Autism, Accommodation for Disability, and Traumatic Normalization

Mu and his adult big sister in front of the Mother and Child statue in downtown Greenbelt when Mu was six years old.
Image of a child in a yellow winter coat and black slacks leaning on a young woman in a green winter jacket and dark jeans
both have their backs to the camera and are facing a giant sculpture of a mother holding a small child. ©Kerima Cevik

I try to stay out of autism parenting arguments in the community. My son doesn't fit the mold of those parenting issues being debated, and such discussions only end with my being furious at the lengths parents go to try and force normalization in their children the way Cinderella's stepmother tried to force a glass slipper that clearly wouldn't fit on Cindy's stepsisters. But sometimes speaking up saves lives and may change things for the better. So I'm going to write about an aspect of autism parenting.

Someone on social media decided to post a question. They asked if it was better to make an autistic child comfortable than to challenge them. The inquirer followed by saying this was a point of heavy debate in the autism community and someone had advised them that it was better to make their child comfortable implying that parent posting the question didn't agree with the idea of comfort over challenge.

The entire question was wrong because it was founded on the idea that normalization of an autistic child, by any means necessary, is the right ultimate goal when curing them is not possible. This ignores the reality that autism is a disability that requires, by law, just as much adaptation, accommodation, inclusion, and support as any physical disability would.

Autism is a lifelong disability. Autism is not "curable" by ABA. Enforced behavioral modification simply masks the outward expression of autistic behavior but can cause residual harm that presents in post-traumatic psychiatric disability. Parents often believe that the surfacing of mental health concerns in their autistic children expressed in anxiety disorders and PTSD are caused by autism when in fact they are part and parcel of a lifetime of no accommodation for their offspring's disability, traumatic enforcement of normalization in the guise of parental and professional "challenge over comfort" attitudinal ableism and treatment-related stressors accumulating over time.

Back to the question. Is it better to make an autistic child comfortable or challenge them?

What the hell does that mean?

Where daily life, care of self, care of the personal environment, and overcoming bars to access and disparities in everything from health services to educational equity are challenges which already exist for nonspeaking autistic youth, creating the "making them comfortable v challenging them" question as some adversarial issue dividing the autism community skews the autism conversation away from the true question.

Mu, in a gray t-shirt and gray shorts, Hispanic presenting
male with curly black hair and light brown skin uses
his AAC device, an iPad with TouchChat HD,
while sitting on our deck. ©Kerima Cevik

Why isn't the question "why hasn't the entire autism stakeholder community met and worked out the problem of how therapeutic support can be given without doing further harm to the autistic consumer, particularly when we now know that at least one generation of autistic adults have been permanently traumatized by how therapies are provided now?

When parents set incorrectly high expectations and later find they can't normalize their offspring to their satisfaction they begin a cycle of frustration based abuse that ends in tragedy.  Autistic disability rights activists discuss their own lifelong traumatic treatment experiences in the hope of sparing today's autistic children the long term damage they must live with because of these attempts to normalize them instead of providing the accommodations and supports needed to improve autonomy. If autistic parents were told their child had a physical disability that required they use assistive technology equipment like a wheelchair or cane, they would not then feel they must challenge their children to move through their environment without a wheelchair or cane. They would instead fight for the best equipment available for their offspring. Fundamental to the rift in the understanding of what autism accommodation, services, assistive tech, and inclusion should look like is this incorrect concept that autistic children must be forced to adapt to everything. This pressure increases the more a child can pass for what is viewed as normal. It increases if a child who might be able to communicate at a much higher level with an assistive technology device can produce single or two-word utterances. The goal with any other nonspeaking population is communication through AAC. With autistic nonspeakers, it is forcing two-word utterances and declaring their incompetence.

It is important not to conflate challenging a child after accommodation for a disability and forcing a child to a parent's view of what a normal person looks like. Forcing normalization is a clear sign that parent does not understand the scope of what encompasses autism as a disability and that is dangerous. Acceptance of disability is not lip service during Autism month where we can say we accept our children while compartmentalizing away the reality that they are disabled. It is critical to grasp that we are parenting disabled people. It is imperative that we be certain our children who can pass for typical are assessed for auditory, sensory, and cognitive processing disorders often missed in diagnosis because the child presents as "high functioning. It is critical to push for assessments that do not exist right now that can measure the same auditory, sensory, and cognitive processing disorders in nonspeaking autistic children and adults. Not knowing if a nonspeaking person processes what is said to them in a typical way is a major bar to any treatment, therapeutic support or communication support they need as disabled clients.

This is not a question of "comfort v challenge." It is a question of supporting decision making, educating your children about the scope of their disability and how to keep their mental health intact by using accommodations and assistive technology to support their processing and navigating a world not built for them. It means allowing coping strategies to remain in place as long as they aren't self-injurious.  It means actively seeking humane solutions to self-injurious behavior. It means when aggression occurs, understanding whether the culprit is something like your offspring being in that eight percent of epilepsy patients reacting to their medications with so-called Keppra raging.  One diligent autism mom tracked her daughter's rages and realized over time that the culprit was environmental and in fact an additive in McDonald;s fries. Once the culprit was discovered, the young woman was calm and happy.

Yet we parents are being taught that everything society considers wrong with our offspring is the fault of autism. More lives have been destroyed by this attitude than I can count.

This journey isn't about how embarrassed parents might feel that our children are disabled. It isn't about how things look to others. It is about preparing our disabled children to survive and navigate our world with as little stress and as much independence as possible. It is also about teaching them that society is also interdependent, and it is perfectly natural to need help and supports to safely navigate their lives.

Let us begin by understanding our own offspring as much as we are able. Let us realize everything we try to do with them on the excuse we are doing something for their own good has consequences.
Let us get our own headspace together so we can mentor confident, happy, autistic adults who know they are disabled and are fine with who they are.

Peace

Meltdowns Over Meltdowns

Mu looking away from the lamp in the living room. Noticing this we removed the lamps.

Sometimes, all of us have meltdowns. Not slight upsets, or moments of rage. Full blown, life sucks meltdowns. If you don't carry an autism label and you don't harm yourself or others while having them, they remain private moments of vented frustration one may or may not be ashamed of. Hopefully, no thoughtless friend or family member will live broadcast your meltdown and we won't see it on Periscope or Snapchat.

Like steam escaping from a pressure cooker, once the meltdown is over, life goes back to being lived.

The problem with the concept of melting down and people like my son is the trifecta working against their right to show upset to any large or small degree. That would be the triple stigma of an autism label, not being able to speak about what is frustrating to such a degree that meltdown results, and being a large teen compared to their peers. Add to that my son being a person of color, and specters of possible meltdowns and all the potential imaginary damage that he might inflict during one sends people who are supposed to educate or help resolve his health issues into a fear-laden fantasy of endless catastrophic possibilities. Those possibilities drive critical decisions about everything from where he should be educated to what kind of quality of healthcare he gets and he suffers the consequences for this fear-based policy making in his exclusion from things that the ADA and IDEA are supposed to be there to ensure he is included in.

Like all humans, he loses patience and loses his temper.

He must be allowed to express that to some degree, as must we all.

It does not follow that every planning work about him should lead with how to restrain him, chemically or otherwise. This drive to drug him or place him in the care of men who resemble NFL defensive linemen "just in case" is one of our greatest challenges to counter and this makes his options as he grows older unjustly limited by what people imagine might happen should he lose his temper. We have refused several potential respite providers whose solution to our son's size was to assign someone to him large enough to "restrain him" if he should have a meltdown.

Contrary to popular belief, he's actually not a giant, walking, perpetual, meltdown.

I was saddened when even an activist who I respected, after a meeting, made a snarky comment about potential holes in the walls of any house our son might live in.
Really?

There were no holes to see in our house. So where did that remark come from? I guess it came from the presumption of his degree of disability naturally resulting in wall breaking. Not that damage to property doesn't or can't happen when someone neurodivergent has a meltdown. Sometimes autistic people get frustrated. It is a disability after all. And that activist should know. They were autistic too.  In short, most people, even those who should know better, look at our son and see this:

The Hulk Wallpaper, from The Avengers, Age of Ultron © Marvel Comics Group

Imagine what life would be like if your employers, your primary care physician, your dentist, your spouse always kept an adult size papoose handy "just in case" you lost your temper while at work, getting vaccine boosters, or coming in for teeth cleaning. Everyone on edge, expecting that eventually, you would turn green and rip your pants and when that happened, folk have to be ready to wrap you in a blanket or sit on you or call out the National Guard and thereby keep their walls hole-free.

This is what I am supposed to accept as the reality for our son.Yet they cannot understand why I would find such options inhumane and unacceptable. So let's go there. Let's discuss a moment when Mu just couldn't take it anymore.

We've had a hellish 48 hours recently. It began with a simple, irritant. A creature, either of four or two legs, set off a car alarm in the parking area right in front of our house. At an ungodly hour. When Mu was making a valiant effort to fall into an exhausted sleep. That was followed by too many emergency vehicles speeding to some traffic accident too close to this neighborhood, then dawn breaking and the HOA deciding that this would be a great day to mow every shared lawn space on this massive property. Mu was reaching the limits of his patience when a nearby neighbor, getting ready to leave for work, decided the entire neighborhood really needed to hear his taste in music.

Mu in StarTrek robe, with permission of the subject
 ©Kerima Cevik

What pushed Mu over the edge was in fact, me. I was walking into his room and took a step forward that sent pain searing through my hip so sharply I gasped and involuntary tears poured down my face. Horrified, he went into full meltdown, hitting himself. I quickly checked myself, made my expression as calm as I could in such pain, and repeatedly whispered, "it's not your fault, it is not your fault," until he looked at me and saw me smiling through my pain directly at him. He stopped immediately. A shy, hesitant smile began and I relaxed. I waited seated on the edge of his bed for the pain in my hip to crest and decrease. I suggested a shower might make him feel better. Running water and the StarTrek robe, a birthday gift from his big sister, sent further relief to him. "Let's get you snug in bed and try having you sleep again," I suggested.

When he was tucked in, his favorite music playing on his iPad, I leaned heavily on my cane and limped from his room. "Goodnight, son" I uttered. I moved two slow painful steps down the hall when I heard the words "I love you" waft from his room.

I am the most fortunate of parents.

He lets me know when he's angry at himself. And he lets me know he loves me. That is enough to let me know that this time, my educated guess about the trigger for many of his meltdowns is nearly spot on. That means I can truly work towards a resolution to future upsets by knowing why they happen.

No one is doing research on this. We are simply treating our loved ones like aggressive animals who need obedience school. That needs to change.

Someone I respect greatly told me that caring for a disabled person with intense support needs is a backbreaking, heartbreaking, thankless job. I agree it breaks down the body prematurely. People around you break you down mentally if you allow them to, and usually the ones thinking they are operating with the best of intentions do the worst damage. They demand to know what is wrong with your loved one, then immediately follow with things like "I'm so sorry." My favorite response is "excuse me why are you sorry?" "He's disabled, not dead."

While that may sometimes begin a needed conversation about ableism, the cumulative effect of it is like any form of gaslighting. It is something a parent must counter for their own mental health security. I won't go into having to fight against disparity in everything from health care service quality and delivery to educational supports. It wears down the spirit.

I have a son who demonstrates his gratitude for my care. Many parents don't ever hear that gratitude. They might see it in some fashion, a smile, and eye blink, a squeeze of a hand. But they never hear it. I know what this means emotionally. To know that your son wrongly believes when you suffer it is somehow because you're caring for his needs and being his support staff is a jolting revelation. I see his gratitude in the use of words he rarely feels the need to utter, in his displays of affection reserved for only three people in the entire world, in his attempts to increase his independence. His ultimate love letter, the performance art of his iron will to survive and live on after I'm gone is in his herculean effort to master small but critical life skills.

To understand that my son blames himself for my aging, for a life of harm visited upon me when I was very young because of my race, is heartbreaking. But armed with this understanding, I am able to reduce the dreaded meltdown episodes everyone else seems to fear to events so rare and so brief that when they do occur we are no more surprised than we would be if we had a bad day and just couldn't take anymore.

The criteria for what meltdowns are, why they happen, and exactly how to work with the autistic teen or adult towards a reduction in these events are never a focus of patient-centered research and they should be. Meltdowns are treated like the Gamma radiation that drives the Hulk, and our loved ones are discussed and managed as if any moment they will lift cars and burst through walls, and the National Guard must be called or the entire nation will be destroyed.

This is our story, not the story of another mother and her nonspeaking autistic son. I don't profess to have a "cure" or solution for these bouts of frustration either. I just hope that what Mu and I decided to write about meltdowns begins a better dialog than past articles like the Washington Post's "The Dark Side of Autism." We cannot act as if self-harm and harm to others is a pathological certainty; we need to  begin working towards a true understanding of what causes this state of desperate angst and fugue and thereby learn how to help our loved ones navigate it without chemical, behavioral or physical restraint. What we've done to date is a sort of traumatizing band-aid over the entire meltdown event. You don't force a band-aid on steam escaping a pressure cooker. You move to let steam safely escape. Our approach seems very wrong.

As for Mustafa and I, we are truly good. All the lies about testosterone as Gamma radiation igniting him into a raging teenaged Hulk were so much fertilizer. The truth of puberty and meltdowns? Well, he has acquired a great deal more facial hair. He may need to find gainful employment soon as he is eating us out of house and home. Also, he still doesn't clean his room.

In other words, he's acting like a typical almost 14-year-old.

Now if we could only get the rest of the world to calm down and not stereotype him, we might get some serious quality of life improvements and more stress-free community inclusion going forward.

In the meantime, he lives in a home where all human emotional moments are accepted, love is as abundant as understanding. and this seems to make those episodes rare indeed.

Peace.

Kudzu, #AutismSpeaks10, & The Autism Wars

When my son was 2 years old, something pervasive, noxious, and invasive entered his life and ours. No, I don't mean autism. I mean Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks was quite literally the kudzu of the autism and autistic communities.

 

Clemson University researchers are nearly lost in the overwhelming cover of kudzu vines, which have spread over every surface, object and tree in the area. (Credit: Clemson University News)

First I should explain what I mean by kudzu, for those who may not know. Here's a quick primer. Quoting The Weather Network's article,  kudzu is the

"Plant scourge of the South adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, aiding in its own spread"

Specifically:
"It quickly covers the ground, buildings, and anything else around, blanketing fields and even climbing up trees. Any plants unfortunate enough to be overgrown (including trees) are deprived of sunlight by the dense cover of kudzu leaves and they quickly die out. These vines now cover over 3 million hectares of land throughout the U.S., mostly in the southeastern states - Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi - but it has spread south into Florida, west to Texas and north as far as Ontario. "

"While these growths have taken on epic proportions, that's not the only problem from kudzu. It's already been shown that kudzu causes more nitric oxide (which is also a byproduct of burning fossil fuels) to be released from soils, which has caused an increase in ground-level ozone levels during summertime heat. In addition, as the plants continue to spread northward, especially with climate change, they are actually increasing the amount of carbon dioxide released from the soil into the atmosphere, introducing a feedback loop. "

"According to Malcolm Campbell, a professor and the vice-principal of research at the University of

Kudzu seed pods credit Wikimedia Commons

Toronto, in his piece in The Conversation, the research of Nishanth Tharayil and Mioko Tamura, from Clemson University, shows that the plants choked out by the kudzu tend to lock more carbon into the soil."

"The study, published in New Phytologist, showed that despite a 22 per cent increase in soil litter (due to the abundant leaves the kudzu drops during winter), there was a 28 per cent decrease in soil carbon after a kudzu infestation invades an area."

"According to a Clemson University press release, Tharayil said: "Our findings highlight the capacity of invasive plants to effect climate change by destabilizing the carbon pool in soil and shows that invasive plants can have profound influence on our understanding to manage land in a way that mitigates carbon emissions.""

Flowering kudzu credit Wikimedia
Commons

We watched in stunned helplessness as Autism Speaks, like kudzu, invasively entered our lives and propagated gigantic, noxious campaigns that spread vapors of ablest humiliation, hopelessness, and resentment sprinkled with the occasional seasoning of inspiration pornography around the world. Their misguided doomsday scenario of fundraising by fear of an autism epidemic oppresses supporters to relieve that sense of helplessness by raising money to aid it in spreading its depressive rhetoric. Local autism nonprofits directly helping autistic adults, children, and families saw funds being choked off as Autism Speaks launched massive media campaigns to generate new fundraising revenue streams of tens of thousands of dollars towards odd research efforts (read about why Alison Singer resigned from Autism Speaks here) each year.

As kudzu spread north, killing every native plant in its path, Autism Speaks expanded into legislative efforts and advocacy, with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop, upending or appropriating efforts by informed legislative activists and organizations not in lockstep with them while trying to mandate its own singular, damaging agenda.  Autism Speaks spoke about autistics while choking out their voices. It claimed it spoke in the name of all autism parents while demanding all parents accept their idea of what autism does to families and what autism policy should be. It has spent recent years trying to obliterate any other advocating voice for autism by such misadventures as:

• attempting to come to Washington D.C. and mandate their singular biased opinion of a national autism policy all the while ignoring disabled disability rights activists and all other autism and disability nonprofits. (This effort continues.); 
•  targeted releasing of another apocalyptic "autism the epidemic" PSA (Sounding the Alarm) and massively pitching and screening it privately, along with sprinkles of funding, to various schools of public health and health care facilities in order to add professional legitimacy to their private autism agenda; 
• that disturbing genome database campaign in collaboration with Google  named and hashtagged "MSSNG" meaning "missing", implying their view that a puzzle piece is missing from our children's brains and bringing to mind disturbing and dangerous eugenic practices of the past that began with attempts to prove that any divergent population was less than another genetically
•  going as far as traveling to self-promote and attempt to control the autism conversation in Catholic countries by marketing their organization to the Vatican complete with founding member Suzanne Wright's unfortunate statement that families look upon their autistic loved ones as St. Francis looked upon someone with Hansen's disease. 

When autistic activists, who remember their lives as neurodivergent children in a world of refrigerator mom treatments, Lovaas punishments as therapy, shock treatments, institutionalization, and unspeakable harm, raise their voices in protest, Autism Speaks unleashes their supporters to bully and insult these justifiably angry advocates. It is a sad spectacle to witness.

Parents attacking autistic adults is in a very real sense akin to those parents attacking adult versions of their own autistic children.  Their inability to see that in their frenzied passion to attack (in the name of a mega nonprofit that uses legal power and corporate might to defend itself with impunity) they are damning the only people who know firsthand what the futures of their own children will hold and are fighting like hell to ensure better futures for autistic children is sadder still. Would they want some stranger to attack their children as viciously as they are attacking autistic adults under the cover of social media? It is heartbreaking to see this degree of hostility and compartmentalization in Autism Speaks supporters. Aren't we all also parents? Aren't we supposed to have the maturity and control our online behavior? Melting down on social media over a hashtag trouncing is not the solution to what is happening. Asking why #AutismSpeaks10 is viewed with such enmity by adults who are truly like our children because they share their neurology might be a better place to start.

Mu, autistic, out and about representing Charm City
On Purple day. Purple has become the only shade of
blue we endorse. Please note the absence of the puzzle
piece. ©Kerima Çevik

Our family never recovered from the shock of seeing Autism Speaks' "Autism Every Day" PSA, which is still branded with its logo and available for viewing on YouTube. We never viewed our son in this manner and it upset us greatly to have autism-parents presented in this way. Having learned our lesson about the depressive effect that Autism Speaks can have on us, we now set a blistering schedule well ahead of time for the month of April to avoid the media bombardment of Jerry Lewis telethon style content that leaves us dispirited every Autism month. Shopping for school supplies, groceries, and a host of other things is a challenge during the month of April. Kudzu, I mean Autism Speaks, and their pervasive puzzle piece logo, meant to represent a piece missing from our children's brains? Or the unsolvable "mystery" of autism, or something? is in our faces. Tenth-anniversary celebrations will only make their annual month-long assault worse.

Autism Speaks came into our lives like kudzu, destroying and divisive to those it presents itself as being in the service of. The good news is kudzu is edible. And if the right species are planted to counter it, things like soy, peanuts, and peas, those plants will give back to the soil and allow native plant life to grow back.

kudzu starch cake,katori-city, Japan ©Katorisi Wikimedia

So how can we fight the kudzu spreading in autism land?

By continuing to insist that Autism Speaks stop inciting panic and hopelessness to control the autism conversation and raise money. It is WRONG. Speaking out even if they use their massive media control to counter. Continue to inform people about what Autism Speaks does and why it is wrong.

Continue to insist Autism Speaks include autistic representation. Autism Speaks needs meaningful autistic decision-making representation. This means either a collaborative working partnership on equal terms with autistic-run organizations that have equal representation in deciding autism policy and issues that have a lifetime impact on autistic children and adults, equal representation on the board of directors, or both. The composition of its board makes Autism Speaks appear to speak for wealthy, cisgender, white, parents, grandparents, and professionals who have autistic loved ones.

Don't allow Autism Speaks to continue efforts to mandate national Autism Policy as they see fit while excluding all other stakeholders: Autism Speaks must stop insisting on forcibly attempting to promote their own agenda by mandating autism policy alone. Autism policy, whether they like it or not, must be inclusive of all stakeholders including autistic voices and the voices of other organizations who represent autistic people and their families and care providers. This is not a corporate takeover. This is a cause and human lives are in the balance.

Reclaim Autism Month: Autism month should not be the personal fundraising self-gratifying palooza of Autism Speaks. It should be a time when the full scope of what autism is, as well as how autistic people have always been part and parcel of our society should be on display. It should be a month for understanding, educating, and beyond awareness, it should be a time for demonstrations of acceptance, positivity, and hope.

So please Autism Speaks, do not obliterate other voices with the ritual explosion of 10th-anniversary chest pounding. We get it. You've leveraged a fundraising model that worked for Susan Komen for years. You're flush with funding and more is never enough. That doesn't give you the right to smash the voices of those you claim to speak for and torture them with loud, sensory overloading, displays of power that are dangerous to autistics. Tenth anniversary or not, for the safety of the autistics you claim to serve, tone down the over-the-top antics a bit this year.

My wish for #AutismSpeaks10 is that Autism Speaks makes a conscious decision to cease being the kudzu of the autism community and act to reinvent themselves into what they should be, a nonprofit that has true autistic representation and allows autistic voices, including those criticizing them, to speak their minds without being the victims of personal verbal attacks and abusive rhetoric by overzealous supporters. We could suspend reality for just a moment more and pretend that Autism Speaks lived with us in the United States and understood that autistic people and families who aren't Autism Speaks members, volunteers, or supporters, like all other stakeholders, had the constitutional right to speak their minds about policies and practices that directly impact their futures.

Further, we could push this make-believe scenario and consider that if all autism organizations looked for points of policy everyone agreed on, worked on a summit that united these points into an autism policy plan acceptable to everyone, then everyone would successfully advocate for said joint autism policy and the acrimonious nature of the autism wars might pause for a cease-fire.

Wars tend to end with ceasefires.

Peace

Free Your MInd

Our children are growing up and growing old. As fun as it was to watch them as infants and sweet young children, we have to accept the fact that our children are maturing and will age. My son is on the brink of becoming a teen. What I have spent the past three years doing is asking myself what kind of quality of life and standard of living I want my son to have when he is grown up.

Part of the reason for my unusual point of view in this blog is an attitude driven by the idea that I want my son and everyone who is disabled to live as autonomously as possible. I want my son and all his peers to experience the best quality of life they can. I want my son and his peers to have the opportunities to succeed and excel in life without losing health benefits, food stamps, and other supports that sustain them. I want my son to be completely included in our community and respected in society as he is. I want my family to understand that my son's future should not be tied to anyone else's. The world should be such that he can live his life without feeling he needs me to be alive to live it with joy. No one, not even his mother, should make him feel dependent. He should feel empowered.

This attitude is why, when being asked something by Landon Bryce one day a long while ago,  I was unable to answer. It had to do with whether I considered myself an autism parent blogger. I really dislike the term "Autism Mommy Blogger". I didn't want to be called that. Because it is used in a derogatory way, to diminish the women blogging. The majority of these women are highly educated authors, journalists and career women who made life changing decisions to be there for their autistic children. Others are dedicated stay at home parents who are self taught advocates for their own kids. None deserve to be marginalized because thousands of other parents read what they write and hold it in higher regard than someone with a background in journalism or science who is not autistic, or has not parented an autistic child. But facing this question from Landon, I could not put this all into words. I could only say, that I did not want that label. I did not want my son to be diminished by my blogging about him. And not all mom bloggers understand that attitude or care. Some are destructive of their children in their blogging and I did not want to be part of that either.

So understand that blogging was something I started to help gain a voice for what I thought my son and his nonspeaking autistic peers deserved for their future as adults. I don't believe a goal of living above the poverty line is an unreasonable goal. I don't think living autonomously is an extreme goal for a nonspeaking autistic person either. In fact I know nonspeaking autistic adults who do live autonomously in their own homes. So the question was how could I write to explain this to other parents? How could I make them understand that the rhetoric they have been given all their lives, that they must somehow survive beyond all hope and be healthy because their lifework is now to be a caregiver for their nonspeaking autistic child for as long as that child is alive is a recipe for disaster? How do I make other mothers see that there is a better future for their children that does not necessarily include them? Because once the problem is defined properly, it can be solved. Autism parents are determined, tough, patient, and focused people. Imagine if all these characteristics were bent towards finding a solution to the problem of where their children could live out their lives autonomously and how to keep them living a good quality of life. I felt that if I could accomplish that change in thought process and attitude, all our children would be safer, happier, and included in their own lives. Parents would be relieved, less stressful about the future, happier now.

So far, I've failed to reach most adults. Perhaps that is because I am not writing about the tough day to day aspects of being an autism parent. Maybe because I am saying I love my son as he as and am proud of him. Or that I reject Autism Speaks, who does not seem to get the faintest idea of how to advocate for my son and his peers because it refuses to include autistic adults in the leadership of their organization, which professes to advocate and speak for them. I do not know, but I do know that I am not reaching the people who I wanted to try and tell that life does not have to be as others have said it will be for our children. I now wonder if I should simply cease trying.

I don't really know where to go from here.  Maybe I should spend some time telling you all what is already out there that can change your children's lives right now. Right now, as state and federal governments are cutting funding from developmental disabilities programs (click me), autistic adults are teaming up to live autonomously and support one another living as independently as possible. Parents of nonspeaking autistic children are having that conversation about coaching their children in day to day life skills now. All that is great. But there is something we can all do right now. We can fight to insure that by the time our children grow up, they are paid what any other worker is paid for equal work. We can fight to insure that all our nonspeaking autistic children are assessed and accommodated with AAC devices and that the law insures that their speech devices are never removed from their reach. We can form communities for autonomous living as parents and built our own cohorts of classmates, playmates or friends that can live together and share a home or large apartment and adapt the homes for them so they can live as autonomously as possible.

We have right now, so much technology that can make a nonspeaking autistic adult autonomous. We are just so focused on the tragedy model scenarios of us carrying our children on our backs for their entire lives that we are not demanding our schools prepare them for life on their own. Our children are ABA "therapy-ed" into learned helplessness. We are fed a litany of what our children cannot do to such an extent that we become helplessly trapped in a mentality that says our children will need us until they die.That mindset is a type of learned helplessness as well.

We now have driverless cars that use GPS and onboard computers to navigate traffic. We have robots that clean carpets, toilets that flush themselves, all in one machines that can wash, dry and even steam clean laundry. We have dials on showers that keep users from dispensing water hot enough to burn.  No autism parent is thinking about how these things can make their children's lives more autonomous. What is out there is literally thousands of autism blogs saying the same sad and tragic things. I don't want my blog to be one of the thousands abandoning hope and wallowing in despair.

How can we change things right now? How can we make a future for our children that no one believes is possible? First change our attitudes of what the future means for our children. Yes, our nonspeaking autistic children can live well without us. Yes they can. If we help them. Believe your child can leave home just like any other child. See yourself being proud of your grown child living autonomously. Then join me. I"m telling you what is out there for them will blow your minds.

To Autism Speaks, from the "Woman of Color"

When I was 12, I was put on my class debate team. One of the first concepts we were taught was the difference between debate or any manner of constructive dialog and a shouting match. Rule one was to be informed, and never launch personal attacks on the individuals presenting the opposing view. Character assassination always lost the debate.

Perhaps everyone has noticed an increasingly large number of autism organizations, autistic disability rights advocates, parent advocates, and autism families are calling out Autism Speaks. Any nonprofit organization being criticized for any reason, should above all be both transparent and receptive to the concerns and criticism of anyone, particularly the population it professes to serve. It should listen to the families it demands fundraising efforts and donations from. Autism Speaks is not doing so.

Just to summarize, what Autism Speaks did this time was launch a campaign to control public policy on autism beginning with a massive lobby effort taking the form of a "policy summit". What is wrong with this is that there are a great many other autism and disability related nonprofit and advocacy organizations who have autistic board members and diverse representation. Autism Speaks had no right to try and dictate policy alone. The right thing to do would have been to call a summit inviting all autism organizations and try to agree on policy. I say this because Autism Speaks has no autistic representation. I want to be clear on this. John Elder Robison was never made a member of the board of Autism Speaks. A careful inspection of autistic adults working with Autism Speaks will show none being given any true leadership role. They are given the specific message of promoting the medical model of autism, and must first show they are willing to propagate Autism Speaks' view of autism in order to gain grant money or support. They must at the very least, not argue with Autism Speaks. This is qualitatively different from being a decision making autistic member of the board.

During Autism Speaks' lobby invasion of Washington D.C., Mrs. Suzanne Wright signed her name to a blog post so heinous that the entire autism community, even parents who formerly supported Autism Speaks, reacted in outrage. I did as well (click here to read more). It was inexcusable. We have moved beyond that horrible time in history when disabled children were presented as tragic figures, and the fear of a world full of them used to gain some financial or other benefit for a nonprofit. Rather than respond to the genuine concerns of families Autism Speaks ignored them. No concern has been expressed about John Elder Robison resigning from his association with Autism Speaks. Were I a board member that would concern me greatly.  I wondered why board members were not reaching out to those they accepted membership to serve. Then I inadvertently ended up in a brief written exchange with a board member and understood.

When I stated that efforts by legislative advocates, disability rights advocates, autistic legislative advocates, lawmakers, and parent advocates to mandate insurance reform began years prior to Autism Speaks' entrance into public policy, and what in fact Autism Speaks had done was co-opt those efforts, take them over, and then claim organizational victory when reform was passed, the reaction of the board member was swift and vicious. Not knowing what was coming, I followed with the statement that Autism Speaks had no autistic members on its board and no diversity either, except for a female celebrity. In response to this member's comment that autism was a spectrum that sometimes was just "quirks" to be accepted and embraced, but all too often it was a nonverbal child with serious behaviors who needed a great deal of help, I reacted by saying that my son was one of those nonspeaking children that he was presenting as tragic and outside of acceptance and embracing. I pointed out that as a woman of color,  I was part of a population that was similarly maligned and he might not want to imply that my son was not worthy of acceptance. His response to was attack me personally. He went as far as using a common stereotype, saying that I attacked everything real or imagined, implying I was just the angry Black woman. He clearly has never read my blog.  Remember what I said earlier? If you feel you are losing a debate, never fall to personal attacks. In this case, the exercise of attacking an Afro Latina autism parent advocate served no purpose but to silence by insult. Hopefully this was not an example of how other board members or Autism Speaks itself handles criticism of its methods or shortcomings in its organization. In order to threaten and demean "woman of color" was placed in quotes in his response. Apparently my race, in his mind, does make me less than others and my son's degree of disability was not worth dealing with when not used as an excuse for appropriating my son's right be represented by his peers.

Right now people are saying in a very loud, unified voice, that Autism Speaks not speak for other autism nonprofits on what national autism policy should be. They are asking that Autism Speaks not speak for autistic people until it can show representation in the decision making levels of its organization, Not presenting autistic people and segregating them to projects and throwing funding at them. There is a difference gentle people. Demand more. "Don't be tempted by the shinny apple, don't you eat of the bitter fruit", as Tracy Chapman sings. Autism Speaks has a great deal of soul searching and homework to do. Here in summary is what I see as needing work:

1. Autistic Board Membership - There are great professional autistics who are wealthy, you know, like the rest of your board members. Find them
2. Diversity within the leadership and membership of the governing board: When I say "woman of color" I am being inclusive of all nonwhite racial groups. Autism Speaks has no Asian or indigenous  board members. I am also including ethnic minorities, I see no apparent Hispanic representation either. What about LGBTQ leadership? The present board membership does not reflect the population of members being supposedly spoken for.
3. Autism Speaks has no right to drive public policy on autism exclusive of other autism organizations, particularly those existing self advocacy organizations who truly are speaking for their members. (read more here)
4. It is time to  stop the tragedy model of fundraising. Stop using fear to raise funds too.
5. Autism Speaks should try dialog with those who have justifiable grievances against them rather than launching attacks on those who criticize the organization.

Although I am just a "woman of color" with a "nonverbal son needing a great deal of help", I continue to stand with autistic disability rights advocates, organizations and autism families demanding a sponsor boycott of Autism Speaks until these issues are addressed and resolved. Addressing the issue does not mean demanding those protesting on twitter have their accounts blocked, or using corporate strong arming to block protest. I continue to demand Autism Speaks respect parents of color and their nonspeaking autistic children.

Signed,

The "Woman of Color"

A Mouse that Roars - Standing in Defiance of Autism Speaks

Trauma Trigger Warning for language and ableism

On November 13, 2013, Autism Speaks will unleash the full force of its corporate lobbying budget and political action money on Washington D.C.. Autism Speaks is bombarding the District of Columbia with advertising, showering universities with research funding and overwhelming the locals with overwrought, ableist, tragedy rhetoric in order to fulfill their corporate agenda. Anyone in their way will be crushed underfoot. Any person objecting to or criticizing how they do business will be legally dealt with. Autism Speaks has repeatedly made that point, and it was again made clear when they rescinded a job offer to the mother of an autistic teen who requested reasonable accommodation to care for him during her work day (click here for details on that incident).

Tomorrow, autistic disability rights activist Lydia Brown will face down this bombastic display of corporate wealth and power and try to be heard. She will stand in defiance of Autism Speaks' three day "national policy summit" that excludes the voices of autistic adults who advocate for their peers. I am the mother of one of those "children who will need help all their lives". I am an autism mother. I stand with Lydia Brown in defiance of Autism Speaks. 

Yes, gentle people. I am asking that all of you stand with us against this frightening force lumbering forward with no interest in our families or in autistic people who are growing up and aging. Autism Speaks is inhumanely imposing their idea of what our community needs and attempting to mandate everything from how my son will be housed to funding research that has no real benefit to my son or his peers. Note that no research funding is going to technology that provides more effective augmentative alternative communication devices, when the primary challenge to autistic individuals throughout their lifespan is communication. Assistive technology solutions for autonomous living are not funded by Autism Speaks research money. Mrs. Suzanne Wright refers to autistics as "the autism crisis", dehumanizing them in a most ableist manner. She goes on to equate my son and his peers, who are still very much here as being "missing", a clear reference to the highly offensive "Ransom Notes" campaign launched by New York University discussedhere. Her exact statement in this excerpt from her blog post, entitled Autism Speaks to Washington - A Call for Actionis

"This week is the week America will fully wake up to the autism crisis

If three million children in America one day went missing – what would we as a country do?

If three million children in America one morning fell gravely ill – what would we as a country do?

We would call out the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. We’d call up every member of the National Guard. We’d use every piece of equipment ever made.

We’d leave no stone unturned.

Yet we’ve for the most part lost touch with three million American children, and as a nation we’ve done nothing."

Suzanne Wright

Her entire disturbing post can be read here.

For all those saying that Autism Speaks is understanding neurodiversity, the message is clear that at Autism Speaks, tragedy, ableism, and fear tactics are still the order of the day. My son's challenges are enough without Autism Speaks using them to push their own agenda in his name without his voice in his own affairs. He's not lost. Only Autism Speaks has lost touch with the very autistic people it professes to represent. Autism Speaks has no autistic governing representation of any significance on their board of directors. Please take the time to read Ms. Brown's latest post here.  Read about how autistic adults were treated by people who were participating in the juggernaut Autism Speaks fundraising event machine here when these young autistic activists exercised their right to protest the event. Autistic adults are our children, grown up. Do we want our children to be voiceless and passive, accepting what people who do not understand or care about them decide about their lives? Or do we want to know that they are standing together to defend their own right to speak for themselves and control as much of their own lives as they can?

Autism Speaks promotes ABA thoughtlessly, ignoring documented harmful outcomes like learned helplessness that must be dealt with years after this intervention ends. Parents and autistics of all ages who are capable of self advocacy should be given the right to choose what accommodations, supports, services and help they need. What the wealthy grandparents of an autistic child deem worked for him must not therefore be mandated for all of us. Autism families and autistic adults who don't agree with the way Autism Speaks approaches autism should not be simply subjected to their dictated national policy. No organization has the right to remove my son's right to be heard and mandate whether  and how my son is included in his school and his community.  I will not let Autism Speaks silence my son as he grows up. I will not allow Autism Speaks to usurp my voice as a parent and mandate what it thinks my son needs. Autism Speaks does not have that right.

Autism Speaks has no right to perpetuate policies that leave my son at the mercy of strangers in isolation from his own community, chemically lobotomized because their organization is uncomfortable with his apparent differences and degree of impairment. I look different from people who are white. My nose is wider. I will not narrow it. My skin is darker. I will not lighten it. I am visibly different from Mrs. Suzanne Wright. Should she then speak for what I need because she is in a position to bestow large quantities of money on those who make decisions? I thought this was the United States of America. I can speak for myself and adults with my son's degree of impairment can speak for him, until he can clearly communicate his needs himself. Only someone who knows what road my son will travel as an adult can know what he needs. Sorry that is not someone who is not autistic.

I will stand with Lydia Brown and disability and human rights activists in defiance of the mega nonprofit Autism Speaks.  For those of you who say Autism Speaks has good intentions, I respond that the road to a hellish future for my son and too many of his peers is being paved with their good intentions. We are at the crossroads of a very dangerous turn in the road of nonprofit public policy lobbying. Will this organization dictate the lives of your children? Is the future that you see for your grown son or daughter? A future of poverty and dependence on people paid to care for them after you are gone? Look further. We have the technology to vastly improve the quality of life for my son and his peers. Isn't it sad that the push for assistive technology development for wounded warriors is encouraged but that drive does not exist for our community? We must take a breath, step away from sadness and ask each day how our children will live as independent adults. 

The goal is autonomy. I want the whole American Dream for my son. I want lifetime educational access so he can continue learning until he reaches his highest potential. I want supported employment beyond him pushing a shopping cart. I want him to live on his own in clean, safe, housing beyond poverty. I want him to be an active part of his community. No revamped institutional residential housing is going to be accepted by me for my son. I have seen segregation. That didn't really work out for us people of color at all. We decided that was enough of that. How is that supposed to be ok for my disabled son?

I will be a mouse who roars. Even if I cannot be there in person, I want to be there in spirit, and so today I roar for Lydia Brown, and all those who will stand with her. A friend has a blog with a title that describes the unstoppable force headed Autism Speaks' way tomorrow.  The title is "Small But Kind of Mighty".

Lend your voices to ours, online and in person. Roar for your progeny. Demand more.

Here is my thank you to every brave soul who stands and speaks for my son. In solidarity.

Nothing About My Son Without HIm.

Two Autism Stories

Several years ago, I attended a meeting of parents and care providers to discuss the lack of county services available for their loved ones on the autism spectrum. At the meeting, an African American medical professional told me something that still gives me pause: "Autism is a disability for the rich," she said. “Only the wealthy can afford the costs of the intensive early interventions we as parents need to help our children succeed." She continued, “As African Americans, we are disproportionately caring for our children on the spectrum as single parents, with limited means, and are dependent on institutions like our public schools to give whatever supports they can."

As I continue my three year fight for appropriate supports for my own child, I ask myself each day, “Was my acquaintance correct? No matter how diligently I try, no matter the effort I make, will I be unable to provide my own child with the help he needs because of financial and racial disparities?”

Two stories show this disparity of care, resources, and options in a way that leaves me with heartbreaking concern. A Journey into the World of Autism is a series of photographs with commentary, about an against all odds, full on battle for the dignity and civil rights of a 14 year old African American boy, Daniel Tuttle Jr. Daniel was given a diagnosis of autism when he was 2 years old. He never received early interventions or any support services. His battle for services is still being fought by a woman who is not his mother. She was his first daycare provider as an infant; when she heard Daniel's mother was out of work and overwhelmed trying to manage his care, she did not hesitate to go through the process of becoming his care provider.

Autism Lives Daily in Our House briefly outlines the story of Jack Drinkwine, a white child diagnosed with autism who is receiving intensive interventions and supports. He has teams of medical and educational professionals working with him to improve his ability to navigate his world. Jack's mother, a university professor, discusses the combination of therapies and supports paid for by a combination of funding that Daniel Tuttle's care provider could never hope to achieve.
Daniels is homeschooled and sent to a speech therapist. Daniel's only other therapy, administered by his care provider, is a GFCF diet and the basic set of the shoebox task system, the foundational exercises in the TEACCH method. Daniel's care provider continues to try to place him in a safe educational environment where he is able to adapt to the classroom and receive at least minimal services and supports. Meanwhile, Professor Drinkwine advises other parents to acquire the intensive interventions for their children that she has, never considering that many parents and care providers do not have the resources available to them that a family with two working parents- a university professor and a high ranking military officer- does.

Is this disparity of service placing African American children on the spectrum at risk for more confrontations with aversive behavioral management techniques, fewer educational and therapeutic supports and a greater risk for either institutional care or catastrophic encounters with the criminal justice system as adults? It is a chilling thought for me as I look at my dark skin and my deeply autistic son.


Please read both articles and let me know what you think:

A Journey Into The World of Autism
Autism Lives Daily in Our House

More on Daniel Tuttle Jr. from DC & NYC Photographer Eli Meir Kaplan:
Against the Odds