Constant Judgment

I wrote a book called "Autism and Assholes".  Why? Because since the day my son was born with complete blindness and later developed severe autism, I have become keenly aware of how many assholes are truly out there.  I excluded one major asshole in the book, however, that I feel the need to mention now.  The Media!  The Media Assholes and psycho-analyzers out there spewing piles of garbage about Parents of Special Needs children as if we were all a bunch of tightly bound fuses ready to go off at any moment. 

Constant Judgment is what we face every day.  Our kids have a meltdown in a store.......the whole world's watching.  Our child has a difficult day in school..........the whole school staff is watching.  Our family outing goes haywire from a frightened little one.........the whole world is watching.  All eyes are on us at all times.  No anonymity here!  No, not for us!  Thanks to the stigma that all of the psycho babble about "crack-pot murderous parents" we'll have even more prying eyes to tolerate.  Everyone watching & wondering "is that child acting that way because they are abused?", or "is that one of "those mom's" that I'm going to read about in the news one day?" 

No sir, no normal parenting privacy allowed for us!  If it's not a stare of disgust, or a look of quandary, or a glance of ignorant curiosity, it's a look of mistrust, of wonderment of our mental state and "will we be able to hold up".

Let me assure you we will hold up!  We already have! We already do!  We do this everyday and we do it with love, kindness, patients and gentleness.  We do it with the same unconditional love for our children that anyone else has for their children and probably much more.  We do it all  with an unwarranted jury and judge watching us!  We work harder,  sleep less, pay more, study more, learn more, battle more, cry more, and are judged the harshest! 

We're told we deal with more stress than anyone in the world.........yet the people making this statement don't look in the mirror to realize they are one of the major causes of stress for us!

Now the powers that be and babblers of great gossip have decided to take this up a notch and turn up the glare of the microscope even further.  They've done this by spewing nonsense about "understandable frustration" relating to parents murdering their disabled / autistic children.  They've done this by "victimizing" the very murderer.  They've done this by showing compassion and sympathy for these monsters that commit murder against their own children. 

Now the rest of the world feels an obligation or at least a small urge to "watch out" for those poor special needs parents that could against their own will SNAP at any moment and just decide to "OFF" one of their children.  Let's put this into perspective folks!  A murderer is a murderer!  Anyone capable of murdering their child was capable of doing so whether that child was disabled or not; autistic or not.  This is not mercy, this is not a crime of motherly love, this is NOT an excusable action or at all warranted!  This is just murder.  Thanks to the multiple postings of sympathy and concern for parents feeling such desires, the fish bowl that me and the rest of the loving special needs parents already live in just got even more transparent for all the world to look at and judge.

Is this stigma really what you think will help us?  Too be judged more fiercely and trusted less?  To have  our mental and emotional stamina measured by a the general public that knows nothing about us as human beings or for that matter our love for our children and capacity to care for them? 

The only thing that will help us is for you to call Murderers what they are...........Murderers.  Not victims of circumstance.  What excuse would you have given them if their child had not been autistic or disabled?  Would you have worked so hard to find compassion for what "they" must have been going through to make them commit such an act?  Would you really have the rest of the world believe that special needs parents believe they are victims of their own beautiful children's existances? 

Let's call Murderers what they are!  No more excuses!  I'll keep calling out the Assholes as I see them!