Autism Weekly Podcast

Many families worry about what will happen if they call police for help with their autistic child or loved one. This week, Jeff Skibitsky talks with Officer Laurie Reyes and Officer Amy Stoughton (Ret.) of the Montgomery County (MD) Police Department’s Autism/IDD, Alzheimer’s and Dementia Outreach Unit. They explain what really happens on those calls, how families can prepare, and why calling 911 right away is the most important step.

Laurie created the unit in 2004 to address a rise in “missing at risk” calls. It is now recognized as a national model by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Autism Speaks and Pathfinders for Autism. The unit responds to 40 to 60 autism and IDD calls a month, does more than 1,000 family follow-ups a year and gives about 150 community presentations a year.

In this episode:

Guests

Officer Laurie Reyes has served with the Montgomery County Police Department for 29 years. In 2004, she created the department’s Autism/IDD, Alzheimer’s and Dementia Outreach Unit and still coordinates it. She has been named a White House Champion of Change for Youth and Law Enforcement. She has also received the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service in Policing and a Maryland Governor’s Citation for her work with the unit.

Officer Amy Stoughton (Ret.) served 27 years with the Montgomery County Police Department, mostly in patrol, before retiring in 2024. She joined the Outreach Unit in 2022 and has since given resources and support to more than 2,000 families, including through home visits. She continues to work with the unit in retirement, training officers, recruits and Montgomery County Public Schools staff, students and parents.

Resources mentioned

Questions for the unit: [email protected]

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Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS Kids and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.

What should families do in the first weeks and months after an autism diagnosis? Host Jeff Skibitsky talks with Dr. Erica Bailen, a board-certified pediatrician who combines conventional pediatric medicine with functional medicine training. Through a direct pediatrics model, she gives families longer visits, direct access, and a whole child approach to care.

Dr. Bailen explains why she reminds every family that their child is the same child they were the day before the diagnosis, and why care should start with strengths. She covers what to focus on first, from finding a neuro-affirming medical home to getting on therapy wait lists early. She also talks about how sleep, nutrition, and gut health affect the whole child, how to tell useful tests from expensive ones that don’t change care, and how to spot misinformation that promises to “cure” or “reverse” autism.

The conversation ends with a message for everyone: presume competence. Being nonverbal doesn’t mean a child can’t communicate or understand.

Resources

I searched for the book and her practice and couldn’t confirm either. The only “Autism Roadmap” I found is by a different author, and her listed practice is a Norton Children’s location that isn’t a direct pediatrics practice, so it may be out of date. Ask Dr. Bailen for both links before you publish.

Sources:

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Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS Kids and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.

This week, Jeff sits down with Camille Proctor, Founder and Executive Director of The Color of Autism Foundation. Camille started the foundation in 2009 after a long fight to get her son diagnosed and after support groups where no one looked like her. Today it's a national resource for Black families navigating diagnosis and services.

Camille talks about why Black children are often diagnosed later or misdiagnosed, and what it's like to wait months to get from diagnosis to services in underserved communities. She shares what providers get wrong when they make assumptions instead of asking families who they are. She also explains why the parent should be treated as the navigator, with the provider as co-captain.

Camille walks through the foundation's free five-week parent training. It teaches families to collect data in plain language, advocate in IEP meetings, create social stories, and support a loved one in crisis without calling the police. She also shares how autistic trainers shape the work and what gives her hope for the future.

Resources:

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Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS Kids and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.

For most autistic people, the supports end at 21 or 22. The friendships, the structure, the built-in reasons to be around other people, all of it was attached to a school system that stops.

Dr. Rachel Loftin has spent her career with the people on the other side of that line. She is chief clinical officer at Prosper Health, which she helped found and which is now the largest provider of mental health services for autistic adults in the country. She is also on faculty in the psychiatry departments at Northwestern and Yale.

In this episode, she joins host Jeff Skibitsky to talk about what connection really looks like in adulthood, why so much social skills instruction teaches autistic people to disappear into a crowd, and what parents of young kids can start doing now.

In this episode:

Dr. Rachel Loftin

Prosper Health

For adults and families navigating the transition

For healthcare access

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Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS Kids and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.

Most parents know their kid plays video games. Far fewer could name the game. Andrew Fishman, LCSW, says that gap is where the nightly fights start.

Andrew is a licensed clinical social worker who works with teens and emerging adults, writes about video games and mental health for Psychology Today, and is the author of Parenting A Gamer: Help Your Child Build Healthy Habits, Make Positive Choices, and Find Balance in Virtual Worlds. He has led social groups for autistic teens and adults, and he is a lifelong gamer himself.

In this conversation with host Jeff Skibitsky, Andrew explains why gaming works as social scaffolding for autistic players. No eye contact to manage, no body language to decode, and everyone in the lobby already shares the interest. Autistic people play roughly twice as many hours per week as neurotypical people, and Andrew makes the case that there is a good reason for that.

What we cover:

Resources

Andrew Fishman, LCSW

Mentioned in the episode

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Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS Kids and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.

Most kids in the U.S. aren't diagnosed with autism until after age 4, long past the window when early intervention makes the biggest difference. The problem isn't that clinicians don't care. It's that a traditional evaluation can take six to eight hours end to end, and there aren't enough specialists to go around.

This week, Jeff sits down with Dr. Cheryl Tierney, a board-certified, fellowship-trained developmental pediatrician, professor of pediatrics at Penn State, and Chief Medical Officer at EarliPoint Health. For more than 25 years she has evaluated and diagnosed children with autism, learning, speech-language, attention, and sleep disorders.

Dr. Tierney explains how EarliPoint's FDA-cleared eye-tracking system works: 12 minutes of natural video scenes, 120 data points captured per second, more than 86,000 data points if a child watches the full session. The result is an objective read on how a child uses eye gaze to learn from the world around them, plus proxy measures for social engagement, language, and cognition. She is clear about what it is not. It is not a standalone diagnosis, and it is not about forced eye contact.

The conversation also covers what happens after diagnosis. Repeat assessments let clinicians see whether a child is closing the developmental gap in months instead of years, which means treatment can change course while it still matters.

In this episode:

Resources

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Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS Kids and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.

The UNC researcher behind the Black Empowerment and Autism Network on bias, access, and building care systems that actually fit families.

Autism research has historically been built on a narrow slice of the population. Dr. Brian Boyd argues that gap is not just an academic problem. It shows up as later diagnoses, thinner services, and worse outcomes for the families who were never in the data.

In this episode, Dr. Boyd joins host Jeff Skibitsky to talk about founding the Black Empowerment and Autism Network (BEAM), now close to 70 members across research, medicine, and clinical practice, and what it takes to build systems of care that respond to the families in front of them.

What we cover

About Dr. Brian Boyd

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Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS Kids and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.

This week on Autism Weekly, host Jeff Skibitsky sits down with Amy Kelly, National Director of Family Engagement at Devereux and mother of three, including her daughter Annie, who was diagnosed with autism just before her second birthday. With nearly 20 years working directly with families and a career built out of her own experience navigating the system, Amy brings both professional expertise and lived experience to a conversation about what real inclusion looks like.

Resources

Amy and Jeff explore what family engagement actually means in practice, not just as a program feature but as a standard organizations should hold themselves to. They discuss the difference between token inclusion and full participation, how to prepare for and navigate an IEP meeting with confidence, and specific questions families should be asking depending on where their child falls on the spectrum, from communication device access on school buses to Extended School Year services and social skills programming.

Amy also shares practical strategies for advocating effectively without being labeled the "difficult parent," why evidence-based practices matter, and how documenting a child's progress can shift conversations with school districts. She closes with a reminder that autism is a family diagnosis, and that supporting the whole family, not just the individual, is central to long-term success.

Whether you're just starting the IEP process or years into advocating for your child, this episode offers grounded, practical guidance from someone who has lived both sides of it.

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Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS Kids and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.

This week we're joined by Dr. Mary Jane Weiss, a psychologist and board certified behavior analyst who has spent her career advancing the science of applied behavior analysis and its application to autism. Dr. Weiss serves as executive director of programs in ABA and autism and directs a Ph.D. program in the field. Her work focuses on the philosophical and scientific foundations of ABA, ethical decision-making in professional practice, and collaboration across disciplines. Today we'll talk about what compassionate, humane, and effective ABA actually looks like in practice. Download latest episode to learn more!

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts

BACB Ethics Code landing page: https://www.bacb.com/ethics-information/ethics-codes/

Learn More About Dr. Mary Jane Weiss

Further Reading

Rohrer, J. L., & Weiss, M. J. (2022). Teaching Compassion Skills to Students of Behavior Analysis: A Preliminary Investigation.

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Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS Kids and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.

This week we're joined by Dr. Marilena Griguoli, a neuroscientist whose research is helping us understand something that sits at the very heart of autism: how the brain processes social experiences and builds social memory. Dr. Griguoli's work, funded by the Autism Research Institute, is looking at the specific brain circuits involved in social behavior and how they can be supported. Social connection is one of the most meaningful and complex areas for autistic individuals and their families. Today, we are exploring what the science reveals about why. Download latest episode to learn more!

Resources

Resources Mentioned & Further Reading

Learn more about Dr. Marilena Griguoli’s research:

Featured research:

Related autism research funding:

Institutional research profile:

Researcher bio:

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Autism weekly is now found on all of the major listening apps including apple podcasts, stitcher, Spotify, amazon music, and more. Subscribe to be notified when we post a new podcast. Autism weekly is produced by ABS Kids. ABS Kids is proud to provide diagnostic assessments and ABA therapy to children with developmental delays like Autism Spectrum Disorder. You can learn more about ABS Kids and the Autism Weekly podcast by visiting abskids.com.