When people find out I wrote a book about parenting kids with autism, I am sometimes presented with a version of the following:
“The idea of ‘treating’ autism is offensive to me. Neurodiversity is something to be celebrated, not something to be cured.”
It’s a well-meaning sentiment, and I would certainly never suggest that, say, an analytical worldview, or a preferred style of communication, or even a tendency toward hyperfixation should be corrected. I am happy to possess all of these traits myself.
But it’s an undeniable reality that the people who like to talk about neurodiversity are always at the extremely high-functioning end of the spectrum (the first bit of evidence being that they’re talking at all.) And they don’t usually have any first-hand knowledge of the more extreme forms that autism can take, or what a friend of mine once called “capital-A Autism.” That’s a completely different life for both parent and child, and frankly it often seems that the high-functioning want to pretend that the low-functioning don’t exist. They don’t want to discuss what it’s like to care for someone who, for example, compulsively smashes every window he can access because he simply likes the sound of breaking glass.
So, yes, I absolutely maintain that a nonverbal, self-harming child suffering from constant digestive pain and a dozen panic attacks a day has a right to seek relief. If that’s not what autism looks like for you, then that’s great! But it very much is what autism looks like for a lot of people, and it does not help them one bit when the neurodiversity movement tries to elevate their obvious medical symptoms into an identity.
Those who read the book will find that it lays out my position fully, with nuance and empathy, and I stand by everything in it.