“But you’re not at all like my son?!”
People rarely get surprised when an 18 year old is very different from a 5 year old, but when both are autistic people suddenly find it incredulous that they might have different personalities and different abilities, and that they might be at very different stages in life.
And both are different from a 33 year old. I’ve literally had to speak the words, “We grow up. We don’t die from autism.”
In an argument with my mother over my role in life, in which I said I have to be what I never had, she said, “Do you think I never went looking for an adult like you, when you were a child? I NEVER found one! NO ONE was like you were!”
Of course no adult was like me.
I was a child.
This is an extraordinarily multigenerational problem that has existed as long as disability has existed.
Reblog this. Parents younger than me need to read it now.