My active little boy with dark hair and expressive green eyes couldn’t speak until he was four years old. He suffered from a profound speech impairment. But he was intelligent and figured out how to mimic what other people were saying. He fooled many of us, including his pediatrician, with his echolalia (repeating what other people were saying). This was the beginning of a lifetime of imitating and pretending so that he could mask his discomfort and challenges.
Your story tugged on my heartstrings and I am very sad that your sweet boy was influenced and stolen by this evil cult. This made me cry...“Watch out for death by a thousand paper cuts. Protect him and love him at home. Make home a safe refuge for him. He will be bullied mercilessly and every single instance of a hurtful word or action is like a paper cut to his sense of self. One or two can heal but he will get to be 17 or 18 and be emotionally hemorrhaging by a thousand paper cuts.” I can relate to the paper cut pain as I was bullied, and my only child, a girl, was bullied and now my 4 year-old granddaughter has autism and had delayed speech and I am so afraid that she will also be bullied. Kids can be so cruel! I am trying to educate my daughter about the trans-cult and rainbow clubs so we can protect our sweet girl. I hope that your son will one day return to you, and in the meantime I pray that he will remember his childhood fondness and all the love he received from you.
Your son sounds like a beautiful boy. Your love for him shines through in every sentence you've written. Also it is a beautifully written tribute/story. You are all in my prayers. 🩷
Anyone willing to go so far with their roleplay that they're willing to have their balls cut off and their chest expanded to 5 times its normal weight is doing some truly special, genius level method acting
Parents need to understand that in this day and age having your child diagnosed with autism or Asperger’s and arranging an IEP for them does not come without inherent consequences for socialization & identity.
Think of how you would have felt growing up if you had been officially diagnosed as “retarded.” Autism doesn’t mean the same thing, but children don’t understand the difference. Children & teens use “autist” and “special” and “iep kid” as insults starting from very young ages. Even if you keep your kid’s diagnosis from being public knowledge among his peers, he will know that those insults apply to him.
You are telling a very young child some very heavy stuff. “You are different, you will always be different, you will never be like other people, you will never fit in.” Whether or not it’s true, that message has a profound impact on children. It takes away their hope. It robs them of the hope that they’ll ever “be normal.”
It also affects how you view your own child. You recast small difficulties or harmless quirks as further evidence of his incurable & fundamental “difference.” Just look at this article.
”He pretended that he knew what the teacher was instructing by watching what the other kindergarteners were doing and following their cues.”
That’s how everyone learns. Maybe he needed more time than other kids, to move from imitation to synthesis, but that doesn’t make him fundamentally different.
“He masked by using canned phrases when he met people.”
We all do this every day. Do you conscientiously think about what to say every time you come in to work in the morning & greet your colleagues? Do you think conscientiously about what to say every time you go to bed next to your partner? Maybe some of the time, but the vast majority of adult interactions consist of “canned phrases.” Again, he could be different by degree, but he is not fundamentally different.
“I suspect he never developed a true sense of identity. Identity answers the question Who am I?”
He didn’t have the chance to answer this question because YOU answered it for him. You told him, “You are autistic.”
He needs a mask because he’s been told his whole life that he is fundamentally “mentally ugly” - fundamentally separated from other people like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. You told him he will never truly understand or fit in. Of course he feels ashamed of his differences.
Of course he really is different from most people. So are we all in greater or lesser degrees. But when you tell a child that his difference is fundamental, categorical, rather than a matter of degree, you plant a deeply rooted seed of self-doubt that will stay with him forever. He didn’t get to identify as a ‘nerd” or a “geek” or anything else that means “different in a good way” - you told him he was “different due to his disorder.” You had a Psychologist define his identity for him at a fundamental level.
You invited the Psychologist into your life, and first the Psychologist said your son was different because he is “autistic.” You liked this because you had an easy explanation for all his curious differences, both pleasant & unpleasant. Now the Psychologist has told your son that he is different because he is “trans.” You don’t like this - but why should your son believe you? After all, you taught him that the Psychologist is always right.
Your statement “Now the Psychologist has told your son that he is different because he is “trans.” is inaccurate. The therapist said: “Your son is wearing a mask. This is not who he is. I don’t think he even has true gender dysphoria. His pretending to be a woman is a phase. Autism plays a huge part in it. I don’t know how long it will last but eventually the mask will have to come off”.
As I understand the article, that therapist is one who had been working with him before college, not whoever he was seeing at college that provided him with gender-based medicine in furtherance of his Trans identity. If he is indeed pursuing gender-medicine treatment, then he has doubtless found a new therapist who will affirm this course.
While I find gender-based medicine an order of magnitude crueler, orienting this child's whole life around this purported diagnosis of "Autism" is itself cruel and demeaning nonetheless. I don't care what "Psychologists" say, I don't care about their little bible of diagnoses and disorders. The "Trans" debacle should prove to you that their bible is no more fact-based than the Christian one. Their dicta come before science, and science is ignored when it disagrees with their dicta. They have shown this over & over again - "Trans" is but the latest & greatest example.
I care that a child has been told his whole life that he is different. He has been told his whole life that he can never be normal. That he will never fit in. That he will never "pass" for a regular person. The truth or untruth of that fact is completely irrelevant. It is an intensely cruel and harmful message for a child - and all the more so the more different he is. Can you imagine for a second what that experience is like? To be told day in and day out that you're irreconcilably different and will need help forever just to get along?
No, you can't imagine it. I can't either. No one who hasn't experienced it can know what it's like in the slightest. But I have talked with people who have - talked with them as people, not as "patients." There are so, so many who say that the one thing they always wanted was just to be "normal" - to live their life without a diagnosis, without being their idiosyncrasies being psychologized, without being considered "medically different." Diagnosis robs a child of normalcy. That is no small theft - in fact there are few greater.
These handy diagnoses cause parents & teachers to recast every idiosyncrasy of a child as a "symptom" instead of taking uniqueness as uniqueness. Whatever "acceptance" is blathered about after the fact is beyond meaningless. If they truly "accepted" they would not diagnose "disorder.". We see an excellent example of recasting right in the opening blurb of this article - "He fooled many of us, including his pediatrician, with his echolalia (repeating what other people were saying)"
Do you see what's blatantly wrong with that statement? Medical echolalia is literal repetition of heard words. Such behavior would not be capable of "fooling" anyone. Plainly he was not in fact merely repeating back words - rather he was likely imitating and recapitulating other people's vocabularies and demeanors. That is something we all do, consciously or unconsciously. Maybe he was bad at it, but that's not "masking", and it's not "an autistic behavior."
This poor child has been told his whole life that he is unfixably different, and the reason he was given - "You were born autistic" - is not a satisfying reason. It's definitionally fuzzy, and more importantly, it's embarrassing. "Trans" is a much more appealing explanation - it comes with friends, parties & parades.
What you're looking at here is really a war between two equally numinous sects of the Psychological religion, each with their own "diagnoses," both interested in fitting this unique child into a box, and neither interested in his actual personhood. You should be entirely unsurprised when he chooses the sect that tells him he's a beautiful woman over the sect that classes him with the retarded.
I'm there with Marie. The diagnosis helped my child with autism get the needed support from an early age. Everyone always knew she was different as did she. When she was older and we revealed the diagnosis, and she found it a relief to know that there were other kids like her. There was never a stigma with being autistic and no one ever made fun of her because of her diagnosis - the mean kids could just observe her and figure out how to upset her based on her personality. There are quite a few detransitioners who found out after going through medical changes that they were autistic and that explained their dysphoria better than trans ever did. It doesn't do anyone any good to hide the truth. Autism is not necessarily the predestined identity that you think it is. Gen-z kids are encouraged to pick a marginalized identity instead of build one based acquiring skills and experiences, so these kids pick trans despite the fact that they already fill a marginalized category.
It's very plain that these kids "pick trans" because the marginalized category they were assigned - "autistic" - is used as a synonym for "retarded" in common parlance. To quote a comment from here a few months ago: "Autism is embarrassing. Trans has a flag and parades."
>There are quite a few detransitioners who found out after going through medical changes that they were autistic and that explained their dysphoria better than trans ever did.
It pains me deeply to see people searching for identity lost in the religious framework of Psychology. This cruel religion inherently considers anyone "sufficiently different" to be "disordered" - in other words, an aberration to be corrected. No amount of "destigmatizing" neutralizes this fundamental statement.
There used to exist identities that didn't include intrinsic self-othering. They were self-chosen, self-oriented identities like "animal lover" or "baseball fan." This sort of identity provides a different, weird, bullied kid with something to proudly hang their hat on. They might not have friends, they might not have popularity, they might not have good grade, but they have dolphins - and they *don't* have parents, teachers & doctors united in an obsession with observing, analyzing, and categorizing their differences. Excuse me, their "disorder." How acutely cruel that those charged with a child's protection now unite with their bullies in labeling them as an "other."
It appears that your experience with autism is quite different than mine. Since the DSM V combined classic Kanner's autism with the Asperger's Syndrome, there are some wicked smart kids on the spectrum who would never be classified by anyone, including their peers, as "retarded". (A harsh term from past generations.) No one is "othering" the autistic people in my community circles, especially the teenagers, since now having any "difference" (marginalized identity, mental health issue, neurodivergence, etc.) is something young people are proud of. And there are still plenty of autistic kids who have pride in their interests or what they are good at. I've not seen any parents, teacher, doctors obsessively analyzing and categorizing the children's differences, but using an understanding of their challenges to try to help them fit into the world they are faced with. If anything the problem is that today's world is so far from the world we evolved in.
The very act of defining a person as "autistic" and "differently brained" relative to the body of "normal people" who have "normal brains" is so fundamentally othering that it's kind of hard to surpass it.
So-called "normal" people who tolerate the artificial, restrictive, disturbing modern world without abreaction - who sit without too much complaint in a sedentary, understimulating, stultifying school environment from the age of five - who are content to be separated from the nature we evolved with... it is rather these strange new creatures that I would like to see investigated and diagnosed.
The diagnosis of autism opened up doors for my son that he wouldn’t have had access otherwise. He would have not achieved his academic and intellectual potential without those supports. He was the smart nerd who won many competitions and had his name recognized repeatedly. He got lost in college but he experienced success in high school. Kids who are different are bullied whether they have a diagnosis or not. I was a teacher and kids and teachers knew exactly who were the kids on the spectrum even if they didn’t have the díganos, special Ed or an IEP. In fact, many of the kids without the supports did much worse and added academic failure to their struggles. My kid didn’t know he was autistic until he was older. When he requested to be removed off the IEP and Special Education, we did that. He had learned the skills he needed to succeed academically on his own.
The question is not whether he will be bullied or not - as you say, most people who are visibly different will experience bullying - the question is whether or not he will feel like the bullies are right. The question is whether or not he will consider it right that he be treated differently from other people and separated from "normal people." You told him that he is different in an unfixable and intrinsic way.
Why do you think he requested to be removed from an IEP & from special education? Since he's cut you off, you can't ask him, but I can almost certainly tell you the answer: He was embarrassed of the labels you gave him. Deeply embarrassed - and resentful. He had every right to be.
Every kid who is having academic difficulty deserves support and it shouldn't matter whether they or their parents accept the discriminatory official labels of "autistic" or "ADHD." What about kids who have academic difficulties for other reasons? Do they not deserve support? What if they're just plain ol' stupid? Does such a thing even exist in the framework of Psychology? Must everyone accept a Psychological label before they are offered help?
>kids and teachers knew exactly who were the kids on the spectrum
This is such a harmful and disgusting way of thinking. You don't know a god damn thing about other people's inner workings and you have no right to slot them into neat little Psychological boxes based on stereotypes and crude theorizing. You doubly have no right to treat them differently based on your personal judgments. You should support everyone without trying to put them in a neat little box.
You helped plant Psychology's seeds, now you reap its bitter fruits. Your son has been living his entire life in a box you built & labeled and you viewed him through that lens even before you told him how you & the Psychologists had classified him.
I have an uncle who didn't learn to speak until age 6 - good thing for him that he grew up in rural China, where such differences were considered just part of human variation. He was allowed to stay at home until he felt comfortable starting school and then he started with all the other children, without any of our new Western labels for people who are different. He learned computer science in a rural school with no computers - he worked out code on paper - and now he has a PhD in the field. If he were born in America today he would have been slotted into "special education" and denied "normal" status and "normal" education because of his idiosyncrasies.
I had a cousin who had the misfortune of being born in America today. Despite a sharp intellect and excellent grades in technical subjects was slotted into "special education" because of behavioral quirks that rendered him "not fit" for a place among "normal" students. He was labeled "sped" by his own teachers and his own parents and he was bullied mercilessly for it by his "normal" peers. He jumped in front of a train at age fifteen.
I'm very sorry for the loss of your cousin. The problem seems like less having to do with his diagnosis than a US school system that teaches to the average, slots all kids by age, and squashes motivation for learning and creativity. Due to an uncompliant nature, my daughter was bullied more by teachers that didn't understand autism than by peers. Needless to say, we never left her in those situations once they arose. But not everyone feels they have the power to do that - walk away from authorities and "experts" (educators, doctors, or therapists etc).
My cousin was sent to one of the top 100 public schools in the country. His parents moved to that expensive district because they thought it would have more resources for him. I'm sure it did - I'm sure there were lots of resources & specialists for "special needs," for the "neurodivergent," for the "differently abled" - what it didn't have was a place where he could at least imagine himself normal.
I can't blame his parents for trusting the supposed experts. I can blame the experts. That cousin was that uncle's nephew. They were very similar according to people who knew both of them. That uncle is on call at Intel to solve engineering problems that Intel engineers can't solve. Sometimes he makes a hundred grand for a week's help there. He's already sold off one startup and he isn't even 50. So how smart of an individual did these experts do to death? The next Gates? Quite possibly.
The presence of every single "support" for your "disorder" is an unavoidable reminder of your official status as one of the "differents." I just do not get the need to classify people like this. Every single such classification will inevitably become an insult in common parlance and on we go to the next one. It happens every single time. And what is the purported gain? A bit of an easier time grouping people's cases together? Not remotely worth the damage.
If people need support, give them support they need without first having to "diagnose" them with some kind of official psychic malady. And the funny thing is, I bet quite a lot of "normal" people would find some of these supports helpful now and again.
A bit harsh spiky. My 'child' transitioned at 35 and immediately cut us off. He was super smart and probably 'neuro-atypical' but back in those days we didn't have those words. We helped him learn to get a along with others and excellent teachers kept him from being pigeon holed with any diagnoses. I did consult with folks about him and was cautioned not to have him diagnosed but to let him be different. He was well liked through school and found his way in high school. So working hard to not have him diagnosed didn't benefit any of us either. He fell down the rabbit hole of the internet possibly because that form of communication came easily to him. Now he has diagnosed himself with all manner of letters and I suspect, although he hasn't told me, that he blames me for not having him diagnosed. Parenting these days, whether your child is 3 or 30 is not for the feint of heart. Being cut off by a child your adore, who you did your very best for, is excruciating.
I am harsh because so many people choose to remain stubbornly ignorant of the damage they do when they seek labels of this nature for themselves & their children. Labels - aka identities - are the lenses through which we view ourselves and the world, they are the essence of self-definition.
Lots of people will try to label a kid who stands out. Everyone knows that with labels like "loser" or "freak" you wouldn't say, "Yes, you're a freak and a loser, but today it's okay to be a freak and a loser, so don't worry." You would say something more like "Some kids lash out at other people to make themselves feel better. Don't worry about them at all." After your kid leaves your care he will lose your support, that's true, and many people will label him or try to get him to choose a label they would like him to choose - from discord to the street corner christian pamphleteer - but that's no reason to take that fundamental support away prematurely by othering him with an exogeneous label.
"Autistic" is a synonym for "freak and loser" among kids today. Whether you think it is an accurate descriptor or not absolutely does not matter. Even in the most acceptive environment, a kid being told he is fundamentally not like other people is no small thing, even if he already sensed it.
Bless your heart for telling this story that your little boy cannot express yet. Your understanding and love come through in every word, I am certain this is what makes the difference; your boy know this and it matters so much.
I am so sorry. I understand, as so many of us do, the vulnerability of our kids who survive so much, who try so hard only to be scooped up by this atrocity.
The idea of wearing a mask and playing a part hit me hard. It is exactly how I think about my daughter. I told the staff at her school that she can pretend she is a boy and they can pretend she is a boy but I am not going to pretend she is a boy. What luck you had to find a good therapist. I wish I had been able to find one. We haven’t been cut off yet but I expect it to happen. Transgenderism is like a pack of wolves always going for the young and/or vulnerable. My daughter, your son, they were easy prey.
We have similar stories. I warned my daughter of boys intentions but failed to see so many other dangers as many have mentioned. The queer cult eyeing the vulnerable, who come in form of therapists, doctors, teachers and girlfriends. And the ones studying gender studies taking interest in our kids. I failed to warn her of toxic grooming older girlfriends. Our kids are so pure and desperate in seeking and having friends, a place to belong they fail to see the manipulation and gaslighting. It happens in safest spaces, small private schools to being involved in sports activities. Hold on to your kids. No where is safe from this danger. For our adult kids we have to hope and pray the damage is low and that they will return back home soon. There are so many who have fallen victim of gender ideology. It is a dangerous and profitable business (cult) that targets the most vulnerable and innocent. We must speak up and fight to bring it down. Gender affirming care will be the next opioid crisis. Thank you for sharing your sad story. My heart goes out to you and your family. You are not alone.
A very sad story, beautifully told. I think many of us have kids who are similar, on the spectrum, not having any idea who they are. My son was able to express himself with words but I believe he copied others when it came to emotions. He never showed me any affection until he saw the love his older siblings (who live overseas) expressed towards me. He saw them hug and kiss me and when we returned home, for a short time he did the same - for a very short time.
I want to sob for you, for all of us who so love so fiercely our unique children and to have to watch them descend into this made up abyss without family and connections......for what?
These pathetic mental patients who simply want more affirmation for their mental illness by claiming vulnerable children.
Your story tugged on my heartstrings and I am very sad that your sweet boy was influenced and stolen by this evil cult. This made me cry...“Watch out for death by a thousand paper cuts. Protect him and love him at home. Make home a safe refuge for him. He will be bullied mercilessly and every single instance of a hurtful word or action is like a paper cut to his sense of self. One or two can heal but he will get to be 17 or 18 and be emotionally hemorrhaging by a thousand paper cuts.” I can relate to the paper cut pain as I was bullied, and my only child, a girl, was bullied and now my 4 year-old granddaughter has autism and had delayed speech and I am so afraid that she will also be bullied. Kids can be so cruel! I am trying to educate my daughter about the trans-cult and rainbow clubs so we can protect our sweet girl. I hope that your son will one day return to you, and in the meantime I pray that he will remember his childhood fondness and all the love he received from you.
Your son sounds like a beautiful boy. Your love for him shines through in every sentence you've written. Also it is a beautifully written tribute/story. You are all in my prayers. 🩷
Devastating.
I’m in a similar place with my autistic daughter. She hasn’t cut me off, but I see she’s gradually cutting herself off from herself, day by day.
sending you a virtual hug...
My prayers are with you and your son. Thank you for sharing this story.
So beautifully written, thank you.
Anyone willing to go so far with their roleplay that they're willing to have their balls cut off and their chest expanded to 5 times its normal weight is doing some truly special, genius level method acting
Parents need to understand that in this day and age having your child diagnosed with autism or Asperger’s and arranging an IEP for them does not come without inherent consequences for socialization & identity.
Think of how you would have felt growing up if you had been officially diagnosed as “retarded.” Autism doesn’t mean the same thing, but children don’t understand the difference. Children & teens use “autist” and “special” and “iep kid” as insults starting from very young ages. Even if you keep your kid’s diagnosis from being public knowledge among his peers, he will know that those insults apply to him.
You are telling a very young child some very heavy stuff. “You are different, you will always be different, you will never be like other people, you will never fit in.” Whether or not it’s true, that message has a profound impact on children. It takes away their hope. It robs them of the hope that they’ll ever “be normal.”
It also affects how you view your own child. You recast small difficulties or harmless quirks as further evidence of his incurable & fundamental “difference.” Just look at this article.
”He pretended that he knew what the teacher was instructing by watching what the other kindergarteners were doing and following their cues.”
That’s how everyone learns. Maybe he needed more time than other kids, to move from imitation to synthesis, but that doesn’t make him fundamentally different.
“He masked by using canned phrases when he met people.”
We all do this every day. Do you conscientiously think about what to say every time you come in to work in the morning & greet your colleagues? Do you think conscientiously about what to say every time you go to bed next to your partner? Maybe some of the time, but the vast majority of adult interactions consist of “canned phrases.” Again, he could be different by degree, but he is not fundamentally different.
“I suspect he never developed a true sense of identity. Identity answers the question Who am I?”
He didn’t have the chance to answer this question because YOU answered it for him. You told him, “You are autistic.”
He needs a mask because he’s been told his whole life that he is fundamentally “mentally ugly” - fundamentally separated from other people like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. You told him he will never truly understand or fit in. Of course he feels ashamed of his differences.
Of course he really is different from most people. So are we all in greater or lesser degrees. But when you tell a child that his difference is fundamental, categorical, rather than a matter of degree, you plant a deeply rooted seed of self-doubt that will stay with him forever. He didn’t get to identify as a ‘nerd” or a “geek” or anything else that means “different in a good way” - you told him he was “different due to his disorder.” You had a Psychologist define his identity for him at a fundamental level.
You invited the Psychologist into your life, and first the Psychologist said your son was different because he is “autistic.” You liked this because you had an easy explanation for all his curious differences, both pleasant & unpleasant. Now the Psychologist has told your son that he is different because he is “trans.” You don’t like this - but why should your son believe you? After all, you taught him that the Psychologist is always right.
Your statement “Now the Psychologist has told your son that he is different because he is “trans.” is inaccurate. The therapist said: “Your son is wearing a mask. This is not who he is. I don’t think he even has true gender dysphoria. His pretending to be a woman is a phase. Autism plays a huge part in it. I don’t know how long it will last but eventually the mask will have to come off”.
As I understand the article, that therapist is one who had been working with him before college, not whoever he was seeing at college that provided him with gender-based medicine in furtherance of his Trans identity. If he is indeed pursuing gender-medicine treatment, then he has doubtless found a new therapist who will affirm this course.
While I find gender-based medicine an order of magnitude crueler, orienting this child's whole life around this purported diagnosis of "Autism" is itself cruel and demeaning nonetheless. I don't care what "Psychologists" say, I don't care about their little bible of diagnoses and disorders. The "Trans" debacle should prove to you that their bible is no more fact-based than the Christian one. Their dicta come before science, and science is ignored when it disagrees with their dicta. They have shown this over & over again - "Trans" is but the latest & greatest example.
I care that a child has been told his whole life that he is different. He has been told his whole life that he can never be normal. That he will never fit in. That he will never "pass" for a regular person. The truth or untruth of that fact is completely irrelevant. It is an intensely cruel and harmful message for a child - and all the more so the more different he is. Can you imagine for a second what that experience is like? To be told day in and day out that you're irreconcilably different and will need help forever just to get along?
No, you can't imagine it. I can't either. No one who hasn't experienced it can know what it's like in the slightest. But I have talked with people who have - talked with them as people, not as "patients." There are so, so many who say that the one thing they always wanted was just to be "normal" - to live their life without a diagnosis, without being their idiosyncrasies being psychologized, without being considered "medically different." Diagnosis robs a child of normalcy. That is no small theft - in fact there are few greater.
These handy diagnoses cause parents & teachers to recast every idiosyncrasy of a child as a "symptom" instead of taking uniqueness as uniqueness. Whatever "acceptance" is blathered about after the fact is beyond meaningless. If they truly "accepted" they would not diagnose "disorder.". We see an excellent example of recasting right in the opening blurb of this article - "He fooled many of us, including his pediatrician, with his echolalia (repeating what other people were saying)"
Do you see what's blatantly wrong with that statement? Medical echolalia is literal repetition of heard words. Such behavior would not be capable of "fooling" anyone. Plainly he was not in fact merely repeating back words - rather he was likely imitating and recapitulating other people's vocabularies and demeanors. That is something we all do, consciously or unconsciously. Maybe he was bad at it, but that's not "masking", and it's not "an autistic behavior."
This poor child has been told his whole life that he is unfixably different, and the reason he was given - "You were born autistic" - is not a satisfying reason. It's definitionally fuzzy, and more importantly, it's embarrassing. "Trans" is a much more appealing explanation - it comes with friends, parties & parades.
What you're looking at here is really a war between two equally numinous sects of the Psychological religion, each with their own "diagnoses," both interested in fitting this unique child into a box, and neither interested in his actual personhood. You should be entirely unsurprised when he chooses the sect that tells him he's a beautiful woman over the sect that classes him with the retarded.
I'm there with Marie. The diagnosis helped my child with autism get the needed support from an early age. Everyone always knew she was different as did she. When she was older and we revealed the diagnosis, and she found it a relief to know that there were other kids like her. There was never a stigma with being autistic and no one ever made fun of her because of her diagnosis - the mean kids could just observe her and figure out how to upset her based on her personality. There are quite a few detransitioners who found out after going through medical changes that they were autistic and that explained their dysphoria better than trans ever did. It doesn't do anyone any good to hide the truth. Autism is not necessarily the predestined identity that you think it is. Gen-z kids are encouraged to pick a marginalized identity instead of build one based acquiring skills and experiences, so these kids pick trans despite the fact that they already fill a marginalized category.
It's very plain that these kids "pick trans" because the marginalized category they were assigned - "autistic" - is used as a synonym for "retarded" in common parlance. To quote a comment from here a few months ago: "Autism is embarrassing. Trans has a flag and parades."
>There are quite a few detransitioners who found out after going through medical changes that they were autistic and that explained their dysphoria better than trans ever did.
It pains me deeply to see people searching for identity lost in the religious framework of Psychology. This cruel religion inherently considers anyone "sufficiently different" to be "disordered" - in other words, an aberration to be corrected. No amount of "destigmatizing" neutralizes this fundamental statement.
There used to exist identities that didn't include intrinsic self-othering. They were self-chosen, self-oriented identities like "animal lover" or "baseball fan." This sort of identity provides a different, weird, bullied kid with something to proudly hang their hat on. They might not have friends, they might not have popularity, they might not have good grade, but they have dolphins - and they *don't* have parents, teachers & doctors united in an obsession with observing, analyzing, and categorizing their differences. Excuse me, their "disorder." How acutely cruel that those charged with a child's protection now unite with their bullies in labeling them as an "other."
It appears that your experience with autism is quite different than mine. Since the DSM V combined classic Kanner's autism with the Asperger's Syndrome, there are some wicked smart kids on the spectrum who would never be classified by anyone, including their peers, as "retarded". (A harsh term from past generations.) No one is "othering" the autistic people in my community circles, especially the teenagers, since now having any "difference" (marginalized identity, mental health issue, neurodivergence, etc.) is something young people are proud of. And there are still plenty of autistic kids who have pride in their interests or what they are good at. I've not seen any parents, teacher, doctors obsessively analyzing and categorizing the children's differences, but using an understanding of their challenges to try to help them fit into the world they are faced with. If anything the problem is that today's world is so far from the world we evolved in.
The very act of defining a person as "autistic" and "differently brained" relative to the body of "normal people" who have "normal brains" is so fundamentally othering that it's kind of hard to surpass it.
So-called "normal" people who tolerate the artificial, restrictive, disturbing modern world without abreaction - who sit without too much complaint in a sedentary, understimulating, stultifying school environment from the age of five - who are content to be separated from the nature we evolved with... it is rather these strange new creatures that I would like to see investigated and diagnosed.
The diagnosis of autism opened up doors for my son that he wouldn’t have had access otherwise. He would have not achieved his academic and intellectual potential without those supports. He was the smart nerd who won many competitions and had his name recognized repeatedly. He got lost in college but he experienced success in high school. Kids who are different are bullied whether they have a diagnosis or not. I was a teacher and kids and teachers knew exactly who were the kids on the spectrum even if they didn’t have the díganos, special Ed or an IEP. In fact, many of the kids without the supports did much worse and added academic failure to their struggles. My kid didn’t know he was autistic until he was older. When he requested to be removed off the IEP and Special Education, we did that. He had learned the skills he needed to succeed academically on his own.
The question is not whether he will be bullied or not - as you say, most people who are visibly different will experience bullying - the question is whether or not he will feel like the bullies are right. The question is whether or not he will consider it right that he be treated differently from other people and separated from "normal people." You told him that he is different in an unfixable and intrinsic way.
Why do you think he requested to be removed from an IEP & from special education? Since he's cut you off, you can't ask him, but I can almost certainly tell you the answer: He was embarrassed of the labels you gave him. Deeply embarrassed - and resentful. He had every right to be.
Every kid who is having academic difficulty deserves support and it shouldn't matter whether they or their parents accept the discriminatory official labels of "autistic" or "ADHD." What about kids who have academic difficulties for other reasons? Do they not deserve support? What if they're just plain ol' stupid? Does such a thing even exist in the framework of Psychology? Must everyone accept a Psychological label before they are offered help?
>kids and teachers knew exactly who were the kids on the spectrum
This is such a harmful and disgusting way of thinking. You don't know a god damn thing about other people's inner workings and you have no right to slot them into neat little Psychological boxes based on stereotypes and crude theorizing. You doubly have no right to treat them differently based on your personal judgments. You should support everyone without trying to put them in a neat little box.
You helped plant Psychology's seeds, now you reap its bitter fruits. Your son has been living his entire life in a box you built & labeled and you viewed him through that lens even before you told him how you & the Psychologists had classified him.
I have an uncle who didn't learn to speak until age 6 - good thing for him that he grew up in rural China, where such differences were considered just part of human variation. He was allowed to stay at home until he felt comfortable starting school and then he started with all the other children, without any of our new Western labels for people who are different. He learned computer science in a rural school with no computers - he worked out code on paper - and now he has a PhD in the field. If he were born in America today he would have been slotted into "special education" and denied "normal" status and "normal" education because of his idiosyncrasies.
I had a cousin who had the misfortune of being born in America today. Despite a sharp intellect and excellent grades in technical subjects was slotted into "special education" because of behavioral quirks that rendered him "not fit" for a place among "normal" students. He was labeled "sped" by his own teachers and his own parents and he was bullied mercilessly for it by his "normal" peers. He jumped in front of a train at age fifteen.
I'm very sorry for the loss of your cousin. The problem seems like less having to do with his diagnosis than a US school system that teaches to the average, slots all kids by age, and squashes motivation for learning and creativity. Due to an uncompliant nature, my daughter was bullied more by teachers that didn't understand autism than by peers. Needless to say, we never left her in those situations once they arose. But not everyone feels they have the power to do that - walk away from authorities and "experts" (educators, doctors, or therapists etc).
My cousin was sent to one of the top 100 public schools in the country. His parents moved to that expensive district because they thought it would have more resources for him. I'm sure it did - I'm sure there were lots of resources & specialists for "special needs," for the "neurodivergent," for the "differently abled" - what it didn't have was a place where he could at least imagine himself normal.
I can't blame his parents for trusting the supposed experts. I can blame the experts. That cousin was that uncle's nephew. They were very similar according to people who knew both of them. That uncle is on call at Intel to solve engineering problems that Intel engineers can't solve. Sometimes he makes a hundred grand for a week's help there. He's already sold off one startup and he isn't even 50. So how smart of an individual did these experts do to death? The next Gates? Quite possibly.
The presence of every single "support" for your "disorder" is an unavoidable reminder of your official status as one of the "differents." I just do not get the need to classify people like this. Every single such classification will inevitably become an insult in common parlance and on we go to the next one. It happens every single time. And what is the purported gain? A bit of an easier time grouping people's cases together? Not remotely worth the damage.
If people need support, give them support they need without first having to "diagnose" them with some kind of official psychic malady. And the funny thing is, I bet quite a lot of "normal" people would find some of these supports helpful now and again.
A bit harsh spiky. My 'child' transitioned at 35 and immediately cut us off. He was super smart and probably 'neuro-atypical' but back in those days we didn't have those words. We helped him learn to get a along with others and excellent teachers kept him from being pigeon holed with any diagnoses. I did consult with folks about him and was cautioned not to have him diagnosed but to let him be different. He was well liked through school and found his way in high school. So working hard to not have him diagnosed didn't benefit any of us either. He fell down the rabbit hole of the internet possibly because that form of communication came easily to him. Now he has diagnosed himself with all manner of letters and I suspect, although he hasn't told me, that he blames me for not having him diagnosed. Parenting these days, whether your child is 3 or 30 is not for the feint of heart. Being cut off by a child your adore, who you did your very best for, is excruciating.
I am harsh because so many people choose to remain stubbornly ignorant of the damage they do when they seek labels of this nature for themselves & their children. Labels - aka identities - are the lenses through which we view ourselves and the world, they are the essence of self-definition.
Lots of people will try to label a kid who stands out. Everyone knows that with labels like "loser" or "freak" you wouldn't say, "Yes, you're a freak and a loser, but today it's okay to be a freak and a loser, so don't worry." You would say something more like "Some kids lash out at other people to make themselves feel better. Don't worry about them at all." After your kid leaves your care he will lose your support, that's true, and many people will label him or try to get him to choose a label they would like him to choose - from discord to the street corner christian pamphleteer - but that's no reason to take that fundamental support away prematurely by othering him with an exogeneous label.
"Autistic" is a synonym for "freak and loser" among kids today. Whether you think it is an accurate descriptor or not absolutely does not matter. Even in the most acceptive environment, a kid being told he is fundamentally not like other people is no small thing, even if he already sensed it.
Bless your heart for telling this story that your little boy cannot express yet. Your understanding and love come through in every word, I am certain this is what makes the difference; your boy know this and it matters so much.
I am so sorry. I understand, as so many of us do, the vulnerability of our kids who survive so much, who try so hard only to be scooped up by this atrocity.
The idea of wearing a mask and playing a part hit me hard. It is exactly how I think about my daughter. I told the staff at her school that she can pretend she is a boy and they can pretend she is a boy but I am not going to pretend she is a boy. What luck you had to find a good therapist. I wish I had been able to find one. We haven’t been cut off yet but I expect it to happen. Transgenderism is like a pack of wolves always going for the young and/or vulnerable. My daughter, your son, they were easy prey.
Beautiful words. Thank you.
We have similar stories. I warned my daughter of boys intentions but failed to see so many other dangers as many have mentioned. The queer cult eyeing the vulnerable, who come in form of therapists, doctors, teachers and girlfriends. And the ones studying gender studies taking interest in our kids. I failed to warn her of toxic grooming older girlfriends. Our kids are so pure and desperate in seeking and having friends, a place to belong they fail to see the manipulation and gaslighting. It happens in safest spaces, small private schools to being involved in sports activities. Hold on to your kids. No where is safe from this danger. For our adult kids we have to hope and pray the damage is low and that they will return back home soon. There are so many who have fallen victim of gender ideology. It is a dangerous and profitable business (cult) that targets the most vulnerable and innocent. We must speak up and fight to bring it down. Gender affirming care will be the next opioid crisis. Thank you for sharing your sad story. My heart goes out to you and your family. You are not alone.
A very sad story, beautifully told. I think many of us have kids who are similar, on the spectrum, not having any idea who they are. My son was able to express himself with words but I believe he copied others when it came to emotions. He never showed me any affection until he saw the love his older siblings (who live overseas) expressed towards me. He saw them hug and kiss me and when we returned home, for a short time he did the same - for a very short time.
I hear you. Sending love and hugs. Ours is a similar journey.
❤️
Keep SHOUTING the truth. It will win eventually!
I want to sob for you, for all of us who so love so fiercely our unique children and to have to watch them descend into this made up abyss without family and connections......for what?
These pathetic mental patients who simply want more affirmation for their mental illness by claiming vulnerable children.