Let those freak flags fly

    I'm finding out more and more where I stand in the whole autism community. So, as you know, Michael, Lukas and I are going to be taking place in a walk with Autism Speaks. I got my flyers, paperwork and all that jazz in the mail today and it pissed me off. I open the booklet and it has different stories from mother's about their kid's autism. They were just sob stories saying things like, "Autism robbed my son of a childhood." and so on and so forth. I looked up at Michael with tears in my eyes and said, "Promise me we will never be one of these parents" and he assured me we won't.
 

   The "Neurodiversity Movement" really hits home with me. Basically, it was created by autistic adults to advocate for themselves. They don't want to be changed. They embrace their differences and are even proud of them. A great paper I read is here:

http://radicalpsychology.org/vol7-1/boundy.html

"While the actual term ‘neurodiversity’ was not seen in print until 1997, The neurodiversity movement is often thought to have begun with a speech made by Jim Sinclair at the 1993 International Conference on Autism at Toronto, called ‘Don’t Mourn for Us.’ In this speech, Sinclair asked the parents of autistic children to try to understand that ‘Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive; it colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion and encounter. It is not possible to separate the person from the autism’ (Sinclair, 1993). He further asks them to understand that what it is they feel they have lost, when they speak of ‘losing a child’ to autism, is not the actual child him/herself but the idea they had of what that child would be like, what kind of relationship and experiences they would have with the child. The parents of an autistic child, he says, have not lost a child, but an illusion. They must mourn the passing of the illusion and then accept the child on his/her own terms (Sinclair, 1993)."


This above is spot on and Sinclair is autisic himself. I am not going to mourn for the illusion of a child who never existed. Lukas is autistic. It is part of him and that's just fine with me. I want him to get therapies because I know that he learns differently and honestly, he enjoys it. His childhood is NOT lost. His life wasn't taken away from him. He's sitting here alive and thriving. Yeah, he has his quirks and can be difficult and other people may not understand him, but oh well. I'm all for raising awareness, but I am not for "curing" my son because there is nothing to be cured!

We will still have family vacations, Christmas mornings, hikes, school, and those awesome days like today where we are all together making snickerdoodles and eating homemade potato soup for dinner. Well, Lukas had pancakes for dinner, but oh well. I don't want him to retreat too far into his own world, but am I gonna stop him from doing every little odd behavior like lining things up because it's strange? Hell no.

How in the world do these parents make it through the years with so much sadness in their hearts for their children? Sorry, but I want a positive and happy life. So, in this house, we will continue to let our freak flags fly. I've always been good at that anyway.