In my last posting I write about a common response on the part of parents to the discovery that their child is autistic. This response is to regard the discovery as a tragedy - where all their dreams, all their hopes evaporate. I ended by saying that I am going to come at the topic of hope and autism from a rather different angle - and the promised topic of the next blog posting may well have suggested some of what this direction might entail: “Every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence”
But, before I get to that posting, I would like to share a response I've had to the previous one, quoted with the author's permission
…my partner was just diagnosed with ASD and his parents were no help at all during his assessment because they refused to accept that the child THEY raised could be autistic. You are absolutely right that to a parent having an autistic child can be seen as either their fault or a tragedy.
We suspect that our three year old may also be slightly autistic but whenever you tell a neurotypical person this may be the case all you get it “I’m so sorry.” To us, it’s not a tragedy.”
Autism: 'it's not a tragedy." This strikes me as an ideal way to think about autism - a thought for the day even, for today, the first day of Autism Awareness Week!
Thank you Dani!
Next time... actually this time! “Every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter, every aspect of existence”
And the blame/attribution has certain historical; social; cultural resonances.
ReplyDeleteFor instance in a Franco-Belgian space it is very different from an Anglophone space and I imagine in Poland it would be different again. Fortunately we are in 2020. And not wanting to drop into this "product of my time"/"my upbringing" argument - to situate too narrowly.
"Slightly" might be a guard up and they might be "Hmm, that's intriguing" or "hmmm, could be"?
And then the whole experience/essence/existence thing.
Yes - lots of people put up lots of barriers.
And the way we think of tragedy as a consequence of what someone did or their relations to history and to dialectic.
And how it defies or defeats the Comic Plot [Thomas Couser - a Disability Studies litcrit theorist].
A silly thing to be in the position of telling people not to dream or that they don't need to dream.
I have been thinking of the Animal-Groom plot of fairytales and the Jinn and the Fisherman and this three-year-old boy who didn't speak for two weeks after his parents were abroad. That is from THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT.
Also Babette and her Poetry of Science and Music which is where I was last week [the 30th March].
"here a crosswalk everywhere a crosswalk there a crosswalk".
Another point-thought about tragedy
ReplyDeletewe often speak of the bloodless variety; the kind in which we don't see that people are hurt...
And that whole tragedy - "this is serious"; "there are stakes/consequences".
It has a way of making people fear and act.
Fear being a big motivator.
And then I did read about the man learning to fear and shiver in the marital bed situation.
My friend Ann Magill talked about the Boy Who Learnt to Fear and we wondered if maybe this was a fairy tale representation of Autistic responses and reactions.