Would you believe your own child?

chavisory posts Would you believe your own child? on Chavisory's Notebook

For Autistics Speaking Day this year, I actually have a question for parents.

If you’re the parent of an autistic kid, and you have ever told an autistic adult (or are still in the habit of doing so), “If my child could speak or write like you, I would consider them cured…” or anything along those lines…

What if they could?

What if some form of treatment or therapy, that currently exists or that might yet be developed, works, and your autistic child gains the ability to share their thoughts in speech or writing?

And what if they said to you, “But I’m not cured.”

What if they said “I am working so hard, in ways I don’t even know how to explain to you.”

“I am so tired.”

“This is draining all of my cognitive and internal resources and I don’t know how long I can actually keep it up.”

“Maybe this looks easy to you, but it feels like my brain is swimming in molasses or doing complicated gymnastics to me.”

“Yes, I can talk, but you’re still speaking a foreign language and every time I answer you I’m carrying out a multistep process of translation and back-translation.”

“I was a real person this whole time. I heard every word you said.”

“I’m actually engaging in this act of elaborate fakery which makes me exhausted in order to make you happy because apparently that’s the only way I get to have rights or choices.”

(Or just because it hurts for you to be so unhappy with me all the time.)

“Sometimes being autistic is hard but sometimes it’s wonderful. I don’t need to be changed as much as I need other people to respect that I exist in the world differently.”

Would you believe them?

Or would you say “No, you’re cured! You’re not autistic anymore.”

Or “That’s great for you, but some people are really disabled.”

Or “You must be very high-functioning.”

“But some autistic people can’t communicate at all.”

“Not everyone is like you.”

“What gives you the right to speak for all autistic people?”

Is that what you would say to your child, if they were to gain an ability you say you dearly wish they could, if they were able to illuminate for you some aspect of why things are difficult for them in the ways that they are?

Would you treat them the way you treat other autistic people who’ve committed the sin of being even slightly articulate on the internet, and saying things like “I think we all deserve acceptance, I think our needs deserve respect, I think we all deserve not to have to live in institutions, I don’t regret my life the way it is?”

We often say that the way you treat autistic adults now is how you’re teaching other people to treat your child when they’re older.

You’re also telling your child how you’d treat them if, heaven forbid, they actually accomplished what you say you want.

And if that’s not how you would talk to your kid if they could speak or type, if they could translate their thoughts and wishes and experiences of the world to you…

Then why is that the way you talk to autistic adults you’re so convinced don’t have anything in common with your child now?

A few years ago, Maxfield Sparrow asked, in a post for We Are Like Your Child, “Do you believe in your children?”

My question is… Would you even believe your child? If they said the kinds of things you say you wish they could say?