AGRON LATIFI

Kayla Sterchow had lots of reasons to celebrate on Thursday when she turned 20.

But she couldn’t get her “traumatic’’  high school years in the Illawarra out of her head.

Bullied by other students and kicked out of seven schools, the University of Canberra student was constantly told by teachers she “wouldn’t get anywhere in life’’ because of her autism.

MATTHEW ROZSA

Mikey Rowe will take the lead in “Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” as theater marks a milestone

It's not only reasonable to criticize the casting of non-transgender individuals as transgender characters or to bemoan the whitewashing of nonwhite characters. It's necessary.

Rick Morton

The executives of the flagship ­National Disability Insurance Scheme, which received guaranteed funding worth tens of billions of dollars in last week’s budget, have launched a crackdown on support funding to keep a lid on ballooning costs.

Two teenagers accused of using a replica pistol to "scare" a boy with severe autism as they tried to rob him outside a north Canberra supermarket went home to watch a television show about serial killer Ivan Milat, court documents allege.

The boys, aged 16 and 17, each faced the ACT Childrens' Court charged with attempted aggravated robbery using an offensive weapon on Monday. Neither has entered pleas.

Court documents said witnesses called police after two teenagers approached the boy outside Woolworths at Dickson shortly before 7pm on Sunday.

Cathy O'Leary

Kathy Lette believes there are a lot of men with undiagnosed autism out there.

The London-based author and feminist, who is in Perth to speak to parents of children with autism, argues that with one in 68 people on the spectrum, autism could be defined as “an extreme form of maleness”.

“Just look at your husbands who are trainspotters or plane spotters, keep their records in alphabetical order and are socially awkward,” she said.

Kathy Lette

A mother does many things for her son: running trays up to his bedroom for nothing more serious than a stubbed toe, detecting lost bits of sports kit, secretly completing overdue homework …

But should soliciting a prostitute be one of them? "So, how much to initiate my son sexually?" are just not the words a law-abiding, middle-aged mum ever expects to say to a working girl in thigh-high boots and leather hot-pants in the dead of night in a seedy backstreet. 

Madeleine Ryan

"Ah, the actress," the psychic said. "Yes, I am an actress," I replied. "Oh, no," she corrected. "You're a writer. But you're an actress in your day-to-day life. Always performing. No one really knows who you are. Not yet, anyway."

Eight years ago, at the time of that reading, I didn't know I was autistic. I had no idea that the way I experienced life was different from the way others did. Nor was I aware that, in order to cope, I had become exceptionally skilled at playing the role of someone else – to the point that I had even fooled myself.

With its collection of small vessels and hoses, plain tiled floor and bags of malt, the workplace of People Like Us in Skippinge, Denmark, is a typical brewing scene.

But for Rune Lindgreen, a 39-year-old with Asperger Syndrome, it is much more than that. Lindgreen was out of work for almost a decade before landing a job as a beer developer in this company run by autistic adults.

People Like Us was founded last year by brothers Lars and Jesper Carlsen, owners of LeVas, a provider of education and training for people with autism.

Women with autism are twice as likely to be undiagnosed as men. Amelia Hill speaks to four mothers who only recognised their own condition after researching their children’s behaviour

Amelia Hill

Being a girl or woman with autism is hard: it’s only in the past two to three years that many professionals have begun to recognise that the condition is not limited to boys and men. But what’s harder is to be a mother with autism – and harder than that, is to be a mother with autism, of children with autism.