I was planning on starting a conversation about Syria this morning, and probably will do it a bit later, but first I want to carry over a conversation in the last thread about caregivers.

The autism writers on Twitter are talking about a woman in Michigan, who tried to commit murder-suicide with her autistic daughter last week. The autistic daughter had extreme problems with violence and even put her mother in the hospital a couple of times, but the family was unable to get funding from the insurance companies or the school district to cover an intensive behavior program for the girl. The mother must have hit rock bottom and tried to kill herself and the girl.

While very, very few autistic kids have such extreme behaviors and nobody condones the mother’s behavior, we can all understand the fight to find the right services for a disabled child. One year, I made thirty calls to an insurance company to cover the expenses for a social skills class for Ian.

Taking care of a disabled child or an elderly parent is hard, thankless work. If we are considering spending billions on another war, can we also consider the needs of people in our neighborhoods?

On a positive note, I do find that autistic community is doing a better job taking care of its own. Just this morning, I found an autistic-kid friendly Minecraft server. I’m hopeful that in ten years, Ian will have more opportunities for work and life than exist at this moment.