“Rather, I help him find his way in this world and maximize his gifts without trying to stamp out part of his personality (autistic) in the process. Does that make sense?”

Perfectly. It’s called parenting, and it’s a perspective I hope and feel everyone who has children, NT or Special Needs or whatever, would and should have.

I love your post. I agree with what you have to say.

Kristina, thank you for being a voice in our community. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I was not speaking about all autistics. I was speaking about my son. My son’s sea change started when he was 13. Before that I was telling him that there would be no way I could ever allow him to drive. There was no way at the time to think that he would ever attend college. It took medical intervention to effect the change.

My own son fit pretty much the same laundry list of symptoms as Ed’s son, minus academic skills regression. 8 years later he is not only fully verbal but also bilingual and doing extremely well academically and reasonably well socially (meaning that he will never be the social butterfly, but he can certainly interact with others and be self-sufficient). It is too early for college but I can reasonably assume that he’ll be able to take calculus, English and physics when the time comes.

No ABA, no biomed of any sort. Some ST and OT and what would presumably pass as very watered down Floortime/DIR but at the time I have seen that as simply “parenting”. I am not going to claim that this is typical outcome, but others should not claim it can’t happen without medical intervention either…

You misunderstand me, Ed. Accepting my son as he is, autism and all does not mean a laissez-faire attitude towards helping him be as comfortable and functional as possible. For our family, it means that we help my son by giving him ST so he can learn to effectively communicate his needs, OT so he can effectively manage his sensory issues, TEACCH so he can learn how to function within a school classroom and the world at large, and a self contained classroom so he can simply LEARN.

To me, acceptance means that I help him be the best he can be, as he is. It means I don’t try to exorcise the autism “demon” out of him in the name of “cure” or “recovery.” Rather, I help him find his way in this world and maximize his gifts without trying to stamp out part of his personality (autistic) in the process. Does that make sense?

Also, Harold, the only ones name calling is the one calling other parents “delusional.” Because someone disagrees with you is far from grounds to declare “shame on you.”

It’s also full of people who have the same problems a few people at school had, yet the people at school rarely had a diagnosis, and ’special ed.’ at that time was technically little better than exclusion. Several people in my year, who had classic signs of various disorders only got thier diagnosis in adulthood, often only after trying adult education, or through occupational health.

I’m not aware of any reason why you would have seen such people at school, assuming they weren’t ’streamlined’ , and be mentally equipped to have recognised them, so your claim of ‘having seen it personally’ isn’t really that impressive and is actually to be expected if the socio-cultural explanation is correct.

I’m not sure where you’re going with the ‘just strange’ comment, as ASD’s like aspergers are more richer and more complex than being ‘just strange’.

The environment is what we humans make of it. And no, I do not mean anything having to do with diagnostics