Raising Children with Autism, Before the "Epidemic"

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I spent the bulk of my school-age years in 1990's. That was at the very beginning of the autism "epidemic", when the word "autism" still evoked horrified gasps, rather than annoyed groans.

Some of my teachers, especially in late elementary school and middle school, kept telling my parents that I will become a scientist. Unfortunately, my parents took it as a license to push me for nothing but the best grades at all times. To the point where a C on a report card resulted in hours of screaming and berating, followed by loss of TV "privileges" for two weeks. And a D on one lousy homework assignment resulted in my parents crying and slamming things for hours on end. The pressure to maintain perfect academic performance at all times was so bad, that I used to develop a fever pretty much every time a bad report card was supposed to come.

Other teachers adopted a more progressive stance. They emphasized my social popularity (or lack thereof) in their class over my academic performance. Sure, they mentioned my grades, but very tangentially. If I were to run into these teachers today, I'd shake their hand and thank them for putting up with my aspie antics.

The scientist prophecy never came true. Instead, I had office jobs so stressful, that I was chugging vodka straight out the bottle every night, smoking nearly a whole pack per day, and stuffing McDonald's down my throat, just to feel some relaxation. Needless to say, my health suffered; I even had to go to the hospital. Today, my job isn't easy, but tolerable, and my health is better. If I run into any of my teachers who tooted the "science" horn, I'll do something to them so horrible, that I'll get arrested on a misdemeanor charge.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s, literally RIGHT before "the epidemic." I know my folks (parents and grandparents) suffered a lot of s**t from people complaining that they spoiled me. As it turns out, I guess they got their vindication; all of them but my mother lived long enough to hear about the autism diagnosis and to hear me tell them that, somehow, without knowing what they were doing, between them, they did everything "right."

I was lucky though. The fever for institutionalizing and isolating kids had pretty much died down. I was just "bright, but spoiled." "Smart, but weird." If they had had to put up with that s**t, my mother would have gotten angry. For the few years she was able to work, she was a home health nurse for kids with terminal conditions; I remember her being frequently angry about the attention "her kids" didn't get. She gave up a lot of weekends to make sure they got that attention, and that their parents got taught the things they needed to know to empower them to let their kids live as much life as they could and die at home. Daddy would have got down about it, smoked a joint, laughed it off, got back to raising his kid (pretty much what he did anyway, every time teachers called him up worried because I still sucked my thumb and cried a lot in junior high, or read things that were too mature, or whatever). Grandma would have had conniption fits about "backwards idiots" and "West Virginia is always 30 years behind the times" and got on with raising the kid.

I know my grandmother had a HELL of a time raising my aunt, back in the 50s and 60s. I didn't hear much about it until after Grandma died. All she ever said was that Grandpa's family was very unkind about the child (his daughter from a previous marriage), and her take on it was, "I just thought, well, what did they expect?! Her mother abandoned her when she was EIGHTEEN MONTHS OLD! She needed some LOVE! She needed a MOTHER! I worked with her; it turned out OK." Come to find out, Grandma inherited a violent, non-verbal four-year-old in diapers. I guess it DID turn out OK. Somehow, she pulled a Temple Grandin with my aunt. She had no clue what she was doing. No training. Nothing. She had a high-school diploma and ten years of work as a factory worker and a bookkeeper. She had a mother that loved her until she was eight; then she had an abusive stepmother. She knew not to do THAT, she liked kids, she had a lot of patience. You can tell SOMETHING is wrong with my aunt. She can't make eye contact (can't even look at you and carry a conversation). She has to repeat what you're saying to process it. She has one friend, she never had an emotional connection with her kids, she married a man from India and gets on much better with his family. But, you know, she's functional. She's been married for 45 years. She held a job. Her kids turned out OK. I guess believing in somebody, and love and patience and teaching, can work miracles.

I dimly remember being very small, 3-6 years old. Grandma worked very hard to make sure I had friends, worked at teaching me to take turns and how to interact with people. How to be someone that people would want to be friends with, to go along with what other people wanted to do. How to go to the store and interact with the cashier, the butcher, the lady at the deli, the lady at the fruit stand (and God, her name was Rosemary, and she was A COMPLETE b***h...) I remember her taking me to the public library (the doctor told her there was nothing wrong with me, "She very smart!! Take her to library!!) and making special arrangements so I could use the elementary school library before kindergarten. I remember her taking me to the playground and spending a great deal of time holding my hand, walking the balance beam with me over and over and over, teaching me to walk with my feet flat instead of on my toes (the only sharp thing I ever remember her saying about my autistic ways was about hand-flapping and toe-walking, those things scared her and she would snap, "Do you want people to think you're ret*d?!" and honestly having had to fight people that wanted to institutionalize her stepdaughter and growing up and becoming an adult at the height of the 20th century eugenics movement I UNDERSTAND WHY!!), teaching me to balance without falling over, teaching me to jump rope with incredible patience (now I realize that was physical therapy for motor coordination issues)...

I guess it was bad, but... I feel like they taught me to be more qualified to raise my kids than a lot of the professionals. I'm reluctant to let the professionals get their hands on my kids, even though two of them do have issues (DS10 has ADHD, I gather pretty mild, because I have never let anyone get their grimy paws on him and never medicated, just read a lot and adapted what my folks taught me and spent a lot of time talking to Hubby who realized he had it when DS got diagnosed, and he's doing OK; DD5 has some kind of speech issue, pretty sure it's apraxia but haven't gotten a formal diagnosis, she's improving as well as a speech therapist would ask for, the older she gets the more I suspect that she's the only one out of my four to get The Curse but you know, I'm not really worried...)