So the Internet is having another pile-on. This time, noted cranial-anal masturbation aficionado Michael Savage (I love that last name - much more macho than his real one: Weiner) has gone on record saying that:
Which is of course, stupid. But unlike the rest of the internet, I’m not terribly concerned. Sure, Mr. Weiner is ignorant, but ignorance is easily fixed: I could drop Jared off at his house and have him convinced that autism is a serious problem in a half hour. He’d probably be pissed that he had to pull his cell phone out of the toilet and expect me to pay to have his walls repainted, but he’d still have learned something from the experience.
And more importantly: Weiner is a troll. He thrives on attention. And the first rule you’re supposed to learn on the Internet is: don’t feed the trolls. The best way to shut them down is to stop listening.
But surprisingly, after reading many of the reactions to his diatribe, I find myself agreeing with part of what he says: I don’t like a lot of the parents of autistics either.
Oh, I don’t blame them for being bad parents. And I don’t think they did anything to cause their kids’ autism. But I am sick to death of hearing them whine. Let’s have an example: Steve Young wrote the following over at the Huffington Post:
There’s so much I wanted to say, not only to pound some actual knowledge into whatever [Weiner] uses for a brain, but also to defend those families who have been besieged by the heartbreak and hardship of living with someone, especially their children, with Autism.
I wondered how [Weiner] might feel if it were his child who was constantly being met with disapproving stares from strangers who recommend that “if your child can’t behave maybe you shouldn’t take him out in public.” And how he might feel if [he] knew that it is going to happen every single day.
But as I began to write a note to Savage, I realized that it would be more appropriate to have someone who knows full well the devastation felt of not only hearing the diagnosis of your child as autistic, but having to live through the day to day sadness, frustration and pain you feel when it hits you that your child may never have what most would consider a typical life.
Wow. Once again, we get to hear that the people suffering from autism are: the parents. It’s heartbreaking. It’s a hardship. They’re constantly met with disapproving stares! And that’s after they’ve been devastated by finding out that their child won’t have a “typical” life! Oh no! The poor dears!
Steve’s son Ryan, the parent of an autistic, continues:
What no parent of a special needs child wants is to be pre-judged or isolated and kept in the shadows so that people like you don’t have to look at a child with a disability.
More of the same, eh? (Although he’s admittedly less offensive than his dad.) Notice that he’s not complaining about the way people treat his daughter here - he’s upset at how people treat him. Never mind that autistics have been literally locked away in the shadows for most of human history: his metaphorical pain is the worst kind there is. When his daughter is freaking out in a store and so unnerved by her surroundings that all she can do is scream, he’s the one who deserves our sympathy.
This young man is just absolutely pissed that his daughter won’t live out the fantasy life that he’s created for her. These are the same kind of parents that force their kids into 5 different sports and 10 different activities because they want their child to be the soccer-playing concert pianist they never were. And now that they realize that - heaven forfend! - their kid is going to be whatever he or she wants to be instead of offering them the vicarious thrills they’ve always wanted, they’re distraught. You never hear this crap from other people with disabled kids, mostly because if, for instance, you have a kid with Downs Syndrome, you know the score from birth. It’s the fact that the parents of autistics get to spend 18 months planning out when little Suzie will leave her ballet class at some exclusive day care center to attend Juilliard that sets them on the path to crazy-town.
In order to cement the stupidity of it all, the post in question ends with a link to Autism Speaks. Of course.
So if you do call in to Mr. Weiner’s radio program, don’t waste your time telling him the facts about autism. He can learn that from Wikipedia. Tell him that you’re sick of hearing these parents whine. I know I am.
Today I was trying to talk to Jared about our plans to go see Wall-E (best movie ever - the Godfather sleeps with Luca Brasi), and he kept interrupting to ask when we were leaving. I wanted to explain that we were waiting to see when my special lady would arrive and would then go to whatever the next showing was, but Jared just could not stop interrupting. So, in my frustration, I did something dumb: I spoke Jared-ese.
Jared has his own way of talking sometimes and it’s important to model good speech patterns for him. So I often say things back to him with little corrections: “She bringed it.” “She brought it.” You get the point. But his other habit is that he has little routines for how he discusses things that disappoint him. And it’s an even worse idea to encourage that. But I was frustrated, and just couldn’t help myself. So as he’s interrupting to say, “When are we going to the movie?” I started quickly asking, “Can’t I talk about the plan? Is the plan cancelled? Is the plan over? Is the plan ruined? Do you want to ruin the plan? Are we done with the plan? Why can’t we have the plan?”
And he totally caved. “What’s the plan?”
That’s just going to make it more tempting next time. Bad, bad daddy.
So while things have been pretty shitty for me, I realized that I’m making things shitty for the rest of you by not sharing what’s going on with Jared. Here’s a small update, as we slowly creep back to a more normal posting schedule:
Jared decided back in December that he wanted to go see the Bee Movie, and he was really determined to go, so I took him. And surprise of surprises, he was really good! So I also took him to Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Water Horse. Then a few weeks ago, he announced that he wanted to go to see Veggie Tales: The Pirates that Don’t Do Anything, and I had a bad feeling. I thought I remembered that their shows were of a religious nature, and, as you all know, I’m concerned about bringing too many abstractions into Jared’s life. But the commercials didn’t seem religious, so we went.
Luckily, it wasn’t religious. There were some undercurrents, but not very different than the typical “do the right thing” message of most children’s programming. When we went shopping for Jared’s birthday, he stood and stared at a trio of Veggie Tales movies, and really seemed to want them. Now, with the situation being the way it is, I had to take Jared and Sierra out with me, and then dodge and weave around to get his presents while he was looking the other way, and I didn’t have a chance to really check out these movies. Big mistake.
One is about temptation. Okay, fine. One is about The Wizard of Oz (on the surface). And the last is a pretty straight-forward retelling of Exodus with vegetables. Fine. But Jared’s favorite part of any DVD is the bonus material, and Jared found all of the easter eggs on his own pretty quickly. He watched all the behind the scenes shorts, and sat through all the previews.
So I was a little tweaked, but not exactly surprised when this exchange came up:
Jared: I can’t get bologna on my own.
Me: Sure you can, Jared. It’s not the world’s healthiest snack, but it’s a lot better than some of the junk out there. You’re allowed to have some bologna, just not too much.
Jared: No. I can only do it with God.
Sigh. I tried to convince him that the message the show was giving him wasn’t about getting snacks, but I didn’t make a lot of headway. And this was the sort of thing I was concerned with: Jared getting messages about religion that he really can’t understand at this point in his life. I mean, Jared is a reading whiz and a math genius, but metaphor and allegory are pretty much beyond him.
Or so I thought.
Tonight I read Jared one of my favorite children’s books. Usually he reads to me at bedtime as part of his homework, but on long weekends, I love getting a chance to read to him. It’s a whole production: voices, hand gestures, lunging around the bed for dramatic effect. I’m sure you can imagine. So I get done reading Where the Wild Things Are, and Jared looks at me and says, “Oh, it’s a prodigal son story.”
Don’t I feel silly.