Okay: I appreciate your confusion, and I apologise for expressing my frustration so forcefully. But given as I'm working on the assumption that we're both neuro-typical (non-autistic) and therefore have no problem with creative empathy, I'm going to ask you to put yourself in my shoes, here.
I grew up with a clever, kind, desperately confused older sibling. At Honeywell Primary School in the late 1970s, he was told to get undressed for PE and to join the teacher in the hall. He did exactly as asked, and strolled in naked, eager for his first lesson. The teacher then ruthlessly mocked this four year old for doing precisely what he'd been asked, and encouraged the other dozens of children there, all of whom understood the implied meaning of her request, into mocking him just as remorselessly. This was his time at the school, with the sole exception of an amazing special needs teacher in the attics who cherished him, understood him... and told my mother to move him elsewhere. The rest of the staff spent their time implying it was because she was a working, single parent, and he'd be fine when she remarried (Mrs Mallyean, the head, was an exception, and also brilliant).
My brother left school with no qualifications at all. When diagnosed, in his 20s, he started getting intensive help - he now has an excellent job in IT, having had his co-morbid dyslexia diagnosed, and having had his exceptionally high IQ very belatedly assessed. But his childhood years were hell, and as his stress levels in school rose, so were our lives at home - autistic children are prone to masking, or to pretending they are okay in school to evade attention, before going ballistic at home in an attempt to let out all the confusion, rage and over stimulation.
Autistic children, well managed, generally don't behave aggressively or in a way that is impossible to manage. But to manage them well, you need to
understand them. This takes research, guidance, and experience. I've read a huge number of reputable books on the subject. I've gone on several courses. And I have lived with autism all my life - quite literally, as my brother is two years older than I am. I know that this is how he, and my son, experience the physical world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr4_dOorquQ
I have to adjust our lives and adapt our habits so my son can fully participate in life - family life, and the wider world. My brother has to adjust his own. It's lifelong, and it's complex, but it's perfectly doable. And it varies - on a good day, he can manage all sorts of places. On a bad, he can't manage at all. We have to be flexible - ironic, as flexibility is something that, by diagnosis, he can't manage. But once you start to understand autism - that your child experiences the world far more vividly than you do, and in every area, you start to adapt. You buy special clothing so he isn't endlessly uncomfortable. You learn what diet he can manage, and you carry fruit flavoured chewing gum so he can have a stress release in the chewing. You avoid crowded places, and you recognise that an outing may need to be curtailed, and that's okay. You just accept that you will have almost no sleep for the forseeable future. And you plan, plan, plan. And all of that is okay, because your kid is fabulous, and worth it a million times over.
Parents who are desperate and scared and have a new diagnosis will find clinics like that this charlatan ran, and pay a lot of money for their children to be at best not helped at all, and at worst actively harmed.
Imagine what it is like, as a parent of an autistic child, to read that article. Imagine what it is like to know that other autistic children are having their lives put at risk by some man out to make money from them, to hell with their welfare. And then imagine reading a comment by someone who really knows nothing about autism and has almost no exposure other than a friend with a child, busily recommending some random book, from that zero knowledge base. Then imagine that you get that all. the. time.
You know what it's like to be catcalled in the street as a young woman? How it happens all the time, from men who can't understand why you are so rude in response, when they mean it nicely, and what's your problem, anyway? It's the assumption that their opinion of you has value, and it's the fact it happens all the bloody time. That is what these book recommendations and well-meant comments amount to. You have no idea, how much research all the autistic children's parents I know do. We do not need a recommendation of this nature. Yet we get them ALL THE TIME. It's irritating to the point we joke about it amongst ourselves - that and the inspirational quotes. If I see one more card with a rainbow and a thing about life being about learning to dance in the rain I'm going to write back asking for cash to visit Niagara Falls for practice.
i appreciate you meant well. Honestly, I do. But with autism, education and understanding amongst the public is a huge help, and this sort of book, focused on the parents and written as a feelgood mood boost, isn't achieving that. Autism isn't about the parents, and the hijacking of the autism conversation by parents, and in their interests, is really against the interests of autistic people more widely. The terror of having an autistic child is such that many people would rather risk measles - imagine how that feels, to autistic adults? That they are that unacceptable, and have that little to offer the world, which is in my experience so wholly untrue? To know that people will risk paying a fortune to some crook to have their children's very lives risked, instead of accepting their autism as who they are, and working with it, and with the child they are gifted to have?
Reading that news story was sickening, and distressing, and your sole response was, "if anyone has an autistic child, this book is marvellous!" It felt rather as though someone heard a kid was in intensive care, and piped up to recommend this amazing brand of plaster. The problem with this story wasn't the fact that some kids are autistic. It's that some crooks would risk their lives to exploit the fear of their parents. And genuine, responsible education helps with that - a lot more than a disability edition of the inspirational paperback.
Rebecca, my son is in some ways disabled, but in many others his autism is indeed a gift: I agree with you, and with John Elder Robison. If Autism Speaks have their way, and autism is eliminated as a neurotype, we would all be the poorer.
