Stigmas and "Ass-burgers"

We all know about the weird kid. The one you don't want to be grouped with in class. The one you steer clear of in the hallway. I know because I avoided them too. I never bullied them but I never befriended them, either. They were not like me. Passive niceness? Guilty.

Perhaps my lesson in life is that now I am the parent. After diagnosis, I told my immediate family and close friends but asked that they not spread the word around. I naively thought that with therapy, M would be "cured". I am guilty of buying into that Autism stigma. After all, the only autistic person we all really knew is Rainman (Dustin Hoffman nailed it perfectly- I can say- something that has not been achieved before or since). We fear what we don't know. I cringe at "cured" now. Recovered, rehab'ed, remission, whatever you call it. M has a good prognosis because he is on the high function end of the spectrum. With adequate therapy he may be indistinguishable from his peers. He may be able to function independently in society. But he will always have autism. And I learned that's okay. We love him just for being M.
Knowing that doesn't make me stop worrying about M being the weird kid. The "ass burger",as some kids with the highest functioning Asperger's Syndrome, are labeled by classmates. Some may argue that people with ASD don't want or need friends because they are in their own world. Not true. His world may smell, taste, sound, and feel different but he still wants friends... he just doesn't know how.
Thankfully, M was born into an age of information and acceptance. I just need to change my knee-jerk response that he will be bullied or isolated. What M lacks in social skills, he has in aura. One student teacher who had worked with him for a semester said this about him, "M has something special about him that I can't describe. He has this insane ability to draw people in." I think it's also important to note that he is incredibly adorable which may be a big part of this ability, but hey, it's a good thing he has that on his side!
What's more, children have a great capacity to accept people that are different and learn about the things they don't understand. It's only as we enter into adulthood that we become rigid in our beliefs. Children that are incredibly cruel are usually cruel because of the prejudices and biases placed upon them by their parents.

Autism may not be the cause du jour, but I aim to make it one day. It's not scary, just different. Find out why.
http://www.goodfriendinc.com/

I'll leave you with some names of people you know who may have been diagnosed with ASD under current diagnostic standards. (DISCLAIMER- I, under no circumstances, am diagnosing these people with ASD, only sharing that some behaviors and traits they exhibit COULD POSSIBLY place them on the spectrum had they been evaluated under current standards.)

Daryl Hannah, Woody Allen, Leonardo DaVinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Courtney Love (actually had a documented borderline diagnosis at age 3), Virginia Woolf, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Steven Speilberg and Jeffrey Dahmer.