Bless the Beasts and the Autistic Children

When words fail me in my attempts to spread autism awareness, I look for analogies. About ten years ago, a little boy at the Cincinnati Zoo fell into a gorilla's world and into my thoughts.

When I am asked to describe the hardest parts of having an autistic child, my list includes having to be "on" so much of the time. There are rarely opportunities for parents to be sick, to sleep in, or just truly to be. They have to expect the best but prepare for the worst at all times.

The one time I walked to my seat at a restaurant with my son behind me Mark grabbed a chip off the plate of a smaller child. I didn't know he had taken anything until the boy's mother stormed our table and blurted, "Is that YOUR child?"

It was.

The one time I’ve heard an emergency exit buzzer go off at a restaurant, I asked myself, “Was that caused by MY child?" I didn’t know, but I KNEW.

And it was.

When Mark was little, we were looking right at him, and yet he walked down the steps into a pool and was quickly underwater. We immediately rescued him, and, fortunately, he was unharmed.

You might contrast me with the mom at the zoo. I have kept Mark safe, I have taken action when there was trouble, and no one has been harmed because of Mark.

However, I have to be on guard constantly to make sure he stays safe. I'm exhausted. My brain is fried. I live in constant fear of how my mistakes might be perceived and what harm might come from them.

At the time that the child fell in with the gorilla, people said they wished the child had died to teach the mom a lesson or that her child should be taken away from her.

I notice how rarely people search for the opinions of witnesses or experts on the intricacies of what really happens. I notice that they enjoy creating drama and assigning blame. I notice how rarely they offer compassion.

People grant themselves honorary degrees in armchair psychology, Facebook law, amateur zoology, and autism. They become autism “experts" or autism deniers, the types who say parents need to beat the "autism" out of their kids and who say some of these kids don't speak because parents speak for them.

I'm concerned, as we all should be, that there are ways for a child to get into a gorilla cage. I’m concerned if a mom looks away for a second and an accident happens. I’m concerned when an innocent gorilla gets killed.

But I'm also concerned that people are willing to hurt moms when they make mistakes or treat their children as expendable. I’ve been glared at for my child’s behavior and heard others call him worthless.

While I don't see my child falling into a cage at a zoo, in my nightmares I see another type of cell with different beasts.

These dreams originate not from fantasy or from paranoia but from real news stories of teens with verbal and cognitive challenges who go to jail for shoplifting soda and candy and die in dirty cells and of autistic adults in solitary confinement in prisons who don’t understand why they are there and who confessed to things they didn’t do and don’t even understand.

Mark sometimes takes food that isn't his and confesses to something he didn't do. He gets confused. I can imagine someone asking him to do something he doesn't understand and even something wrong. This is not because his parents are lazy. This is not because he is "bad.”

Mark is vulnerable and naive. He is gentle but is built like a giant. He offers the answer he thinks people want to hear.

This world is not made for my son, but he has the right to be in it. I refuse to keep him in a cage. I will keep taking him out, educating others, and softening his fall. But he will fall, again and again.

And when he falls, I will ask you to have his back — and mine.