Never Say Never

In Saturday's Guardian was an short piece called "What I'm really thinking: the grandmother of an autistic child" in which a woman describes an outing with her 7 year old grandson Jimmy. Obviously we need to have some insight into the difficulties this causes her because that's the standard narrative for any and all articles on autism which centre on a family member and not autistic people themselves. So Grandma describes how "the red-faced Jimmy who is almost out of control" is "screaming and lunging violently at the locked doors" of some public toilets. Later when Jimmy has settled Grandma discloses that she "like[s] to imagine" that they look normal and admits that few of her friends know that she has an autistic grandson in case they offer what she describes as "well-meaning but inappropriate advice" such as a book recommendation by an autistic author. "It breaks my heart because I know that Jimmy, even with the best help in the world, will never be able to read or write or lead a “normal” life."I have not bothered to comment on a Guardian article for a few years but I wanted to reach out to this woman. I swallowed my distaste for the assumptions and probably unexamined attitudes regarding disabled lives and the potential to learn and develop. So doing my best to be considerate and temperate, I left a comment:"If your friend's advice is to read books by autistic authors, then it is both well meaning and appropriate. Also, you cannot possibly know that Jimmy, aged only...
Source: The Voyage - Category: Child Development Tags: autism autism books Source Type: blogs