Autism Awareness Day

~ Laura

It’s World Autism Awareness Day. Awareness is good and all, but I want more than awareness. Yes, it’s nice to give to money scientific studies to research the causes of autism, but I want more than that. I want money and effort put into the autistic children and adults who are here right now.

I want schools to fully fund and support the education of children with autism in safe, effective, warm environments.

I want autistic children to be fully embraced by their typical peers. So, encourage your kids to sit by a nerd in the cafeteria today. Or invite a slightly strange kid over for a playdate.

I want communities to offer social events for that population.

I want communities and school to reach out to the families of autistic children. Some are extremely socially isolated.

I want communities for autistic adults. I want work opportunities for autistic adults.

Published by Laura

7 thoughts on “Autism Awareness Day”

  1. I want tax incentives for businesses to hire the disabled and programs to help them succeed in the workplace. I want monthly reports that detail the money employment saves in social security and other social programs.

    I also want meaningful vocational training for a huge chunk of our high school graduates, including those with autism and other disabilities.

    My wish list for college support – most non-super-competitive schools do pretty well. My son has everything he needs at a state university. So that’s the good news….

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  2. Several important things to think about here. First off, my kids are sometimes assholes. I have yelled at them when I found them mocking a Down Syndrome girl who was shopping with her mother. Appalling. Sometimes they are capable of decency and empathy, and I am happy and proud when I see it, but it’s not something to bet the farm on. And – girls – shit! Far worse. The meanness chronicled in books about girls, and Heathers… right now I am reading Paying for the Party, and they have Anecdotes about sorority black-balls. Yinch. Our school system makes a big fuss about being anti-bully, but bullies are creative and sneaky and they manage. It’s hard to protect the vulnerable, though I think it’s better than it was.

    All of us want to figure out how to ensure that our kids lead pleasant and productive lives. My grandmother was working til her death at 83 to make things work for my retarded uncle, who had gotten on with the railroad during WWII when they were desperate for help and who managed to survive there til early 70s. My father, looking back on it, didn’t take his responsibilities as seriously as he ought have after her death, and they diagnosed him with premature senility and turfed him out. Pension was okay, but he had no organization for his day. I’ve got a number of age peers who are, along with everything else, trying to take care of late-middle-age siblings with failure to launch. A friend of mine had a nice niche practice as a lawyer setting up trusts for adult children with some kind of need for oversight.

    The ideal is that they have a valued role and are worth a good wage and can be happy and proud like everybody else. Depending on where they are on the spectrum, maybe that is being part of a painting crew, or maybe it is being a designer of HVAC duct systems or an ethernet installer. Maybe look for things where there are rules and procedures which have to be followed carefully, and where boredom and short cuts can be a big problem for normals? Software work is popularly prescribed. Laura, you are kind of looking around for a way to make a difference – there was this guy in Europe who looked to open doors for autistic spectrum kids working in software. Can you latch onto his work and try and make it go in Jersey?

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  3. and furthermore, huge difference for those with parents/siblings who can provide oversight, housing, etc. compared to those whose families, for one reason or another, cannot. Probably the difference between being born into a first- or second-quintile family and being born into a fourth- or fifth- is starker for these kids than for anyone else, in terms of mobilizing what is needed for a successful life.

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    1. Temple Grandin had parents who were very comfortably well off and it helped a lot (there was a nanny, speech therapist, private schools and visits to auntie’s cattle ranch in the SW). On the other hand, her parents were able to afford Freudian analysis, which was not helpful.

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      2. I’ve seen some very sad/funny stories of families with an autistic child in France dealing with Freudian analysts (which has been the reigning approach in France even to the present day). There was one where the child was fascinating with some knick knack in the analyst’s office, and the analyst decided that the knick knack represented the breast and the child had been weaned prematurely, which caused the autism.

        You could get better therapy from a witch doctor.

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