Has autism touched your life?

[jongibbs]

Some other time, some other place, and things would be different, maybe.
You might even know my name. You might even love me.
But if you'd let me share your world, I promise I could make things right.
So won't you let me share your world?
Won't you let me in?

I wrote those lyrics in 1998. Back then, my 3-yr-old twin daughters lived in their own

Comments

[msstacy13]

Well, yeah, I suppose there's no such thing as a normal life in America...
:)

Robin Williams talked about the two dreams parents have;
one ends with,
"I'd like to thank the members of the Nobel Prize Committee..."
and the other with,
"Would you like fries with that?"

Not that I'm complaining, mind you,
with dreams at once much smaller yet somehow more profound,
lost between the Nobel Prize and fries.

[jongibbs]

I'd be delighted if my girls developed enough to be able to work in a fast food store.

[msstacy13]

Yeah, I know the feeling...

[snapes_angel]

Why not both?

"Yes, I'll have that Nobel prize. The one in the case there. A little to the left...yes. Now, can I get fries with that? Thank you so much!"

[snapes_angel]

Has autism not touched everyone's lives, in one or another form? I knew two deaf boys once, sat side-by-side on the bus. One was autistic, would rock back and forth in his seat at times, oblivious to the world around him, the other was vibrant, babbling on about things, curious about the world. No, I understood not a word of what he said, he was still well entrenched in the being educated part of the system, but you knew he would, eventually. There was quite a noticeable difference between the two.

Autism itself runs the gamut. There is mild, and not-so-mild. I'm not saying I understand a lot about it, and if I did, that would be an outright lie: but yes, what we want is for our children to be happy.

[jongibbs]

what we want is for our children to be happy.
Amen to that :)

[jongibbs]

Statistics say that 1 in 150 births will bring forth an autistic child...mostly boys

We were told that the odds of having non-identical twin girls who were both autistic was so unlikely, we should have done the lottery :)

[jongibbs]

We're still hoping for a miracle cure, so that when we're 90 we can go and live with them and exact our revenge :)

[asakiyume]

Your post touched me, for one thing. You seem like a loving father. Your cheerfulness and good temper are a blessing.

My only experiences with people with autism are occasional conversations. Once, on a snowy hill, on a cold day, it was my kids and this other family and their kids and one of the boys was autistic (the mother told me afterward). I talked with him--it was like wandering in a foreign country; I felt honored that he did decide to talk to me.

A neighbor girl has some sort of mental challenge that may be autism, or may be something else. I've known her from small childhood. She talks without any affect, but some things make her very happy and some things upset her terribly. Her mind seems to get stuck on some things, and she'll go round about them in talking, round and round. She seems to like me, and I like her a whole lot. She always asks after my youngest son, who's a few years younger than she is, and who played with her a few times when they were both very little.

[jongibbs]

I've met hundreds of children who are somewhere on the autistic spectrum, and I can honestly say I've never seen two that act exactly the same way - in that respect, I'd say they're just like regular folks :)

[cyn2write]

I've known several close friends dealing with autism in their children, and I think nowadays all parents go through a fear of hearing that diagnosis, since it is so prevalent, when it wasn't so years ago. When I get comfortable enough with them, I always ask what they believe caused their child's autism, because I've never seen a condition, other than cancer, that is so widespread and yet so mysterious as to the cause. As you probably know, I've received a thousand different answers. NJ is the best place to live if you have an autistic child because 1 in 70 children there is diagnosed with it, and therefore they have more resources. However, being from New Jersey and having children recently, I know that all new parents here are hypervigilant of the signs and symptoms and constantly live in watch and fear of it. But until we know the cause, there really is nothing we can do, other than what you're doing, and what all good parents do... giving the best we can to our children, to help them be the happiest and best people they can be.

[jongibbs]

We made a conscious effort not to think about the cause (since it's not going to change anything), but I know some folks drive themselves to distraction trying to figure out if it was because of something they did or didn't do, or something that happened etc.