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Special Needs
Help talking to a mom of Autistic Son
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Re: Help talking to a mom of Autistic Son
And if you really aren't BSing us and he truly is the child of 2 current addicts, it's even more disgusting that you insist on washing your hands of this child who - as you claim - needs a caring adult in his life. Instead of looking down your nose at this situation, be an adult. Step in. Help. He is a human being. A child.
As for what you said about special needs parents? Fuck you. Really. Fuck you.
Are you serious?! There is no way this isn't MUD. I mean, you came to a special needs board asking advice. You got it and didn't like it. Now everyone here that took the time to give thoughtful advice is mean and doesn't get it?
Whatever. Watch out for the karma bus because after having such horrible opinions it's coming for you.
Also, I am familiar with the principles of behavior therapy but ignoring behavior that is potentially harmful to others is not acceptable. If my son, who is 4 (he is deaf), hits a child on the playground in a bid for attention, I still remove him.
In my mind, the parent of any child who is acting in a manner that is potentially injurious to others (especially younger children) has an absolute duty to address the behavior. That may require removing the child from the situation.
OP's complete disregard for this boy leads me to think that she doesn't know how involved/uninvolved mom really is. She's just trying to cover her previous comments to make herself look better.
You ALREADY let her know you feel her child is a danger to others. It cannot be unsaid at this point.
It's time to decide how and if you want to repair the relationship. Good Luck.
OP: Stay away from the boy then if its so horrible to be around him. Problem solved. I'm not sure what else you are wanting from us.
It sucks for you that reading comprehension is not your strong suit. No one is saying that you should bend over backwards or not protect your children. There's just a little thing called tact. Since you're so brutally honest, I'm sure you go around telling family members their food is over cooked or that they're looking tubby since they put on a few pounds, right? It wasn't a white lie--certainly you plan on babywearing for other reasons besides your nephew, no?
Luau and I started watching The Normal Heart over the weekend. It’s an incredible movie and one that I highly recommend, particularly if you’re not old enough to have been socially or politically conscious through the early eighties. The movie is a small screen adaptation of the play by the same name by Larry Kramer. Kramer, a gay activist / agitator / revolutionary, co-founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis in 1982, as AIDS (then known as the “gay cancer”) began to emerge, spread, and kill with terrifying speed.
Mark Ruffalo is stunning as the fiery Ned Weeks, based not the least bit loosely on Kramer. Almost too good, in fact. To be honest, I was relieved when I had to walk away from the movie to pick Katie up at a friend’s bar mitzvah. I needed the two-day break before I could pick it up again. It’s not easy to watch – to feel the frustration and desperation emanating from the screen as these men fight for their friends, their lovers, their lives.
The fight, while obviously foreign in some very important ways, felt eerily familiar in others. At its core, it was a fight for help whose basis was to be found in a quest for respect, for dignity, for the recognition of humanity, of equality, of the most fundamental human and civil rights.
In one particularly compelling scene, Ned gets into a shouting match with his older brother, Ben, who supports him in every respect except the one he needs the most. The conversation that they had was a watershed moment for me. This is how it went.
People often ask why, if I’m as concerned about safety as I am, I share pictures of our family online. They wonder why I tell our silly stories of screwing up and cracking up and laughing at each other and ourselves. They ask why I share so many things that have nothing to do with autism.
My answer is because we are human first. All of us. We’re funny and silly and happy and scared and proud and anxious and insecure and frustrated and hopeful and cynical and madly in love with and annoyed at and proud of and delighted in each other and the world. Because we look just like you (though maybe our skin color is different or we’re shorter or taller or whatever-er, but if you look, really look. I promise you’ll be able to see something familiar.)
In response to a reader who once asked why I chose to share photos of the girls, I wrote, “In the end, though, I think that it’s the three-dimensional people – the beautiful faces that look just like anyone else’s beautiful-faced kids, that make our story relatable to some who might not otherwise be bothered – who might find it easier to dismiss it without the ‘No, we really are real people who look startlingly like you’ aspect.”
We are REAL, INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE. All of us. Me, Luau, Katie and Brooke. And until we are ALL seen as such, rather than three people whose life is affected by the autism of the fourth, nothing will really, truly change.
Because no one is going to willingly join us in creating an inclusive society until they realize that they ARE us. And that we are them. Not just that they can relate to us because they could have or might someday have a child like mine, but that they themselves are just like my child. Her, not me. And that they are like her because as people, while we may come in different genders, colors, shapes, sizes, sexual orientations, and neurological makeups, among myriad other modifiers, we are people first. And whatever fundamental differences we may have from one another aside, we are far, far more fundamentally the same than different. If we are to affect real change, then that’s the part that matters. It mattered to Ned because he saw the hard truth that it’s the only foundation upon which any effective advocacy can stand – seeing, knowing, understanding, recognizing, FEELING that we are, underneath it all, all the same. You, me, Luau, Katie, Brooke … We are people before we are anything else.
Until potential allies, like Ben, believe in our sameness, they might deign to offer their financial support, they might underwrite paper efforts to make change, but they will never give what matters most, the only true vehicle of social progress - their hearts.
This is why I will not participate in the kind of advocacy which relies upon pity for me by virtue of being my daughter’s mother to raise money to (theoretically) help her. Because that kind of thinking will never allow HER to be seen as she is – disabled in some ways, but not sick; different, but no less human than me or anyone else; EQUAL to anyone she encounters. And, simply by virtue of her humanity, as deserving of compassion as she is capable of participating in every aspect of society in her own complicated, messy, beautiful way.
We are different.
We are the same.
We are human.
We are in this together.
That’s where change begins.
https://adiaryofamom.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/the-same/