After all, autistic kids are still just kids

If there is any theme to my beliefs and thoughts about raising an autistic child, it is this: Raising an autistic child is just like raising any other child, only different. As the parent of two teen-age boys, one autistic and one not, I know the challenges and joys of raising both.

In the Columbus Dispatch article Autistic kids fall victim to parents who run amok, columnist Deborah Kendrick addresses this very theme (emphasis added):

Anyone who has been a parent has at least one terrible moment where caring for a child seemed unbearable…. None of my children is autistic. They did, however, have special needs, because all children have special needs.

One mom in Autism Every Day states pathetically that her child will never marry. "How do you know that?" is what my heart is screaming at her….

I’ve heard parents of deaf kids, blind kids, kids with Down syndrome and other disabilities make the same kinds of pronouncements: My child will never (fill in the blank). To all of them I say no human can predict what another human will accomplish.

tagged as: Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, Parenting