{"id":1378,"date":"2006-04-19T06:46:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-19T06:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2006\/04\/calling-franz-kafka\/"},"modified":"2006-04-19T06:46:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-19T06:46:00","slug":"calling-franz-kafka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/calling-franz-kafka\/","title":{"rendered":"Calling Franz Kafka"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A few friends have forwarded this link to me “Escape the Hopelessness,” from the National Autism Association<\/a>, and I feel the need to blog it myself. Frankly, it is ads like these that make me feel hopeless. Hopeless that this society will ever be able to get to a place where they accept difference and even learn from it. I, for one, do not want any of my children, autistic or not, to morph into something they are not. Especially not some kind of bug.<\/p>\n

Is autism treatable? Some say it is. But we have to be extremely careful that we are only treating difficult symptoms and not trying to alter who a person is inside. And sometimes, the symptoms are there because we lack the understanding, not the child. I remember when I finally let go of all my ABA training — I had been directed to make Nat file cards alphabetically to rechannel him whenever he laughed inappropriately — I discovered connection with Nat. In that split second that I did not reach for the file cards and instead, sat down on the couch and laughed with Nat, got as silly as he was, he looked at me, really looked at me, and soon his laughter died down naturally. In that moment everything shifted for me, and I realized that he truly is just a person, just a kid, with his own goofy way of doing things and it was up to me, the parent, to figure out how best to connect with him, rather than squelch the “inappropriate” without looking beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

I think the question should be “how can I help my child be the best he can be without giving him a message that he is somehow defective?”<\/p>\n

(Photo is Nat, caught “mid-flap” and doing silly talk while looking at his Lego swimming pool birthday cake)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few friends have forwarded this link to me “Escape the Hopelessness,” from the National Autism Association, and I feel the need to blog it myself. Frankly, it is ads like these that make me feel hopeless. Hopeless that this society will ever be able to get to a place where they accept difference and […]<\/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-1378","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-me","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378","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=1378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}