MrXxx wrote:
League_Girl wrote:
Why would anyone be against wanting their kid to have autism? Lot of you here seem so happy about your condition and isn't it hypocritical to not want your kid to have it? You are acting like it's a bad thing to have.
On a serious note (in spite of the date): I already have three kids, all on the spectrum, and I certainly accept them as they are, and do not wish them to be any different. They all have so many special qualities there is no way to tell which of their best traits would no longer exist if their Autism were not there.
There is also this to be said: Since my wife and I are both on the spectrum, I have to wonder if we'd even know how to handle them if they were NT. Because we all are on the spectrum, at least we've learned to understand each other, and I don't have any idea if that would be possible if any one of us were not.
Seriously:
My four are NT's and I don't think you would have a problem relating to them. After all, you will be raising them so they will understand you more than other kids would.
One thing that having AS has helped me in raising NT kids with is that I'm pretty straightforward and honest about almost everything with them. Except for things like Santa and the Easter bunny, they got total honesty from me about why they could or couldn't do something, and about things like sex and drugs. I have no embarrassment whatsoever in talking about that (but I do no social protocol and I don't talk to my kids about my sex life) but they have never had any reason to be embarrassed about talking to me about any problems they have etc. Even their friends come to me because I'm straightforward with them and treat them like peers and don't try and lie to them. Mine are actually able to get the truth from me when they ask "Is pot dangerous?" so they will believe me when they ask something like "Is ecstacy dangerous?" I also tend to way overexplain stuff and give them all the reasons why something is or isn't dangerous, and I also give them different people's views on it and how things are perceived by different people, so they understand why some people act like they do about certain subjects.
I couldn't do the baby talk thing, or even talk down to them or talk to them like children when they were little. I figured that if they were spending the whole day with me, we should be able to understand each other, so I talked to them like I would another adult, and explained things to them that they didn't udnerstand. It didn't hamper their development at all. In fact, they are all very popular. They are aslo much more accepting of peoples differences too.
Pretty much on the money with the way I've been with my own kids, except for the Santa Clause and Easter Bunny thing. We always told them the honest truth about stuff like that, and it never seemed to take the "magic" out of it for them. They actually went through a brief stage of not believing the truth anyway, which is kind of funny in itself. After three full years of my eldest believing us, we have video of him coming downstairs on Christmas morning yelling, "Presents! Santa brought me presents!"