I've been collecting experiences this week where people are getting completely different impressions of things based on different interpretations of simple words - both correct, but it just shows where their minds are...
The culmination came when I was reading my comics email and this Frank & Ernest cartoon popped up...
Yesterday, it was Wayne having a conversation with his mother about Robyn and their trip home from W Virgina where they met up with my parents to collect Robyn after my sister's wedding... She was explaining why Robyn wasn't hungry for supper - she'd eaten a drumstick on the way down ....
Wayne's question was "Did you stop at a Bojangles?"
Her response "no, just a gas station quickstop"
His response "They serve chicken there?"
Of course not - everyone else in the room knew that when she said 'Drumstick" she meant ice cream cone... but he was fixated on a giant chicken leg...
I guess where this is going is that I missed an opportunity to make a choice on Monday - there was apparently a national movement afoot to have an Autism awareness day of some sort.. and people were going to stop blogging and using social media for the day to support people with autism who don't communicate in traditional ways... which I think is a little backwards... stopping communication about a topic is never the right thing to do... especially one as important as Autism - so to continue the discussion, I wanted to highlight some people who were more on the ball than me on Monday - I will at least use the whole just had a baby excuse - but here are some great posts from my fellow bloggers about how to celebrate and support people with Autism:
Little Bit Quirky - No Shutting Me Up
I'm Just That Way and That's Just Me - Bloggers Unite for Autism
Life is a Spectrum - The Global Pout
Adventures in Extreme Parenthood - Autism Shout Out Loud and Proud
My take on the whole situation is that while my son didn't TALK as early as his peers, he communicated many of his needs and wants just fine - he still doesn't get subtlety, but his communication improves daily - stopping doing something that many people with autism now participate in - social networking - defeats the whole idea of communicating support and respect, IMHO - the more we talk about Autism, its strategies and its effects, the more knowledgeable the world becomes - it's only by sharing experiences and communicating them do we strengthen the body of knowledge - not talking about something only serves to put it away and hide the light that we know can grow...
Please forgive me for being late to the party - but I really hope you check out the posts above for some great reading and a way to further the conversation about Autism... rather than stopping it in its tracks.
