AUTISM PARENTS- STOP SEARCHING.
"Well, the he's a she," were the words of the TV nurse before the mother began to cry.
"Come on, once you see her, you'll love her," still could not persuade the mother to even look at her daughter in the nursery. As you may have guessed, this was a TV drama, and the mother was hoping for a boy, but was given a girl. My maternal grandmother had taken to calling me "Rupert," after the cartoon bear, while I was in gestation, and my mother was convinced that I was going to be a boy before I was born, and that was before the sex of a baby could be determined pre-natal.
Just like you cannot determine the sex of the child (ethical arguments regarding designer babies are beyond the scope of this story) or the child's eye or hair colour, or even their sexuality, you cannot determine the neurology of your child. You can determine, if you buy a brand new car, what make, model and colour you want, but a car is not a child. If you have an autistic child, that is the child you have.
I have read some absolute nonsense by right-wing commentators spouting that puberty blockers and gender reassignment are forms of child abuse (now, if you have a little girl and you force her to wear boy's clothes because you wanted a boy, or vice versa, THAT may be considered child abuse, but if your child is uncomfortable with their gender and you have them assessed and the clinicians agree on that, then that is a parent doing their best for their child) and the Press Council has rightly given them a metaphorical rap over the knuckles in response, but what IS child abuse, is forcing your three or four year old autistic child to attend 40 hours a week of ABA. The Shearers' Strike of 1891, from which the Labor Party grew saw people calling for eight hours work, eight hours sleep, eight hours leisure, but it ought to be remembered that even youthful shearers were teenagers and these principles applied to adults, not four year old children, and a four year old child requires around ten to twelve hours sleep a night, and possibly an afternoon nap, and kindergarten is usually no more than five and a half hours a day, so 40 hours a week ABA for a four year old child is most of their day and too tiring.
Most parents love their children, but loving their children is about accepting them for who they are, not forcing them into a image they want. One of my immense dislikes of certain members of the religious right is them saying, "I want my kids to be brought up this way." If you mean you want your kids to be brought up well-behaved and well-mannered, well, no harm done, but if you want your kids to be brought up to be bigoted, intolerant snobs, well, sorry, that's not the society we want. I would be disgusted if my nephew engaged in homophobic or xenophobic or neuro-phobic language. I am trying to convince my brother and sister-in-law to educate him about autism as much as they can, and I would love for him, if they send him to school and there's an autistic student in the class, to be able to say to the teacher, "My uncle's autistic, so that autistic student can sit beside me, or do this with me," and have the teacher say, "Very kind of you, Vincent." Also, I find it horrifying that some parents want their kids to be taught that same-sex marriage is wrong. After all, just imagine how you would feel, if you were the child of two same-sex parents (whether the sperm or egg donor was part of your life or not) and some kid in the class stood up and made a homophobic remark. And just imagine if somebody made an offensive remark about autism and you had an autistic relative or friend.
Parents of autistic kids, just like you can't choose the gender, eye or hair colour of your child, or their dominant hand (my uncle is left-handed and so is my aunty, but my two cousins from them are right-handed) you cannot choose your child's neurology. If one listens to the song, "Love The One You're With," and hear the lines, "If you can't be with the one you love, Honey, Love the one you're with," that talks of romantic love, as if to say you should be happy with whoever you're with. There are many different types of love, parental love, sibling love, romantic love, are just some examples. Unlike trying to bring romance into a situation it's never going to flourish, think of the saying, "Love The Skin You're In," which means accept you for you. Love the child you've got, regardless of their gender, hair or eye colour or neurology, and they'll love you back.