Autism is an injury.
I’m just going to start saying that. All the time. Social media, in conversation, anywhere I have the opportunity to talk about what’s happening to our kids.
It’s time to stop the lying.
Autism is not:
A magical gene that gets passed down through the generations.
A different way of interacting with the world.
An evolution of the human brain.
Defective physical material from which these children are formed.
Inevitable.
Autism is:
An injury.
I’m tired. I’m tired of not only the battles my kids face, but I’m tired of the general head-in-sand approach that otherwise well-meaning people take to the autism epidemic. I’m tired of the fact that when I say, point blank, that these kids’ bodies and minds are injured, not just created differently, I still get a baffled look.
I started working in a special needs program at a school this year. Why? The teachers asked me that, since you’d think burnout would be even higher when you deal with it at home and work.
My answer: I need to desensitize myself to the grief if I’m going to be of any assistance in stopping this tsunami of disability. And while I’m a writer and editor by professional training, the idea of going back to write for a company–whether writing technical manuals, corporate missives, or quippy things for social media–seems incredibly hollow. Might pay some bills, but every bit of me would absolutely hate it.
My education trained me for something. But life trained me for something else.
Autism is an injury.
I work with some wonderful kids whose families have been through some terrible darkness. And I’ve found that I know things, based on the journey we’ve taken, that even these families don’t know or accept as fact.
But it is a fact. And sometimes I look at these innocent and broken kids and wonder what they would have been like, had they not succumbed to the onslaught of injury that is plaguing almost every single child in this modern age, in some form or another.
We’re having some good conversations about the state of our children today. The After Babel substack is a phenomenal evaluation of the effect of social media and technology on kids. Abigail Shrier is out there, pointing out the obvious, that toxic therapy and permissive parenting are destroying the psyche of so many children.
And there are many others. But most seem to miss the main point. The elephant in the room.
And that’s the massive injury we’ve inflicted on these children.
Less permissive and helicopter-style parenting will help. Less electronics and no social media will help. But kids are falling prey to those easier than they should, but they are not starting with the physical armor they should have been born with and we should have fought to preserve.
Most are not.
And don’t get me started on the obvious overlap of trans-identifying children and autism. That topic alone makes me so angry, I want to move to the woods and never interact with another so-called intelligent person again.
Autism is an injury.
I went snowboarding a couple of weeks ago, for the first time in probably a decade. Many years of feeling physically destabilized–not only from having kids and the toll that takes, but the sheer darkness and trauma we live through on a regular basis–have made it so I haven’t taken any enjoyment in outdoor sports like I should have.
But as I flew down the mountain, giving an involuntary whoop of joy as I did, I remembered who I was and have always been.
I am here. You are here. We are not digital creatures who are hackable and moldable. We are God’s creatures.
Do not participate in the lies. Do not stick your head in the sand and assume someone will step up and do the right thing to stop this train. If COVID taught us anything, it’s that the criminals are in charge, and they are not interested in stopping this train.
Realize they may be doing it on purpose, and your lens will shift even further. Another topic for another day.
Autism is an injury.
Say it out loud and say it again.
No more lies.
Yes! I just learned so much about this from A Midwestern Doctor’s recent article on minimal brain damage from vaccines. He included a PDF of a book from decades ago that hypothesizes very believable mechanisms for how micro strokes cause autism, ADHD, and so many other ailments.