[From 7/15/08, about recurrent stories in the media regarding the mistreatment of autistic children.]To the editor:
The other day, a small news item reported that a four-year-old girl with autism had been thrown out of a Jackson, South Carolina, restaurant—by the police chief—for being too loud. Not for throwing a fit. Just for being a little loud.
The same thing happened a few days earlier in Edmonton, Alberta.
Then there was the story about the child with autism being removed from a commercial airliner.
And let’s not forget the priest in Minnesota who filed a restraining order against an autistic boy, barring him from attending Mass. Or the kindergarten teacher in Florida who allowed her students to vote a 5-year-old autistic classmate out of his class.
If you don’t have a child with autism, or one who’s recovering from it (like I do), you probably didn’t notice these stories. Or maybe you thought, “Good. Served those bratty kids and their parents right.”
Well, raising a child with autism is tough. About 80% of families with autistic kids split up. It’s also isolating. You lose touch with many old friends. Insurance companies don’t cover most of your child’s therapies, and most doctors don’t seem to know the first thing about how to help you.
In addition to all that, when the basic institutions of society—schools, businesses, even churches—tell you that your kid isn’t wanted around, it’s like being punk-slapped over and over and over again.
Apparently, our kids are a huge problem for people who possess such delicate sensibilities that hearing a disabled child cry ruins their day.
Maybe you think it couldn’t happen to you or yours, but with revised figures of as many as 1 in 67 first-grade children currently diagnosed with autism (based on Department of Education statistics) and 1 in 6 diagnosed with some kind of developmental, learning, or behavioral disability (CDC statistics)—you’d better not be so sure.
Does our presence make you uncomfortable? Too bad. Unfortunately—tragically—there are about a million families just like mine, and more every day. We’re not going away, and we have rights too. And we have long memories. We won’t forget who treated our children well, or who hurt them or turned them away.
