Guest Post from Anna Hayward

I got this note from Anna Hayward through the HealthFraud mailing list and she has given me permission to reproduce it. It shows my view of matters (without the aggression) perfectly. Enjoy!

In my experience, the real reason parents get so desperate is because society does not accept people are different. We are not "suffering" from autism, we're just not neurotypical! So a parent is told their child is autistic and what they see is lost dreams, stigma and social exclusion. But these things are not caused by autism, they are caused by society's attitudes towards autistic people, and disabled people in general.

The parents I know who have accepted their child's autism diagnosis most calmly, and been least likely to try "All sorts of things I now consider bananas", have been parents who were already familiar with disabled and autistic people. The ones who coped worst were the types who considered disabled children to happen to other families, and had previously spent a lifetime avoiding disabled people, and looking down their noses at them.

No one sane is going to be thrilled to realise their child is autistic. Autistic kids are bloody hard work! They often don't sleep, can be hyperactive, don't or won't tell you when they're sick, can be obsessional and rigid to an irritating degree, and the services and education available for them is patchy and you have to fight for absolutely *everything*. So it's really hard work and can be demoralising. However, most of the problem is not the autism, it's the lack of support for autistic families, the lack of appropriate education, speech therapy, occupational therapy... even things like dentists and opticians. It has taken me 6 years to find an optician who is prepared to deal with my son! (most cried off on the grounds that if he couldn't tolerate the whole eye test they wouldn't get paid by the government). My son is now in an excellent school, but we had to sue the education authority to get it. Fighting bureacracy on behalf of my son is a full-time job.

Until society is more accepting, and the powers that be are properly organised and informed to help autistic families, people will continue to see autism as the bogeyman and have this "Not my child" attitude that does so much damage. As it is, I notice more and more autism horror stories on the web, invariably being used to sell this quack treatment or that quack treatment. Using the Medical Model for autism is so inappropriate! We're not ill - my son is not ill! Why have a treatment for something that is not an illness?