I must confess I haven’t been able to read any of the stories or watch the news blurbs because April tends to make me sick, and I’ve not been able to do anything about it (like write my own piece…I’m trying). So I avoid. But hey, being Spokane’s Flying Autistic is a start. Or something…

Every so often we need to hear stories like this to remind us that a sometimes-necessary key strategic element in the playing of the game called life is to assert and exercise the option to change the rules of the game from the middle of the playing field with the clock running and the ball in play.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-04152007-1330719.html

Now if only the principal would realize what Teddy seems to realize, that autism is not something to be ashamed of. They’ll all know who he is now that he got his name in the paper, and if I am right about 11 year olds, they’ll think that’s really cool.

[Nataliejean] Ahrens said living in the land of autism has its challenges, but she wouldn’t trade her [12-year-old son] Mark for a Mark without the disease.

“I would want some things to be easier for him. But, he is my child and I love him.”

This underscores that the mom has more clues than the journalist . It’s not a “disease”. It’s a complex set of developmental differences with wide variance among individuals. And it’s not just handicap or disability, though that’s all that may currently be in the field of vision of individuals and families struggling with severe handicap. As their outcomes improve, they will discover otherwise.

We need to teach everyone — the journalists, especially, apparently — to learn to think in parts when it comes to autism, and not lump all the handicaps, strengths, and atypicalities together as some sort of monolithic “enemy” to battle and defeat.

For one thing, we need to get people focused on addressing — mitigating and circumventing — the handicaps, and dealing with the CMPs (concomitant medical problems) as such. If the child has GI distress, treat it as a GI problem, autism or no autism.

For another thing, we need to get people focused on optimizing educational approaches. If the child has learning disabilities, set them up with educational approaches that work for them. And don’t confuse education with attempts to “normalize”. The goal of any educational approach should be to enable skill acquisition, not “to make a child indistinguishable from non-autistic peers”.

And finally, we need to get people focused on the differences that are handicapping only because they are not granted validity and equity by the majority. The definitions of autism in the diagnostic manuals, all too many researchers, clinicians, educators, parents, and the general public dismiss atypical behaviors and atypical allocations of attention as “meaningless”, and that needs to change. It should be as unacceptable to denigrate autistic aesthetic, sensory, affective, and social preferences as it is to denigrate those of Deaf people, blind people, gay people, or people belonging to ethnic, racial, or religious minorities.

And one day it will be so — over the dead bodies of those who say it can’t be done, or who stand in its way.