Joyful Beach Stompies is not joyful for everyone…<\/p>\n
Not only do I have to get my skin tan, I also have to get it thickened. Although I know in my mind what it is like being with Nat on a crowded beach, I had forgotten how the experience feels. I want to enjoy this week with him in Cape Cod, our favorite place, but other people sometimes prevent that.<\/p>\n
We all know it is not polite to stare. Then why do we all do it? Why do parents not even notice their kids being knuckleheads and pointing and giggling at the tall thin young man speaking in an unknown language, stomping hard and chanting, bent over and laughing, somewhat like Rumpelstilskin?<\/p>\n
Why is it sometimes the parents themselves who are guilty? How is it that one in 150 people are somewhere on the autism spectrum, and yet so few of the people on our beach recognize it?<\/p>\n
Maybe they’re scared that Nat will somehow hurt them or do something horrifying. I don’t know how to reassure them. Today I tried just plain asserting the truth. Two women, a daughter and her mom I believe, where doing the looking, staring, whispering, looking again, meaningful\/idiotic shared stare. So I went up to them and I said, “It’s just autism. Don’t worry.”
They looked annoyed at me. Was I wrong to assume what they had been up to? At very least they should not have been staring at Nat so frequently.<\/p>\n
I had forgotten how torn my attention could be at the beach, between enjoying myself with my boys, and noticing people staring at Nat doing his Stompies. Why can’t people just deal with it?<\/p>\n
Because it is quite a thing to see. I know that. Yes, it is how he expresses joy, but it is so intrusive to everyone else. He walks in a large circuit, painfully close to other people’s blankets. He waves his fists and yells out his stuff. No one else is doing that. All I can do is tell him to do it more quietly, and tell the others to stop looking. I have to be the Policeman of the Beach. And all I want to do is have sun. With son(s).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joyful Beach Stompies is not joyful for everyone… Not only do I have to get my skin tan, I also have to get it thickened. Although I know in my mind what it is like being with Nat on a crowded beach, I had forgotten how the experience feels. I want to enjoy this week […]<\/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-160","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-2A","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","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=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}