All About Me in 28 Days (Day 20)

Okey dokey, here I am, running a day behind.  Sigh.  But at least when I perused the topic for today, it was quite easy to know exactly what it would be that I would love to forget.  Forever.

Autism has been the absolute bane of my existence for the past 5 years (actually longer, but we didn’t know that the issues that we struggled with actually had a name).

You can just trust me when I tell you that it is far easier to suffer yourself than it is to watch your child suffer through something that is such an enigma.  There are no approved treatments.  There are few established protocols (and doctors and researchers constantly battle about those–simply put, none are always good choices).

Autism involves many questions but few answers.  While the symptomology may be contained within a page of the DSM-IV, the causality is so uncertain that it is likely to be contained in such a quagmire that it is in the realm of possibility that each autistic individual may have come to a common set of symptoms through a completely individual process.  Which implies that treatments that work for one individual (who expresses a particular symptom) can be quite useless for another individual (with identical symptoms).

It is utterly maddening to watch a child struggle with something so elusive, so demanding, and so very necessary as his or her own neurology.  To know that the 80% of communication that is nonverbal is totally lost on them.  That they must learn everything by rote (when it comes to social skills) and the difficulties therein.  To watch a child struggle for acceptance, only to find frustration at every turn.  To be capable of great love, compassion, and empathy, but be unable to adequately express it.

Austims sucks.