As I have already mentioned on my homepage, this site was born out of a desire to not only raise funds for We Are Beams by gathering sponsorship for taking part in their Fire Walk on 26th March 2022, but also from wanting to normalise the conversation around autism. I strongly believe that many barriers in life are there through a lack of knowledge and by simply talking about something such as a learning disability we can move it on from something that happens to other people to something that we can all have a role in improving for the benefit of those with the condition and for society as a whole.
So with that in mind I decided to create the #abcofautism, 26 posts on Facebook about autism as I know it being the father of a daughter on the spectrum. And to get this blog going I will re-post those 26 stories here starting at the beginning.
A is for Autism which is classified as a learning disability, often incorrectly considered a mental illness and which affects roughly 1 in 100 people officially, but likely many more. Recent figures suggest 1 in 60ish children. Put simply, it affects the way someone learns, communicates and understands the world around them. It has no link to intelligence per se, but because it affects how someone learns and because our education system is woefully inadequate at dealing with children who differ, children with autism often get left behind.
It is called a “spectrum disorder” because of the wide variety of ways it prevails itself, from those that are completely non-verbal and need round the clock care to those titans of the tech world (often described as having Asperger’s or “high-functioning autism”) and everything in between. I’ll cover some of the traits of autism is later posts.
Cases of autism have probably not grown since the condition was identified over 50 years ago, however with a better understanding of the condition, better access to information and very pushy parents (including Rebecca and I), more people are being diagnosed. We do hear people state that “there was no autism in my day” which is factually incorrect – autism has always been around we just used to label those on the spectrum as either stupid, troublemakers or going to the other extreme, gifted. Think back to your school days (if you can remember that far back!) – was there a quirky kid in class that didn’t quite fit in? The one people avoided and didn’t invite to parties? The one that had a weird obsession or was always muttering the same things over and over? They may just have been on the spectrum…
Over the course of the next 25 posts I will cover off some of the myths and misconceptions I’ve heard but I will start with a simple one: there is no cure for autism and there is no medication the reduce its effects. Anyone that suggests they can cure autism is a snake-oil salesman and nothing more.
Not that I would cure Victoria’s autism even if it were possible. You may hear me being quite militant about the fact that Victoria “has autism” and she is not “autistic”. This is a personal preference of mine (so not right or wrong) but as part of normalising autism through greater awareness I hope people will begin to realise that labelling a person, especially a child, as one particular thing is not helpful and ignores all of that person’s other traits. Victoria is caring, funny, clever, beautiful… and just so happens to also have autism.
I hope this and the posts that follow are useful/informative/helpful, and at the very least are a distraction from pictures of people’s dinner, COVID and WW3!