"This is our autism"

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jessica-w ... 38426.html

I definitely agree with the premise of the article. Autism "awareness" has succeeded- everyone has heard of autism... but now it's time for some autism "understanding" because my goodness, understanding of autism is astoundingly lacking.

That said, I think Rainman is more commonly known as the worst representation of autism ever, than it is what autism is.I think I hear people talk about how their child isn't like Rainman way more than I've ever heard people be surprised that a child wasn't like Rainman (in fact, I've never heard anybody say "your child can't be autistic because they're not like Rainman").

People have said that my eldest is just intellectually disabled (usually worded with the MR words instead though), not autistic. I've received that response more than once. This response is pretty recent though- when he was young, nobody ever questioned it. I'm not sure if it's because of the "new autism" media representation which is the high-functioning, genius, geek, whatever, like Sheldon Cooper or something, OR if it's because people think of autism as a childhood disorder. He's 6'4" so I guess he's out of the "cute kid spinning around" realm and into the "what the hell is wrong with that person? Is he dangerous?" realm. He may intellectually disabled, but he's also definitely autistic- displays most of the most classic aspects of the disorder. I recently had someone tell me my son doesn't have autism because her nephew has autism and he's going to university (my son is clearly not going to go to university any time soon). Yeah..that's a little infuriating.

So far, nobody has questioned that my younger son has it. I did have someone ask if he had cerebral palsy, but that was a really strange question because he's not physically disabled...

My son makes claws with his hands a lot. I could understand if someone thought there was a little cerebral palsy going on.

For the past 6 months my son appears to be auditioning for the next transformer movie about 10 hours of everyday.

So far only two people have asked if my son has autism. One was a parent with kids on the spectrum who saw a major meltdown(well major for him) when they moved his suckers at the Walgreens. The other was a older girl(9-12yr) on the spectrum who asked, though in that case I don't think it had anything to do with his actions. I just think the girl was very perceptive.

I was a bit upset about the first. It was pre diagnosis(but was already pretty sure) and the timing sucked since I just wanted to find the darn sucker and leave. She was trying to be helpful, but neither I or the little man was in the mood. The girl was a really cool experience. After she asked me and I said yes, I talked to her parents about their experiences with the ABA provider we both shared.

Since he is 4, 3 during the sucker meltdown, we don't get much questions from adults. Before he spoke I would get questions from kids at the playground, but they were more "why doesn't he talk?". It was worse because he is really, really tall for his age, so they thought he was older. Even when he was a baby I got the why doesn't your kid walk question(he started walking on schedule) and I would have to explain because he is 9/10/11 mos old.

Ever since my 12 yo has known he was on the spectrum, he will ask about other kids sometimes, or tell me about kids who he is sure have autism. There was one boy in his class who he was convinced had autism, and he told me all the reasons why he thought that boy had autism. As he spoke, I knew the boy probably didn't have autism. When I met the boy one day, I found out he had CP. But my son is still convinced the boy has autism.

No one has asked if my son has autism, but when they find out he does, it's like this knowing "oh." One woman I recently met worked with with children with more severe autism than my son has. She kept going on and on about how wonderful my son was and what a good mom I must be, because he was so capable, etc etc. Honestly, it felt weird. He is high functioning, and she is used to working with children who are lower functioning. It almost felt like she was saying he wasn't impacted at all.

Special ed teachers who believe autism is a product of bad parenting, even the severity is based on how good of a parent you are... How inspiring.