{"id":1398,"date":"2006-03-29T05:51:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-29T05:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2006\/03\/letting-go-or-giving-up\/"},"modified":"2006-03-29T05:51:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-29T05:51:00","slug":"letting-go-or-giving-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2006\/03\/letting-go-or-giving-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Letting Go — Or Giving Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joy of Autism has posted a particularly beautiful passage<\/a>, about her understanding of autism as another way of being, rather than something to be cured.<\/p>\n

When Adam was first diagnosed, I was confronted by one type of \u201cscientifically proven therapy.\u201d I joined an organization that funded research in support of a cure because I believed, at first, that autism was an illness that masked my son\u2019s true potential. At least that was how autism was presented to Henry and I. Once we enter the \u201cstream of autism,\u201d as parents, there is little choice to believe these messages as sole choices in a culture that does not accept acceptance for people who are different.<\/p>\n

I hired therapists who viewed Adam as a pathology and that didn\u2019t feel right. After two months of being in \u201cthe autism stream,\u201d I decided that something was horribly wrong with this view. It took a while to trust myself…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This resonated with me and made me remember how I felt when I read Sean and Judy Barron’s There’s A Boy in Here.<\/span><\/a> I am not referring to the alleged “recovery” of Sean Barron. Be that as it may, what moved me is the part where Judy, a mother in the ’60’s with a young autistic child, rejects the current thinking of her day<\/a>, that said that the mother caused the autism, this was a magical moment for me. Such liberation, such bravery! To be able to say to an entire establishment, “You are all wrong.” It is a lonely, but completely empowering, path to take.<\/p>\n

And it is a scary path to take. To go against the system in one way or another is very frightening.<\/p>\n

Last night I attended a meeting of a group of young parents whose children are very young and have ASD. These parents are now trying to organize and get our town to provide better supports to include their children in typical classrooms, much as I tried to do with the parents of Nat’s peers eight years ago, which led to my running for School Committee.<\/p>\n

All of these parents were very knowledgeable about autism approaches, about the various components of education that their children require to learn best. They all had the common trait of being certain that, given this powerful combination of services, their children would continue to thrive in public school settings. I still believe that. Our town has never put together the right combination for Nat to thrive here, so he has always been in private, mostly autistic-oriented placements. I am a believer in public school, so I have had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, Nat has had a lot of the attention he requires to learn. On the other hand, he is lost to our community.<\/p>\n

Nat did not have effective intervention until he was five. And then, after years of an inconsistent, spotty record of school placements (we were continually dissatisfied with his education), he wound up where he is now, a private, prevocational school for autistic people. I will always wonder if he would be higher functioning if I had followed my instincts and gotten him evaluated and helped much earlier, like so many of these new parents I know. If the schools had done right by him, if I had found his medication earlier, if I had kept up the pressure and made sure he had adequate speech\/language therapy all the way through, if, if, if…<\/p>\n

Would he be higher functioning, (I hate that term, but I can’t help but feel that I wish he could talk more, so that he could learn more about the world, and we could learn more about him, and he could be independent) if I had known what to push for sooner? Even though I have the courage to think differently, I don’t always hold onto it. Even though Judy Barron’s attitude empowered me so many years ago, I did not understand fully what Nat needed until years later. I did not even really understand how to connect with him until later. How do all these younger parents know so much, earlier? Why couldn’t I have had as much clarity sooner? Would it have made the difference in Nat’s life?<\/p>\n

I was both moved and lonely at last night’s meeting. I was cheering them on, helping in any way I could, but on the other hand, the following question kept swimming around in my head: <\/span><\/p>\n

By no longer being this angry, have I given up on Nat?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is there more I should be doing? Is my “peace” with autism just another form of healthy letting go and coming to terms, or is it giving up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joy of Autism has posted a particularly beautiful passage, about her understanding of autism as another way of being, rather than something to be cured. When Adam was first diagnosed, I was confronted by one type of \u201cscientifically proven therapy.\u201d I joined an organization that funded research in support of a cure because I believed, […]<\/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-1398","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-my","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398","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=1398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}