Just let them be kids

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Hi, I'm ButterflyGardenMom and this is my home page.

 

I have two wonderful kids...

a boy and a girl.  They are great friends, like to invent creative games to play together, and always look out for each other.  The picture to the left shows my kids having fun with their Nintendo.

When my son started school...

He had already learned some basic arithmetic from educational computer games. When his teachers told me that he often fidgeted, especially in math class, I assumed he was bored.  One day I went to pick up the kids and found that my son had been repeatedly saying "Two" in math class, and the exasperated teacher had told him to stay after school and write a page of 2s.  I started hearing comments about "special needs," which I thought was quite uncalled for, since my son was generally well behaved, other than getting fidgety and hyper at times, and he did well in his schoolwork.


Then the principal gave me some information...

about Asperger's syndrome.  At first, I dismissed it as just some psychological fad and politely told the principal that I wasn't interested in taking my son for an evaluation.  Then I started seeing more autism awareness information in the media and realized that it was more than just a passing diagnostic fad.  I did some reading on the Internet, learned more about the extent of society's prejudices against autistic people, and began to worry.  As my son got older, he gradually outgrew the fidgety behavior and can now sit quietly in class, but he has certain noticeable traits that are considered to be autistic traits, such as a monotone voice and a tendency to rock or sway his upper body occasionally.

One day my son told me about a health class...

in which the teacher discussed mental disorders.  One of the examples was an autistic savant who had amazing musical talent but could barely speak.  My son said that he was very glad he didn't have a mental disorder "because that would be terrible," and that the scientists needed to learn more about how to cure those people.  I didn't say much in response, other than agreeing that there's a lot of ignorance about how the human brain works.  But now I'm beginning to understand how mothers of minority children must have felt when their children brought home racist textbooks.

I haven't told my son anything about autism...

but if our society remains as prejudiced as it is today, and the "autism awareness" efforts continue, my son will need to know about the discrimination he will face.  I'm dreading the day when I can no longer put off having that conversation with him, in which I explain that even if he is an honor student, an ambitious achiever, and a caring and ethical and contributing member of the community, it still won't matter what he accomplishes, there will be many who will see him as mentally defective and who will treat him as a second-class citizen.  There will be interviewers who will reject him for jobs, regardless of his qualifications, just because his voice and body language are different.  There will be women who won't date him because they don't want to be involved with an autistic man.  There will be neighbors and co-workers who will fear and shun him.

I have always been an optimist, and I still have some hope that it is possible for society to change enough so that I won't need to have this conversation with my son.  Other minority groups have overcome prejudice and been integrated into mainstream society: why not autistics?  If we can learn to accept people of different races, cultures, and religions as our equals, can't we learn to accept neurodiversity too?  My son and others like him are not defective, they are not inferior, and they certainly don't need to be told that they have a terrible mental disorder.

Just let them be kids.