sorry if this is therapizing of emotions, which i instinctively find repulsive. but in this case it’s a question of it being hard to emotionally remember the thing that you mentally know is true. if that makes any sense.

Amanda: I passed by a white minivan(which I’ve seen around the college program office complex off and on) that had the autism awareness decal…………the puzzle thing, on it. It made me come up with the following quote/meme, if you will, that I think would make a pretty cool t-shirt saying………

On the front or the back of it, probably the front since most people see that first…..it would say “autistic pride” in capital letters, with an underline beneath it, and then the following:

If you are ashamed of us, then you should be even more ashamed of yourselves.

I think I will write a blog about that at some point……….I haven’t been up to blogging lately even though I’ve got many drafts going……..for me stuff comes out a little bit at a time……..

AI

My husband has had some mild symptoms of it all his life, and lately they’ve been getting more obvious and more frequent. The condition affects women more greatly than men, so even when things are particularly “bad,” he has a hard time using his legs, and if we happen to be somewhere we’ve gone on foot (the first time this happened was on a rare occasion that we were hiking, and we walk to a lot of places like the grocery store or restaurants), he’ll have to lean on me to make it home. He always gets really embarassed (which I can understand – it’s always inconvenient and nothing he’s used to), but what really throws me for a loop is when he asks me if I really will stay with him “no matter what.” Like I’d leave him because he occasionally has trouble walking? I don’t mind reassuring him, because he needs to know that I love him and will take care of him when he needs it, but it still always takes me aback to hear him question whether I’d leave him over something like that.

If someone I knew said they’d thought about, or felt like killing their kids, the first thing I’d do was try to make sure the children were safe. Out of concern for their children, and out of concern for them. A good parent wouldn’t want to harm their kids in a moment of emotional irrationality, and a good friend would see them safe.

Subsequently, if the kids were safe (which depending on how serious the thoughs were, could mean anything from sending them with friends for the day to Child Protective Services), I still wouldn’t tell the woman that these feelings were normal and natural. Understandable, maybe. If they were only thinking about it instead of plotting it, could still see that killing children is horribly wrong, and had called me for help to ensure that they didn’t hurt the kids, I might even go so far as “It doesn’t make you evil.” But thinking about killing your children is a bad thing. At the absolute minimum, it’s a serious problem that requires intervention.

And this isn’t changed at all by the child being autistic. Patting someone on the back for their courage in declaring, “Sometimes I think I should kill my kid,” is just insane. And telling them it’s normal or natural or even okay to think that is dangerous.