{"id":1061,"date":"2007-01-16T07:17:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-16T07:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2007\/01\/balance-in-all-things\/"},"modified":"2007-01-16T07:17:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-16T07:17:00","slug":"balance-in-all-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/balance-in-all-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Balance in all things"},"content":{"rendered":"

MOM NOS mentioned<\/a> a resurgence of activity on her blog because of an old post about the film Autism Everyday<\/span><\/a>, which was aired at the Sundance Film Festival. She mentions all the fiery comments she is getting from it, and discusses the issue of difficult comments. Just to be clear, I have no problem with controversial comments. My issue is with personal insults<\/span>, comments about my person, my body, my face, etc., meant to hurt my feelings. Sure, I can be all Eleanor Roosevelt <\/a>about things and say that I am not willing to be hurt, but let’s face it, I do get hurt sometimes. We all do.<\/p>\n

And yet I have re enabled the comments, with Ned’s help, making it so that you must sign into your blogger account. No anonymous allowed. We’ll see if that does the trick. I doubt it, but MOM NOS is right to point out that a blog can feel lifeless without them. I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater just because one piece of crap was floating in it. Balance, baby, balance.<\/p>\n

Similarly, with raising a difficult child, you might feel tempted to see the entire experience as negative, to simply want to fight and destroy, when it is actually far more complex than that. We need to improve our children’s lives, no question. We need to fight for them and break our backs trying to help them learn and function in this world. <\/p>\n

But — there is negative that allows you to better take in the positive. There is negative from which we learn and our experience of life deepens. From pain there can be great growth. And so, controversy and pain in our lives teaches us things, makes us think, makes us grow. I speak from experience, as a parent who has been attacked by my autistic child over the years, as a parent who has experienced destruction at his hands, mess, smearing, and then the reactions of others: ridicule, ostracism, expulsion.<\/p>\n

But — that is not what my or Nat’s life is about. You can’t say that you hate the experience of food just because you hate the shit that comes from it, excuse my language. You can’t stop baking, cooking, and eating just because — you get my point. I take issue with the Autism Everyday <\/span>phenomenon, by which I mean emphasizing the difficult and horrible of something in order to gain attention for an otherwise positive cause. Just as I take issue with the nasty, ad hominem blog comment, from which I cannot learn, and which is all about dragging me through the mud. They are not what my blog is about.<\/p>\n

I do believe it is positive to want to research autism and figure out how best to ameliorate the difficulties that come with being wired differently. I do wish that Nat had it easier, and that we did, too. If you have a kid who hits you and others, for whatever reason, it makes your life more difficult. That is the truth. But what you do with that, both mentally and outwardly is the bigger point. The problem with Autism Everyday<\/span> is that the overall message is a negative one, which reaches its nadir by having a mother talk about how she has fantasized about killing herself and her autistic child (going over a bridge with her), so driven is she by this despair. And, she doesn’t kill herself because of her other, neurotypical child. Not for any other reason, such as love for her autistic child. It is as if she has given up on that child. She does not talk about what has worked to make her life easier at other times, she does not talk about educational approaches that have helped her autistic child, or therapy that could help her or her child. She only talks about how bad it is. There is no balance, nothing to learn, no way to see growth. And that is what is wrong with that film, because they are purporting to speak for autism parents. <\/p>\n

Despairing is quite normal with any challenge in life. Despairing to the point of wondering about suicide, even. Ugly thoughts are a normal part of the human existence, for anybody. But it is very different to make that into the overall flavor of life with autism. It is heinous to emphasize and legitimize murderous thoughts, implications of a child’s worthlessness, even if it is to raise money or awareness. That is blood money, in my opinion. That is not the way to do it. Honesty is good, going over a bridge is not. We need balance to get at the richness and complexity of life with autism or any other challenge\/difference, not histrionics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MOM NOS mentioned a resurgence of activity on her blog because of an old post about the film Autism Everyday, which was aired at the Sundance Film Festival. She mentions all the fiery comments she is getting from it, and discusses the issue of difficult comments. Just to be clear, I have no problem with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-h7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}