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12/5/2025 0 Comments We Need Tech SupportPeople don’t understand that we are intelligent. Because we never talked more than a few baby words before we regressed, no one in the greater community understands that we have normal language. We need people to believe we are intelligent, have language, and have independent ideas. If they did, there would be more help coming. The fact that they believe we are profoundly cognitively impaired ultimately means that resources should not be wasted on us. Why build communication systems for people who have no language to communicate? That is our tragedy, and it is why organizations like ASHA are so destructive. Instead of using their power and influence to get us means of independent communication, they stick us with infantile apps and tell the world how cognitively disabled we really are. I want to talk by myself more than anything on earth. Typing without a CP is insanely difficult. I am working on it but it is hard and frustrating, and even if I could do it, it is slow. We need technology like Stephen Hawking had. I will hold out hope that someday soon we will get it. 
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7/25/2025 0 Comments The Next MovieWe particularly are making progress on typing being accepted. I see it everywhere now. There are more and more people hearing of spelling and flocking to centers to learn how to do it. I am excited about our progress: it feels like the tipping point is near. All of us need to be treated like the highly intelligent people we are. More than that, we need to access that intelligence. We can contribute so much to our society given the acceptance and accommodations we need. People see us as cognitively impaired, when we are anything but. That needs to end. I know that prejudice is hard to overcome, but it can be over time. We need to slowly chip away at it, one person at a time. Judy had some visitors from the New Jersey chapter of the National Council for Severe Autism here a month ago. They watched Alex and me type, and I could see them shifting their perception of us. Yes, seeing is believing. We need to be seen more. People need to see me and Alex working together on our play. As the old saying goes, they will laugh…they will cry. Time for the next documentary, I think! And it needs to show people us working together, doing advanced math and science, analyzing poetry, and writing creatively. It will change how we are seen…and that could change everything.  6/13/2025 0 Comments The RevolutionAs I was sitting here with Judy today, she got a text from one of her moms who sits on the New Jersey chapter for the National Council for Severe Autism. They are making a petition, hopefully, to get the national council to take down the anti-typing statement from their website. If that happens, that would be a huge victory for us. People are starting to really fight with schools and government agencies to get spelling accepted. Perhaps I am overly optimistic, but I believe we are making huge strides. Since my first day of learning to type years ago, hundreds, if not thousands, of nonspeakers are typing now. And people are switching sides and becoming believers at an accelerating rate. I am particularly excited about all this, because the people are important, many of them. We are witnessing a revolution, folks. We need to change our hashtag from “let the revolution begin” to “the revolution has begun.”  5/16/2025 4 Comments CP MiseryMy time at M2H is too limited. I can talk particularly easily with Judy CPing, so I need to get it all out while I’m here. No one else is as good as her with me, except my Mom. I am feeling particularly down in the dumps because two of my CPs are leaving at the same time. I am so over this whole CP thing. I am thinking a lot about it lately. What is it about us that makes us need CPs? I particularly find that Judy’s brain is quiet and that makes it so easy to think. You cannot understand, if you’re not a nonspeaker, how noisy people’s minds can be. People are naturally disorganized in their minds. They think loads of weird and arbitrary stuff, and it makes us dysregulated. I am not able to not tune into it. It’s like seeing versus hearing: I can’t close my mind’s “eyes.” Anyway, I am in a really bad mood today because I am losing two CPs, and I don’t get to see Judy enough.  4/18/2025 0 Comments PrioritiesI am so happy to be here today. I am perhaps the happiest I’ve been in weeks. For one reason or another I couldn’t come for weeks - and that really sucked. Let’s face it: Judy rocks. I may need to wage war with my parents over permitting other things to take precedence over bringing me here.
Coming to M2H is good for my mental health, and I’m not exaggerating. I have been stressed about a lot of things lately. There is crap going down with my Mom’s job. Two of my CPs are leaving. But I walk into this place, and sit down with Judy, and my whole body relaxes. My mind quiets. I can think calmly and clearly. I feel better than I have in ages. So yeah, coming to see Judy needs to be a priority. 2/7/2025 2 Comments M2H IN THE NEWS!As I sat with Judy today, we found out that a local newspaper had published a two page spread on Mouth to Hand. It relates the story of M2H’s development and growth; Alex’s story; and the facts about dyspraxia, and why people like us can’t speak with our mouths. Such articles in small, local papers may not seem important, but they are. People tend to converse about things in their own communities. And these days, everyone knows someone with autism. You never know whose life may be changed because of this article. It is wonderful!  1/10/2025 2 Comments ExpansionI am mind-blown. I just had a tour of the new community class center that Judy opened up last week. It is beyond amazing. It has three main rooms: one for big groups, one for smaller groups, and one for motor-based activities. It is huge and beautiful, and my awe is genuine. People cannot understand what it means to we nonspeakers to have someone care enough about us to create something like that. Predominant among all centers, M2H sets the standard. In other exciting news, a ton of new classes are going to be offered here, including chemistry, biology, math like calculus and statistics, dance and art. Can you believe that? It absolutely stuns me, how Judy figures out how to do stuff. I am predicting great things for this place.  12/13/2024 2 Comments The M2H ExpansionI looked at the new space for the M2H expansion and am just blown away. It is huge and bright and lovely in every way. There are three big rooms particularly for more classes. I am definitely mad that I don’t live here. It is like a dream come true, M2H. I am personally angry because this is exactly what I’ve always wanted. I dreamed of a place where I could go every day to be with loads of friends, and learn and have fun. People don’t understand how important that is to us. The longing to be in a place where people just accept us as we are is, personally, always first in my thoughts. A place particularly designed and built for us? I can’t believe it! M2H is the greatest place ever.   11/15/2024 0 Comments No More Missing TimeI didn’t get to come to Mouth to Hand for a month and a half, and that sucked. Perhaps that needed to happen to prove my point: I need to live here. If I lived here, I would have missed only one day, when Judy was sick. Instead, I missed weeks of M2H time. Please understand that I am not being dramatic when I say that I live to come here. It energizes me for days - and it makes being nonspeaking not quite as awful. I love being here so much that when I miss time, it hurts my heart. All my life I wished for a place to go where my disability would not matter…and now that I’ve found it, I want and need to be here daily. Putting things into perspective: imagine that you have found your dream place, and then you are told you can barely go there. Pressures of life are stressing you out…but no…you cannot go to the one place that relieves the stress. I am serious when I say that it is emotionally beneficial to me to be in this place.  10/4/2024 0 Comments A Light in the DarknessAs we walked into Mouth to Hand today we were told by Anne that Judy was at Town Hall notarizing building plans for a new space downstairs, and would be back shortly. I felt a moment of pure joy; a surge of almost overwhelming happiness. All spellers ache for acceptance and friends…and amiable spaces where our disability doesn’t matter for awhile, because we are just Vince or Alex or Ben or Kyle while we are there. And for a few hours, we are normal people having fun and laughing and learning and creating and smiling. So a sacred space dedicated to us lets all of us become as happy as we can be. All spellers live in darkness until they can speak. All see some light when they spell their first words. All see the sun for the first time when they walk into M2H.  |
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December 2025
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MOUTH TO HAND LEARNING CENTER, INC.
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HoursM-F: 10 - 6
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