Dear Parents,
I see the weight you’re carrying. The endless pitying gazes and contempt for you for your kid “not measuring up” and you for “caving” and “not modelling well” and everything. The housing prices, the logistics, the patriarchal pressures on any partnerships you’re in. The endless hours at the office forced to hide all emotion, smile, and put just the right amount of pressure to keep a living wage. The bodyshame around pregnancy and not pregnancy and former pregnancy. You are loved in all of this, I know that’s nowhere near sufficient, but we can work this out.
I know you’re afraid for your neurodivergent children and what will happen if they don’t have the skills to be safe in the world. I know you see the onslaught they will face for their atypical traits as they get older, and already do today. All the school board meetings and bullying and threats.
But your childrens’ subversive, unrestrainable, desperate urges to flap their hands, spin, bite themselves, read that physics textbook at age 6, NOT TALK, NOT BE PERCIEVED, and all of the above are not achievements, they are not delays, and they are not just “attention-seeking.” They are the products of desperation in the cold amethyst pulsing and shredding, like a thousand bladed mace, of the flourescent light, the voices that to you are a distraction and to them are swarming insects. They are a brain that cannot be changed and whose cravings for meaning and comfort cannot be socialized away without great torment. Continue reading “~~~ BEHAVIOR IS COMMUNICATION ~~~”