SHATTERING MOMENT I HEARD THE ONE WORD THAT EVERY PARENT DREADS
The article was about the journalist's personal experience of finding out that his son had autism. The article itself was quite interesting, once I'd ignored the parts about him trying to "cure" his son. The son, incidentally, grew up to be a fine young man with a good job and a girlfriend, so I'm not exactly sure what all the fuss was about.
It was the headline that really annoyed me. The one word that every parent dreads? Really? There are a lot of things that I dread, but autism isn't one of them. Autism isn't deadly. It won't kill you. It isn't the end of the world.
I was actually hugely relieved when my son got his diagnosis. It meant I actually had a name for his condition and that I could get the support and help that we needed.
I wonder how the journalist's son felt when he read his father's article? I wonder how he reacted, knowing how his dad felt about his autism and the idea that it was something that needed to be "fixed?"
Autism isn't an illness. It is just a different way of viewing the world. Maybe I'd change the headline to this:
JOURNALIST PROMOTES THE ONE THING THAT EVERY AUTISM PARENT DREADS: IGNORANCE.
Hi Louise
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely true that autism is not an illness. Through my son, we have found that there is immense richness within an autistic person, if we just take the care to look for it.
What sort of support did you end up getting once you got the diagnosis? We got nothing, apart from a few under-resourced and over-crowded Occupational Therapy or Speech and Language session. We opted out of "the system" well before diagnosis, and started to pursue our own route to supporting our son.
Support does seem to be a big issue for many families, as there simply doesn't seem to be enough funding for support schemes and they are all oversubscribed.
ReplyDeleteWe currently have our paediatrician, who monitors his general wellbeing and can refer to services like CAHMS. He used to go to a speech and language group, but their funding was cut, too. We are also able to access the short breaks service, which is run by our local council.
As for schooling, we decided to go "off grid" and homeschool, as it really was the only feasible option for us. We should have had more options, but didn't. Homeschooling has worked very well for us, thankfully, and provides a framework where we are able to incorporate certain speech and language, social and self care methods into our lesson plans.
It is a very inflammatory headline. But from the other side, autism was certainly something I feared as a young pregnant mum, because mostly what I thought I knew was that you had to watch your baby regress. And that seemed intolerably sad to me.
ReplyDeleteWhen autism came knocking at my door, when my youngest child was 9, it looked completely different...
I can relate to that. When I was pregnant with my first baby, the whole MMR debate was in full swing and parents were terrified of autism. Fast forward a few years and I was so grateful to get the autism diagnosis for my youngest son that we had been so desperately fighting for!
ReplyDelete