25th
This is pretty much the most amazing parent piece I’ve ever seen.
Of course, people in the comments section had to ruin it.
yeah the people in the comments are augh. but yeah.
The link is to a post by my friend Shannon, who is a parenting hero of mine, and not just because she made millions of people cry watching a Steve Jobs keynote.
No Shannon is a hero to me because she is raising three children while engaging daily with the emotional and political maelstrom of autism issues on the internet, through her own blog and her new blog and book project, The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. This week that site hosted a thorny and passionate dialogue between parents and self-advocates.
But also because as in her own post, she is able to be as vulnerable about it all as she is passionate herself:
I know I’ll fail a lot, probably badly. I know some self-advocates will be really honest with me when I fail. I know some self-advocates don’t care what I do, as they’re working on strengthening their own community, into which parents and caregivers do not factor.
And because I look to Shannon for perspective, it was encouraging to see her piece positively linked on Tumblr by a couple of self-advocating autistics and aspies. (Although if I looked I could probably find as many others who didn’t like her piece.)
I write here about the boy and my life with him. But before long he won’t be my character to write any more.
And it is likely I use language that adult self-advocates might object to. It is certain I am sharing things that he himself won’t be happy about in later life.
All parent bloggers transgress in this way, just as all children create private Twitter accounts their parents cannot read.
Doing my best. And despite what my parents hoped to teach me, it’s not always good enough.
Some days I need to be okay with that.
