Our Story

About Us

My son was born in 1978 - fourteen years after Bernard Rimland wrote the *book that brought the end to Leo Kanner's "Refrigerator Mother theory". (which is often attributed to Bruno Bettleheim). Eric entered this world before the making of the movie "Rainman", before the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) and just three years after Congress passed Public Law 94-142 Education of All Handicapped Children Act - the precursor of today's Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). He was born toward the end of an era when the general public and much of the medical profession had never even heard of autism. The rate of autism when he was diagnosed in the early 1980's was 1 in 10,000 births. When he entered the public school system most teachers had never heard of autism & I was repeatedly told by the school district that they had never seen a child like him before. Even his pediatrician and his pediatric dentist were unfamiliar with the term "autism". And although the "refrigerator mother" theory was supposedly long dead, it still prevailed in the attitudes of most of the professionals that I encountered during those early years who at least had a rudimentary knowledge of autism.

When Eric was little our local autism chapter had some awareness cards printed and gave a few to members upon request. The cards were nothing fancy - just gray cardstock with black text and no graphics - but they served their purpose and I was glad to have them. This website is my effort to give parents more options than just homemade, plain text cards. All of the cards here are professionally printed on 80 pound cardstock in full color. I hope that you will enjoy sharing them with others as much as I've enjoyed designing them. My goal is to create autism awareness cards that people can be proud to exchange that will convey information about autism to the general public in a positive way. I hope to offer these to visitors of my website at the lowest price possible and still cover my cost (printing, website domain & hosting fees). I also hope in the process to avoid any semblence of commercializing autism as some websites seem to have done.

The slide show on the right is Eric now as an adult doing what he loves best - writing music in the den surrounded by his treasured assortment of sheetmusic books, magazines, cassette tapes and markers.
I fill orders for "Autismcards & More" from home during my free time in the evenings and on the weekends in addition to working a regular full-time job and taking care of dear son. I also maintain the website myself & design all of the cards. This is a "one woman" operation - there is no staff. I always try to fill orders as quickly as possible, but given the circumstances, please be patient if it takes a little while for me to get your order out.

_{* "Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior", 1964 by Bernard Rimland, Ph.D.}