You Make Me Think

There's this meme doing the rounds, called The Thinking Blogger award. Mike Stanton was kind enough to tag this blog. It's quite an honour when you're linked to by a great writer and a thoughtful man like Mike.

The official rules for participation in the Thinking Blogger Awards meme are as follows:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

When I started blogging at the start of January 2006, I was simply intending to have a kind of online diary, that only a few friends and family would ever choose to read. The emphasis, I felt, would be on home-education. It transpired that I probably focus more on autism. I do mostly just record what we've been up to, but every so often, I get on my soap box and give out about the state of the world. My blog stats show that I'm certainly no big player, but a heck of a lot more people read this stuff than I ever expected.

In my favourite blogs, I would read something that inspired and affected me, challenging my assumptions and giving me better insight into the issues of autism, disability and home-education. It's hard to limit the selection to only 5, but made slightly easier if I do not tag those blogs I know have already been chosen for this award. As for these others, there's a chance they will have been tagged without my knowledge, but in that case they should revel in the admiration! So to get on with it, I choose;

Zilari, at Processing in Parts, even though she has decided to stop writing in this particular blog, and the Autistic Bitch From Hell (to give her her full title), at Whose Planet is it Anyway?
These women opened my eyes to the sh!t autistic people have to deal with, explain the rampant disablism, describe what can be done to improve things and every post produced by each is an absolute must read. Honestly, read them, AND the archives!

If Kathleen, from the Neurodiversity Weblog, has not already been chosen, I'm likely to be the next leader of the NI Assembly. But sure, I'll put her down anyway.
This woman is a ruby. She is clever, dogged, unfailingly polite, thorough, fair, compassionate, dedicated and whatever the highest award available to bloggers is, she should get one. She writes about autistic advocacy and anti-scientific theories of autism causation and 'treatment'.

My favorite home-education themed blog at the minute is by Dani and Allie, and is called Green House by the Sea. As well as writing lovingly about their really cool children and their path of autonomous learning, their contemplations on education and parenting are always thought provoking.

And Finally, I give you, Diary of a Goldfish, whom I've only been reading for a short time, since she arranged the terrific Blogging Against Disablism Day. But how can I put this scientifically...she rocks!

So there you go, 5 blogs, they make me think, and they're all written by women!