My latest movie column, on Autism: The Musical, is up now, and I urge you — even if you think the movie has nothing to do with you — to take a look. It’s a terrific and eye-opening film. Here’s a blurb from my column:

Elaine, Hillary, Roseanne and Dianne are some of the mothers of autistic children we meet in the stunning new documentary, Autism: The Musical (Tricia Regan, 2007). Elaine brings them together at The Miracle Project, a theater and movement program she has founded to help her son Neal and other autistic kids learn to communicate their feelings and to control their impulses, but most of all, “to have a great time, [to] feel great.”

Also, check out “A Vinyl Batgirl Notebook” by Mama, PhD contributor Jessica Smartt Gullion; the essay offers a funny glimpse into the daily balancing act of being a writer and a mother (I don’t know a thing about that). Here’s a blurb:

“The kids are fighting again: ‘She keeps goin’ in my room!’ ‘He hitted me!’ ‘She push-ted me first!’ ‘Mama!’ ‘Mama!’ I wipe a Clorox-coated rag across the blue paint-splattered pattern of my kitchen counters and wonder for the thousandth time what kind of person would choose this design.”