Let me tell you, as an autistic adult who also was a main caregiver for an autistic boy (my brother).
For the record: I swear that if you use this post to say autism makes people violent and abusive, I will send 12,000 angry geese to flock in your bedroom and destroy every item that you treasure the most. AND I will eat the leftovers you had planned on eating for lunch tomorrow. Don’t you fuckin dare miss the point of this post.
Listen up. I got a story for you.
Bit of background first.
My boy, my little hobbit, was born when I was ten years old. My mother left him alone with my grandparents and me. She legit abandoned him.
My grandparents weren’t sure they could take him in. I begged. I pleaded. I asked as hard as I could to let us keep him and not give him back to my mother.
Of course, they said yes.
I dutifully became the protective older sister.
I would bathe him up until the week I left for college. I measured his medications and crushed them into his favorite yogurt. Blue, if you were curious.I made sure his food was perfect – french fries made just like he wanted, a chicken fry sandwich complete with his favorite McDonald’s sauce we bought in bulk. I went to his speech and occupational therapies several times a week, and practiced the things he learned. I went with him to his first day of school.
I even did a middle school project all about autism (which I am slightly embarrassed about, as I mentioned A$ in it ugh). I read all the autism books a 12 year old could find, and immersed myself in the Vanderbilt paperwork. I delved into the world of IEPs, visual schedules, and basic sign language.
And now, I’m still sending them resources and information on medications, papers for teachers, and going over doctor notes for him – despite being six hours away.
(Of course, I was an undiagnosed autistic girl who also needed quiet. When I wasn’t needed to do these things, I was often in my room away from the loud television and people. I wasn’t a perfect caregiver, but I did do a lot.)
All of that to say: yeah, it wasn’t easy. But since when is raising a kid ever easy? I started looking after this boy when I wasten years old.
But here’s what infuriates me.
I read all the time about these autism moms who complain about how terrible their lives are. They say they’re afraid of being hurt and their lives are destroyed. Some even talk about killing their kids.
You know what?
Yeah, I got hurt by him or when helping him. I got bit, scratched, hit, and everything else. Usually it was just him being frustrated over lack of communicating his needs, so I was rarely angry. I ran after him when he went out the door straight for a lawnmower and I fell to the concrete. I grabbed him right before he ran into a street and ended up with my arm covered in blood.
I was kicked in the head and given a traumatic brain injury that requires me to now use a cane, and has caused a ton of nervous system issues. I even use a wheelchair part-time due to another condition that occurred afterwards. I’m only 20, and my health is pretty comparable to someone with congestive heart failure.
And you know what? I never in a million years thought about hurting my little brother.
I still don’t blame him. He was often overwhelmed, and had meltdowns. As an autistic person myself, I understood it – even if I didn’t know I was autistic at the time. (I suspected, but was too focused on other things.) I don’t know if I’ll ever get better health-wise, and that’s okay. I don’t know if I’ll get to run and dance again, or if there’s worse effects to come. It’s just what it is, and I’ve accepted that.
He’s a child. It’s not his fault. He once asked me if it was, and I hugged him tight and said absolutely not.
I say all this not to demonstrate how violent autistic people can be, but to demonstrate that I get where these autism moms are coming from.
Again, for the record, autistic people are far more likely to be abused and assaulted.
Remember how I said I get where they’re coming from?
Yeah, that’s still not an excuse to be harmful toward your child. Ever.
You don’t give your babies bleach, shock them, or starve them. You don’t talk about them as if they’re literally a death sentence for you. And you sure as hell don’t want to murder your little ones.
And if you literally want to kill your kid, if you would rather have a dead child than an autistic one, I have news for you. You don’t deserve that child, and you better back up and understand this.
You autism moms need to stop. You need to listen.
Your kids are going through a world that wants to “cure” them, force them into suffering so they can look “normal.” Your kids are going to spend their entire lives dealing with a world that is hostile to them. People try to assimilate us to save their own pride, at the expense of our own comfort and stability. Your kid is going to go through life being told that they should be literally “treated” with electroshock therapy because of their neurology. They’re going to be told that they shouldn’t reproduce. They’re going to be told that they’re not worth having space in this world. Your kid is going to grow up one day, and they’re going to hear this and internalize it.
I know that, because that’s what I hear every day.
You say it’s so hard to have an autistic kid?
Well, of course it is. But you know what?
Kids are hard. They’re going to kick, hit, pinch, and everything else. Even neurotypical kids do that. I don’t know a single kid who hasn’t bit their caregiver or thrown something when grumpy. (I’ll say it again for those in the back: autistic kids are way wayway more likely to be abused and hurt.)
When you have a kid, you sign up for this. You love that little one unconditionally, you protect them with all your heart. You give them support. You love that child even if they have a disability, especially when they have a disability.
You teach them that they are allowed to exist, that they are just as valuable and needed in this world like anyone else. We need all the neurodiversity in this world we can get.
You teach your child that they’re not a burden. You teach them how to say no and that autonomy is often more important than compliance. You teach them that you love them, and that they will always have someone in their corner to back them up when times are tough.
I don’t care how hard you think it is raise an autistic child.
Trust me, I know full well it’s hard. Parenting is hard. It’s not easy, and it’s not always roses and fluffy kittens. That has nothing to do with having an autistic kid; that’s just a fact of life.
The fear of getting hurt is valid. I can attest to that, and I don’t think I can downplay that. But that behavior is communication, and you have to learn how to read it. I did. You have to fight for better supports, for ways to make it easier on your kid – and by doing this, easier for you too.
Sure, it’s hard.
But you know what? Your kid’s going to have it much harder.
[Animated gif of Bryan Cranston doing a mic drop.]
While you won’t read a ‘diagnosis’ as such within the story (Lexa is a cyborg in an alternate 1932 after all and that complicates things a bit), I do often interpret Lexa this way (yes, within this story, too) and see no harm in anyone finding whatever they need in these characters. Thank you so much for reading and your great question.
any other fellow Autistics™ just find parties and party-like environments really unenjoyable and don’t know how/why other people seem to have so much fun at them?
god all the time. i dont know social norms, customs, or rules so i have no idea what to do at parties.
plus its just sensory hell with loud music, occasional flashing lights, loud chatter, etc.
– when ur reblogging a post about your special interest and ur trying to decide whether or not infodumping and screaming in all caps in the tags would be annoying
– “am i close enough with this person to use u instead of you? do i even need to wait? can i use “u” with strangers??”
– “you’ll have to forgive me for this…” no that sounds way too formal what’s the Normal way to phrase it?
-“is this a situation where proper grammar and spelling is necessary?”
– “i’m feeling an emotion ?? what do people do when they feel an emotion? swear??? yeah i can do that what’s the right swear word to use in this context?”
– when you’re re-reading a post before you post it and find words like “therefore” and u gotta rewrite the whole thing
– when your grammar is both too formal and too casual and ur not sure if what u said was phrased awkwardly
– when you run out of words to say so you respond to everything with ‘aaaaaa’
– “was that a nice thing to say???? did that seem blunt or rude? how do i tell?? i don’t want them to think i hate them. best to be overly positive just to be sure”
– typin how you talk in real life…… so there are fuckin ellipses everywhere……… cause you pause a lot. and then you feel weird about it.
– “is this person being rude or am i misinterpreting it? best to just not respond at all”
Apparently it’s just an accepted thing in modern medicine that auties have no theory of mind – not that we’re bad at it, but that we are incapable of attributing beliefs, emotions, or mental states to another person. And this has been a thing for thirty years now. Nearly my entire life.
The “evidence” for this:
Social difficulties are one of the key hallmarks of autism.
A study using new methodology, a low-res scanning method, and a sample size of six fucking people.
Another study, using fMRIs, which showed no social response when looking at a series of moving geometric shapes that NTs apparently assign social interactions to.
A third study, back to shitty PET imaging, where we had to guess emotional states based on pictures of eyes and nothing else.
A fourth one where we were expected to respond differently based on where a person we watched was looking.
And finally, one that showed less activity in a region of the brain that apparently involves social function.
Apparently not sought in any of this:
An autistic person’s explanation of how we think about other people.
Gee, why would people with social difficulties for whom eye contact is actually painful have trouble ascribing motive to inanimate objects, or reading intent and emotion from eyes? Must be ‘cause they literally don’t have any ideas whatsoever about how anyone else’s mind works! No, no, why would we ask them how their minds work? That’s just nonsense.
And this has been Accepted Fact for basically all my life. Un-fucking-believable. The sheer lack of self-awareness in professional scholars of the human mind is breathtaking.
(Hey, anti-self-dxers! You know how you’re always saying “psychologists have more knowledge about these issues than you can?” This right here is why we’re laughing at you. This is the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from the establishment.)
Okay, let me clarify: I am autistic. Not only do I have a theory of mind, I use it way more actively than basically any neurotypical I’ve spoken to. I am literally always the one pointing out how people are sure they have reasons for doing what they do, but everyone else is just being a dick. This comes from the fact that I need it to survive on a daily basis. Because I have trouble reading nonverbal social cues, and because people tend to exploit or use disabled people at a breathtaking rate.
I can’t just glance at someone and size them up; I am constantly, actively thinking about the motives and goals behind literally every social interaction from everybody. Because I’ve had to spend so much time and energy on figuring out how my head works, and how to manage that, which involves learning how I’m different, ie, how normal brains work. I would be unable to interact with people if I weren’t capable of constantly developing theories about their motives, intentions, and emotions. I’m nowhere near perfect at it – my hit rate will be lower than a NT’s in face-to-face communications, but that’s because you have extra data I am lacking. Given the same data set to work from, I’m willing to bet my hit rate would be higher, because I’ve had to actively develop and constantly use this tool.
NTs out of psychology 2kforever.
Okay, can I just say something (if you already know this, feel free to ignore me): If you ever have to argue about this with a neurotypical be sure to point out that this so called evidence is not based on valid research. Validity is one of the basics for scientific studies and none of these experiments are valid. Validity means that you actually measure what you are claiming to measure. Meaning that if you want to find out if autistic people have a theory of mind, you have to test that exact thing. The only way to do that, really, is to ask autistic people about how they understand/interpret other peoples social expressions. Personally, I’d think the best way to do that would be to show video footage of a social expression and ask the person about it. Like, video of the full body. Also, such small sample sizes make it very hard to get significant results. Research that doesn’t fulfill basic criteria (validity, reliability and objectivity) has literally no meaning at all. (Seriously, these examples mentioned above are very debatable in terms of operationalization for any group, not just for autistic people.) So if you ever have to argue about this, be sure to point out the many ways in which this research does not meet the most basic criteria for quality.
Yes, that’s exactly the part that brings me from “What the fuck” to “spitting with the white hot fires of a thousand angry suns”: How the hell did this become an accepted and normalized idea, if this is the support it stands on?
Oh, right, because it confirms biases.
There is so much bad science around autism – and so little of it challenged – except by autistics who are rarely listened to (thanks to organisations like A$).
I don’t mind at all. I don’t know if you’d prefer to have this private, though, so if you do have a Tumblr or would prefer to use another method, please let me know.
As for this question, yes, I do have issues with certain types of fabric, I do prefer very soft cotton materials, anything that is rough or unfinished is kind of impossible to touch or be around. I think this kind of sensory/tactile issue is very common though (and not just with autistics). I’ve also heard from people who are the exact opposite, they need to have that roughness or dullness or otherwise unfinished quality. Sensory issues can vary a great deal.
The Doctor Is Out 