No, My Child Is Not 'High Functioning'*.

* Note: I do not believe in functioning labels. I think they're meaningless but my use of them here is to quote and illustrate where too many parents are coming from.

I try not to argue with people on the interwebs these days. It's pointless. That being said, I have found that when I post comments on autism pages there's one type of parent who always tries to start a load of crap.
"You're only saying that because your child is 'high functioning'!"
I am well and truly sick of these people.

"My child is violent!"
Yeah, my kid was too until we stopped trying to work against her neurology and started working with it.



"But my child still isn't potty trained!"
Not saying it's a party changing diapers but did you hate your child for it the first two years of their life? Get past the idea of what is 'supposed to be' and it'll get a lot easier.

"My child is nonverbal!"
What speech my child has is very unreliable and often understandable only to us. If she said,"Banana chickens", to a stranger they would have no idea that she's talking about The Muppets' version of Bohemian Rhapsody.

"And the constant meltdowns!"
Again, my child had far more meltdowns back before we realized what her triggers were. By eliminating as many triggers as we can we have drastically reduced the number of meltdowns.

"And my child requires constant supervision!"
Yep. This place gets secured like it's Alcatraz before I can run to the bathroom for 2 minutes. Is this stuff really such a terrible hardship?!

"We get no services!!!"
Yeah, we don't either. My child doesn't even go to preschool. It's been literally years since my husband and I went anywhere without her.

Don't assume that our lives must be a piece of cake simply because we're happy. The two really have nothing to do with each other. My daughter has her challenges but she also has her strengths and that's what we choose to focus on. This whole 'my life is worse than your life' competition is ridiculous and more than a little bizarre if you think about it. What prize are these people competing for?

 Photo is of an ecstatic little girl in an orange shirt playing a piano in a tunnel. She is also wearing a blue bracelet and is unbearably cute.