One Halloween, many, many, many years ago, we did go trick or treating. Someone from church called up. In retrospect, I grudgingly suspect that they knew I would not take the kids out, and felt sorry for them. Grudges are heavy to hold.
At any rate, they said they had made cookies just for my kids, and asked if we were going trick or treating. As they only lived 2 blocks away, I sucked it up and decided to go.
Not one to fight nature, we of course trick or treated all the way there, and all the way back, and, once again, not being one to fight nature, my then three year old ate a whole bag of candy in one night.
When debates about vaccines arise, and science is worshipped, the voices of those who link vaccines with their child's late onset autism are often trod over. If you had ever seen a single experience change your child so significantly, you would at least have compassion in touting statistics that say autism isn't linked to vaccines. If you had ever doubted your memory of abilities your child will never have again, you would perhaps question cold statistics more thoroughly. I have.
I do not see autism itself as something caused by something bad, or cured by something good, but as a different way of thinking. We all are on a spectrum, or jumping around somewhere adjacent. But there are those who think of many things, but not deeply, not overintelligently, and there are those who think of only one thing, but to a degree so discerning that most people pass them off as idiots when they talk about it, because most people can't comprehend even the smallest part of what they know. "Neurotypical" is what is used to define the status quo of very broad, but not very deep, thinking. "Monotropic" refers to the opposite. These are merely different ways of thinking, not some horrible demon that needs to be cast out. Autism itself does not need a cure. But seeing a demon take over your child is something I am familiar with. When something as irreversible as how I had cut her toast, sent her into a 3 hour fit of screaming at the top of her lungs where she wouldn't let us near her, and where she was no more in control of her body than a drunk alcoholic (very different than a normal 3 year old tantrum - seen enough of those too), then Autism seems like something covering your true child, something to cure.
But it is not the Autism that needs cured. Some people have tough feet, others' are more sensitive. Yes, you can train your feet to be tough, you can get callouses on your feet, and some people enjoy doing so. But calloused feet are not always an advantage. Forcing everybody to "toughen up" their feet and then diagnosing those who either don't want to, or whose feet toughen slower as needing "intervention" is wrong.
After changing our diet miraculously gave us our daughter back, I realized how many years of her life we had missed. But it was not the Autism that took those years. The Autism is who she is, how she thinks. It was the environment that hurt her. Just like rough pebbles hurt a tender foot, unexpected events in life hurt her. Training her to "deal with it" would not have taken the hurt away from her. Perhaps it might have even made her feel more alone. Not that she regrets alone. But drugs to deaden who she is, or "therapy" to train her into thinking her concerns aren't as important as our neurotypical concerns, would not have "cured" her. Maybe covered her up - as she is not as far on the monotropic scale as some, but not cured her. The only decent way to help a person with Autism, is to do just that. It is to make sure that their tender feet don't encounter any tough stones. It is to build them shoes, or slippers, or socks, or whatever it is they want for their feet, so that the tough stones don't poke through so sharply. With us, this was diet. Diet was HUGELY a part of it. To the point that when she is on a good diet, she probably wouldn't be able to get diagnosed with autism at all.
I was very hesitant to post about autism. The last thing I want is someone to say, oh, I see, she isn't perfect, the poor thing, because her kid has autism. I am not perfect because I am human. Every parent that isn't perfect has a reason. Every child that throws a temper tantrum, every person that has a melt down. We all have reasons. Clumping a group together for amnesty is not what the world needs. It needs unconditional love and acceptance.
Why is it that if a person has an obvious "special need" we are kind to them. We excuse them. Being blind, deaf, crippled, even having obvious downs syndrome is OK, but people with eye boogers, especially if nothing else seems different or deserving of our pity, especially if they are perhaps better than us at something, people with eye boogers are the most shunned and the least accepted of all people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspies_For_Freedom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistic_Pride_Day
http://jerobison.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-resign-my-roles-at-autism-speaks.html
"Wallace would have like to say, 'Hello. My name is Wallace,' but saying hello was not on his list."
This is my favorite book about differences, not "special needs". It has it all, from the hurt ignoring a difference gives, as it implies the difference is bad, to the need to simply think differently. And it does it in a happy upbeat way - nobody really is trying to hurt someone by being uncomfortable around a difference - they just don't know what to do in the situation. All this, and it is just an underlying theme in a hilarious kids book (easier to read than Dr. Seuss - a child can teach themselves how to read from this book). The truths are so universal and subtle that the reader is left wondering if the correlation was even meant by the author, or it just showed through because it was a good book.
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