lot of these I didn't know about, I didn't know about, Anthony Hopkins. I didn't know about Courtney Love. There was some that I didn't know about. The name of the person who created Pokemon is Satoshi Tajiri. S A T O S H I Noon Word T A J I R I , Satoshi Tajiri , Angela, I agree. Eminem a does make subtle hints and a lot of his music to being autistic, but I wanted to go with those that I could prove, were autistic for today. And honestly when I was researching the show, I had so many examples in front of me and because of the length of the show I had to pick only 10. I love that when your daughter's stemming, she hums. Mozart. Thank you. Jason. Jason has posted the Wikipedia link for the creator of Pokemon for anyone interested.

Speaker 1: Angela says our son at three bet all high scores in our family for temple run. He, his uncle was 17 with the highest score before him. Matthew Labyorteaux has autism also. He is the actor from little house on the prairie known as Albert Inggals. I did not know that. A and I did not know Anthony Hopkins had an orchestra piece. Jerry Seinfeld and Tim Burton. Yes. Angela. Those were names that I came up with. T hey are not right from what I can understand, they are not formally diagnosed but they are believed to have autism.

Speaker 1: Now, what I am going to do is give away one of our amazing t shirts for autism awareness month this month. What I want you to do is tell me, let's see. Let me look at one of the people I spoke about, Andy Warhol. What is Andy Warhol known for I know he's known for art, but what makes his arts so different and so special I will be selecting one of the people who comment what makes his art so special to when one of our amazing lakikid tee shirts. So give me your answer, folks. What makes Andy Warhols are so special and we have a winner, Christie Riemenschnelder. Christy, I'm going to screw up your name, but yes, all of his art is repetitive in nature. So Christie wins, Jason, if you want to connect with Christie for me, she is the winner of one of our autism t shirts for this month. Now I want to remind you that we have a Facebook group. If you're not a part of it, you can join at Laki kid.com/ group. We have a page where you can go laki kid.com/ ask. You can go there and post your questions to add for me to answer live on an upcoming show.

Speaker 1: Sorry, I'm just trying to make sure I had everything. I want to thank you for joining me today. I'm Jenn Eggert at Lakikid Ask an autism mom and you could join me at 1:00 PM eastern every Monday for more parenting tips and you can always join our parents support group. Like I said, laki kid.com/ group and if you want to ask questions, go to lakikid com/ live until, let me just make sure. Yes. Everyone. Congrats to Christie. Jason, we'll be sending you, information in a few minutes on how to win or to claim your shirt you won. Remember folks everyday this week we're going to try and be adding new products to our online store. laki kid.com. Go there. I would go there daily cause you never know what you're going to find. Like I said, cell phone cases, tote bags, more tee shirts, hoodies.

Speaker 1: A coffee cup. I really love the Coffee Cup. I think that would make a great gift for grandparents. Remember, M other's Day's coming, Father's Day's coming. It's autism awareness month. We have some great shirts for M om and Dad. We have some coffee mugs for family members, so if you need a birthday gift, a Mother's Day, gift to Father's Day gift, check out our website. Our stuff is amazing and we are adding every day, so thank you all for watching and thank you for sharing this amazing journey with me. I hope that you learned something today, but if you only take away one thing from today's show, please, please know that your child not have to be defined by a diagnosis. They can be successful in whatever field they want. I have a friend who's not able to watch today. She's homeschooling, but her son is into her biology, the study of reptiles, and he's going to go far at 14 years old.

Speaker 1: He's already extremely well versed in reptiles, so find your child's place in this world. I know our children are not made to fit in, but let them find where they can make their impact on this world. I know Riley has big dreams and I'm so excited and I can't wait to see where her big dreams bring her in the future. So thank you all for coming. We can't wait to see you again next week. I guess next week, I believe I have a special guest. I have to double check, but I will see you next week. Thank you all for coming and remember, until next time every child brings good luck.

Speaker 4: Okay.