Accepting Autism.

I guess I will start this off my telling a little about my story.  I'm a thirty something married mom of one little boy, who happens to be on the autism spectrum.   My son developed like most babies.  What I  at first thought was colic lasted the entire first two years of his life.  He screamed.  A lot.  He hated to be put down.  Contrary to popular belief, not all autistic people shun touches and hugs.  If I wasn't rocking with him or swaddling him tightly, he was screaming.   One night, when he was about a year old, I came home from work and he was sitting on the floor with his dad.  He was tearing apart a newspaper and meticulously putting the pieces back together again, like a puzzle.   We all said he was a genius!  He'd do things like that for hours, obsessively.
At two, he still didn't talk.  His doctor suggested speech therapy.  That's when I first heard the words "autism".  He walked into the speech therapists office and lined up all of the blocks, end to end by color.   I was concerned, but because he progressed so fast in speech therapy, the therapist never mentioned it again and I tried to forget it.   We did sign language the first few months, and by the time he was three, he was able to say a few words and sentences.  He was still behind his peers, but we weren't concerned too much.  He was an only child and didn't attend preschool.  His dad and I were not social butterflies ourselves either, so we just assumed he was a thinker.  Shortly before his third birthday, we were at an art supply store.  My husband was pushing him in the cart and I left to find some things.  I waved to my son and disappeared.  He started yelling "Aisle 7!  Aisle 7!"  His dad was not sure where he heard that until he realized that I had waved to our son  under a giant sign that read "Aisle 7".  That's when we realized that he could read.   We came home that day and tested our theory by giving him books and pointing to words.  He read everything we put in front of him.  More proof that our son was a genius!
It was around that time that my husband's mother watched an episode of "Oprah" about autism.  She asked me if I thought that he had autism.  My prior experience with autism was working at a school with children who had various severe developmental and intellectual disabilities.   The kids I knew were not like my son at all.   He could read!  He could talk now!  He was just so smart, that was why he was different.   I think I knew then that she was right, but I couldn't admit it to anyone else.
Meanwhile, my son was having increasingly atypical behaviors.  He screamed all the time.  In a store, he would melt down every time.  One of us had to stay in the car while the other one shopped.  Every change in routine was agonizing for him.  Noises terrified him.  He would hit his head into the wall repeatedly.  If we drove to his grandparent's house, we had to take the same route every single time or he'd panic.   He had pretty bad echolalia.  He confused words all the time.  He wouldn't play with other children.   I was starting to get really scared.
 I started to read about autism.  I read all the scary stuff.  All the crazy theories about cures and vaccines.  Fortunately, I'm a big lover of science so I quickly disregarded all of that.  I started to read about autism from blogs like wrongplanet.net (a message board for people on the spectrum).  I read books by autistic people like Temple Grandin and John Elder Robison, and every clinical book on autism that I could find at the library.   I knew that my son was autistic.  I asked his doctor and she said he seemed fine, but  maybe we needed parenting classes.   I asked her again on another visit, and she said that his dad and I should probably take those parenting classes.  She gave us some information on different seminars and classes.  That's when I did something bad.  I provoked him into a melt down.  He was four, and still in diapers.  He was terrified of the potty.  I knew that asking him to use the potty at the doctors would make him melt down.  I wanted her to see what we saw.
Casually, I mentioned to my son that we should try to go potty.  He screamed.  His scream is not a normal scream.  It is incredibly high pitched.  My dog has started to cry and run away listening to that scream.  Then he threw himself on the floor and started kicking and hitting his head.  I picked him up so that he wouldn't hurt his head on the exam table.  He started to head butt me until I put him down away from the table.  The doctor's jaw DROPPED.  She FINALLY listened to us and gave us the referral to a behaviorist, who suggested he had SPD (sensory processing disorder) and autism.  With that we got a referral to an occupational therapist who confirmed the SPD and recommended we take him to a developmental pediatrician or psychiatrist to have him evaluated for autism.   After over a year on a waiting list to be evaluated, my son was finally given the diagnosis of autism this past summer, shortly after he turned six. 
It has been a long journey, and I know it's just the beginning.  I was so afraid of autism at first.  I was terrified for my son and his future.  Slowly, I started to realize that it's not a death sentence.  Is it harder to raise a child on the spectrum?  I don't know.  He's my only child and so far, raising him, even with all the challenges, has been the best experience of my life.  I think that after my initial fears, when I came to acceptance, I fell in love with my son even more.  He is an amazing child.  I love his beautiful autistic mind.   It has made him so quirky, and funny and sharp.  It has made him the wonderful little boy that I love so much.   Of course, I still worry about things like who will take care of him when we are gone?  What will his future be like?  Will he have a job, go to college, get married, have kids?
I don't know.  Life is never certain for any of us.  All I can do is try to focus on what we can do now and hope that with the right supports and interventions, he can reach his full potential and have a happy life.     
Do we still have setbacks and issues?  Of course.  It's not always easy, but it's always worth it.  I had to quit working to be at home with him.  Financially, it's really hard but I can't imagine not being here for him.  There are a lot of things put on hold indefinitely, but those things are not as important as my son.  I've come to accept the fact that my son is a little different and it's not only okay, I wouldn't want him any other way.   I truly mean that.  If someone could take away my son's autism I wouldn't want them to.  He is perfect just the way he is.  I want him to grow up knowing that. 
I wanted to call my blog "Accepting Autism" because so many times, we parent's don't.  We chase "cures" and are often victims of those who take advantage of our desperation with pseudo science and false hope.   I hate hearing about desperate parents who deplete their entire savings to cure a child who at the end of the day, will always be autistic.   That is not to say I don't believe in therapy.  I'm all about proven therapies and interventions.  Because people with autism have a very real disability and unlike a lot of disabilities, it's not always apparent to the outside world at first glance.  I'm a strong proponent of neurodiversity and disability rights.  I don't think my son is "broken".   He just needs to learn a lot of things that come naturally to most people.  He works so hard every day to function in a world that is very hostile to him.   I think the purpose of this blog is to educate people about diversity so that the world will be a little kinder to my son and people like him.  I know that he's different, not less.  I'm just waiting for everyone else to get on board with that.