Monday, 18 May 2009
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Autism is NOT an Excuse to be a Lazy Parent
Comedian Dennis Leary wrote a book "Why We Suck: A Feel-Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid" and in it he wrote about how some parents are blaming autism instead of blaming themselves for lazy parenting.
I agree with him to a point, but let me explain. There was a girl at my former job who was the mother of 3 children and from when I first met her she'd keep saying that her first son was autistic.
I had a problem with this for the following reasons:
- Her son was a very social child who had no problem going up to people and saying hi and talking to them.
- He not once during the times I babysat him "blanked out"
- He wasn't diagnosed and all the doctors kept saying there was nothing wrong with him and she should just work with him more.
So how in the world could she say he was autistic?
Around the same time I met a mother who actually DID have a son who was autistic and with him you could tell he was "different". But instead of sitting around and blaming the vaccinations and making excuses for her poor parenting as the first mother, she immediately started researching on the subject and attended seminars and did everything in her power that would help her son in spite of his condition.
The first mother on the other hand would plop her child in front of the television and never once would work with her son. Now 3 years later although he's never been formally diagnosed with Autism she still tells anybody who would listen that her son is autistic when he acts out and when people would comment that he still cannot yet talk like a normal 5 year old child should.
The diagnosed autistic boy on the other hand who is also 5 years old now talks. (And this is after he was diagnosed with SEVERE autism and the doctors told his parents that he'd probably never talk). He'll still "blank out" at times but the self beating has stopped. Instead of screaming for hours on end he'll now sit with his mom and read books and now attends regular kindergarten and has had no behavioral problems that are different then any other "normal" child. In fact his doctors are now very optimistic that he'll be able to fully recover from autism and be able to function in society with very few problems.
Now in your opinion is the first child actually Autistic or she's just a lazy parent? I vote for the latter. And it breaks my heart that he'll have to live through life believing he's autistic when in reality he isn't.
If anything having a child with Autism should make you work all the more harder so that they'll be able to live in society as a "normal" person. And although Dennis Leary may have been out of line it does make me wonder just how many more lazy parents out there are trying to use an easy excuse for the lack of responsibility they have in their children's lives.
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- From: ThePseudoHousewife@xanga
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Comments (17)
I've seen this problem first hand too. Well at least something similar. My nephew is autistic & his parents don't really work with him to help him. They let him work through his fits on his own in another room & tell him that it's okay to be upset. The problem that I see is that his sister (who is not autistic) is treated like she is. She's now 11 years old & still can't talk right. There's nothing wrong with her, except for the fact that her parents raised her as if she was autistic like her brother. It doesn't seem like they try at all with either of them.
"Now 3 years later although he's never been formally diagnosed with
Autism she still tells anybody who would listen that her son is
autistic when he acts out and when people would comment that he still
cannot yet talk like a normal 5 year old child should."
I've heard that it's often difficult to get a diagnosis, especially when it's not "classic" autism. This child might have Asperger's (a disorder on the autism spectrum). The mother instinctively knows it. She may be lazy as well... but that doesn't mean the kid is normal. Especially if he's not talking...
No, autism is not an excuse to be a lazy parent. But not everybody deals with autism in the same way. Judging this mother won't do anybody any good.
wow how lame
I think a lot of time ADHD is a cover for lazy parenting. I know that's a little off topic... Seriously though, people let their kids watch tv for hours on end and when they need to burn off some of that pent up energy, and the parent is too tired/busy/lazy to take their kid outside or go to the park and the kid flips out, they resort to the kid being "ADHD" and put them on drugs. Bunch of goons.
@LadyLibellule@xanga - Thank you very much! It is amazing how many people choose to look at the surface of something and judge without having even half the facts.
To the author...There are varying degrees of Autism and something tells me you aren't among those qualified to make a diagnosis. The road to diagnosis can be extremely long, even if one has the resources. Between taking the proper channels and arguing with the military over coverage, it took me several months to get that diagnosis for my son and he is on the severe end of the spectrum. If we had to get that diagnosis today, with our current insurance provider...it would bankrupt us and that is just the diagnosis. (And I never did get military insurance to cover a single treatment beyond psychiatric drug therapy)
Treatment can run from between tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Books on the subject? LIbraries are often out of date and anything with the word Autism on it costs three times as much as other books.
I can't even begin to cover the emotional costs. Some parents do this part extremely well and others fall apart. As someone who has been on this journey for well over a decade and has met hundreds of other families along the way, I can't even begin to cover that cost here. I fault no parent for losing hope as this can be one seriously depressing journey.
As you have already demonstrated in this post, parents fight not only ignorant pediatricians who wouldn't know ASD if it came up and bit them on the ass. We fight insurance companies and government red tape when trying to get respite or SSI or any of the paltry services that get cut every time people cry for a tax break. We fight our own families and friends who insist (long after formal diagnosis) that nothing is wrong that a little discpline won't "fix". And then we fight celebrities such as Michael Savage and Denis Leary for over generalizing and encouraging their fans to judge situations they know NOTHING about. We fight complete strangers who insist that we are lazy parents.
Please let me know how YOU handle it happens to your child and your family. Until then, I bet plenty of parents of children with Autism could find plenty of faults with your own parenting style. "Judge not....."
Just because he doesn't show the classical signs of autism doesn't mean anything. My husband is autistic, but you wouldn't know it from meeting him. But the reason for that is that he has Asperger's, and not the typical form of autism that most people think of when they hear it. The boy might have one of the less known (to the public at large, anyways) forms of autism and they just haven't diagnosed it yet.
But the possability that the mother is just a lazy ass that should never have reproduced is another option. Being a mother-to-be, the idea that a mother could just leave her child in front of the tv and not bother trying to help him if she thought he had autism sickens me. People like that should not be allowed to have children.
@SarahAriella@xanga
@LadyLibellule@xanga - Very well put. I read this bit yesterday and was honestly seething and had to close the window because I couldn't think of anything to type that wasn't a bit out of hand. Autism isn't all non-verbal head banging in your own world hand flapping. The best thing I ever read someone saying about Autism is that if you've met one kid with autism - you have met one kid with autism. It is a spectrum.
I'm sure there are "lazy parents" that have children on the spectrum. There's lazy parents who have neurotypical children as well. Raising any child is hard and I think, I'd like to think anyways, that most parents are doing the best that they can with what they know and have to work with.
@SarahAriella@xanga - You're very correct that a lot of people have trouble getting diagnosis and that having an autistic child is difficult. i don't think anyone will dispute that. But still, there is absolutely no reason to just plop your child down in front of the tv and leave it be if you truly think they're autistic. As a parent, you're supposed to do everything possible to help your child develop, and it sounds as though this woman isn't even trying. There is no 'woe is me, look, my child has a problem' when you're a parent. It becomes 'what can I do to help even a little bit?'. What she's doing, whether that child is autistic or not, is not parenting. It's lazy.
I understand that it's hard to get a diagnosis. My husband didn't get diagnosed with Asperger's till sometime mid gradeschool, even though he'd show the signs of it for a while, and his family had been trying to find out what was 'wrong' with him. So yes, it's difficult to get your child diagnosed with any form or level of autism. But that's no excuse for giving up, and in all honesty, until you get any formal diagnosis, you should not go around telling people your child has something. If it turns out in a year or two the child is diagnosed with something much less severe, what do you tell all those people? You tell them you lied and assumed your child had a disease they didn't have that's caused so many problems for other people who did in fact have it?
I understand that you've gone through this yourself, and yes, I haven't. But speaking as a mother-to-be, with a risk of her child having the same form of autism her husband has - There is nothing in this world that should make a parent just stop trying. And from what the author says here, that's what it sounds like this woman has done, is just stopped trying. And there's no excuse for that.
There is a saying about autism: "If you've met one autistic kid...you've met one autistic kid." Meaning, that every child with autism presents differently. For a long time, I could not get our school district to believe that my son was autistic, because he talks non-stop (and has a large vocabulary to boot), has an IQ in the high normal range, and always wants to be in the middle of the group---definitely not the stereotype of the kid with autism who can't speak, is borderline retarded, and sits off in a corner by himself shunning all social interaction. His main symptoms of autism were a tendency to get overstimulated and get agressive with other kids, and an inability to pay attention to what people were telling him (for which he was thrown out of three daycare centers by age three.) They didn't start believing us until some of the specialists that *they* sent us to starting telling them, "uh, yeah, he's autistic."
The fact that your coworker's son was still having speech problems at age five strongly suggests to me that he is indeed autistic, and probably "high-functioning," so he looks normal in some ways to the casual observer. Also, I am not sure where you get that stuff about "blanking out." That sounds like you are confusing autism with a seizure disorder. While some kids with autism do have seizures, plenty don't, so you can't use that as a definitive diagnosis of autism. And it is really hard to get a diagnosis of autism where it exists, because there are too few specialists who have the expertise to diagnose it. We were told by my son's regular pediatrician and by a psychologist that he was a) not autistic, and b) had ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder, before (after eight hours of arguing on the phone with my insurance company) we were finally referred to a developmental pediatrician who was an autism specialist and was able to see what the others missed. He's since also been diagnosed by three educational psychologists (one from the school district) and another developmental pediatrician who's also an autism specialist. But this process took several years, and a lot of effort and advocacy on my part.
I should also mention that many autistic kids are very visual; my son could watch a movie straight through from beginning to end from a very young age. When I need a break from the rigors of dealing with a child with whom *nothing* is easy (it is a struggle to get him to do everything from eat a meal to dress himself to use the toilet), sometimes I just let him watch TV so that I have thirty minutes or an hour of peace to get my head together to be the kind of parent he needs. TV is also a tool for discipline for us; you can't always just punish kids by taking privileges away, sometimes they need to be rewarded for good behavior as well, and one of his favorite rewards is to get to watch a movie.
By the way, that lame excuse about not labelling a child autistic because of the stigma attached---that's what the special ed coordinator at the school district told me when they were denying that my son was autistic: "Oh, no, you don't want him 'labelled' autistic. That would be such a shame!" Uh, no, the shame would be in *not* being willing to label him autistic, when a) that's what he is, and b) he needs to have his disability documented to get services and treatment for it. My son is bright and creative and has a fearless spirit that wants to engage with life; he will probably end up graduating from college and living a relatively normal, productive life. *But,* he's also autistic, so he's going to need a lot of extra support along the way if he's going to be able to do that---from me, but also from his teachers, his extended family, our community---and, yeah, people can also help him out by giving his parents a little moral support instead of blaming an accident of genetics on us. I don't know if your former co-worker is a good parent or not---but the point is, not really understanding anything about autism or what this mother is going through, neither do you.
My son has Asperger's. He started exhibiting signs at age 2 but wasn't diagnosed until he was 5. The title of this blog makes it appear as though a parent is lazy if their child is autistic. We aren't. My son went through the staring in space, rocking, self beating, failure to make eye contact and it's hard. It's difficult when you can't communicate with your child the way a mother could with a "normal" child. I hate that word normal. It is a relative term.
There are plenty of people more than willing to armchair quarterback a parent about how they raise a child especially when they have no children of their own or they have never had to bring up an autistic child alone.
I don't even entertain people when they ask about my son. Why is he different? What's wrong with him? Nothing is wrong with him and it's none of your business. My son attends special classes and has made the honor roll. His autism allows him to understand things on another level that some kids just don't get. He is a wonderful little boy.
There is a saying about autism: "If you've met one autistic kid...you've met one autistic kid." Meaning, that every child with autism presents differently. For a long time, I could not get our school district to believe that my son was autistic, because he talks non-stop (and has a large vocabulary to boot), has an IQ in the high normal range, and always wants to be in the middle of the group---definitely not the stereotype of the kid with autism who can't speak, is borderline retarded, and sits off in a corner by himself shunning all social interaction. His main symptoms of autism were a tendency to get overstimulated and get agressive with other kids, and an inability to pay attention to what people were telling him (for which he was thrown out of three daycare centers by age three.) They didn't start believing us until some of the specialists that *they* sent us to starting telling them, "uh, yeah, he's autistic."
The fact that your coworker's son was still having speech problems at age five strongly suggests to me that he is indeed autistic, and probably "high-functioning," so he looks normal in some ways to the casual observer. Also, I am not sure where you get that stuff about "blanking out." That sounds like you are confusing autism with a seizure disorder. While some kids with autism do have seizures, plenty don't, so you can't use that as a definitive diagnosis of autism. And it is really hard to get a diagnosis of autism where it exists, because there are too few specialists who have the expertise to diagnose it. We were told by my son's regular pediatrician and by a psychologist that he was a) not autistic, and b) had ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder, before (after eight hours of arguing on the phone with my insurance company) we were finally referred to a developmental pediatrician who was an autism specialist and was able to see what the others missed. He's since also been diagnosed by three educational psychologists (one from the school district) and another developmental pediatrician who's also an autism specialist. But this process took several years, and a lot of effort and advocacy on my part.
I should also mention that many autistic kids are very visual; my son could watch a movie straight through from beginning to end from a very young age. When I need a break from the rigors of dealing with a child with whom *nothing* is easy (it is a struggle to get him to do everything from eat a meal to dress himself to use the toilet), sometimes I just let him watch TV so that I have thirty minutes or an hour of peace to get my head together to be the kind of parent he needs. TV is also a tool for discipline for us; you can't always just punish kids by taking privileges away, sometimes they need to be rewarded for good behavior as well, and one of his favorite rewards is to get to watch a movie.
By the way, that lame excuse about not labelling a child autistic because of the stigma attached---that's what the special ed coordinator at the school district told me when they were denying that my son was autistic: "Oh, no, you don't want him 'labelled' autistic. That would be such a shame!" Uh, no, the shame would be in *not* being willing to label him autistic, when a) that's what he is, and b) he needs to have his disability documented to get services and treatment for it. My son is bright and creative and has a fearless spirit that wants to engage with life; he will probably end up graduating from college and living a relatively normal, productive life. *But,* he's also autistic, so he's going to need a lot of extra support along the way if he's going to be able to do that---from me, but also from his teachers, his extended family, our community---and, yeah, people can also help him out by giving his parents a little moral support instead of blaming an accident of genetics on us. I don't know if your former co-worker is a good parent or not---but the point is, not really understanding anything about autism or what this mother is going through, neither do you.
@IamKelleyK@xanga - AMEN. I'm so sick of hearing that diagnosis, or "diagnosis" - I'm a hypochondriac and self-diagnose myself all the time, but I would never guess about a mental disorder that may or may not be affecting my child - I would get an actual diagnosis, and not just claim ADD/ADHD.
I think the point of this blog was overlooked by a lot of people - regardless as to whether or not the boy in question is truly autistic, the mom doesn't seem to be doing her job. I am going to work with my children A LOT on learning, etc. regardless of whether or not they're autistic. It's good parenting. TV is okay in moderation, but the TV shouldn't be your parenting device, and I think the point she was trying to make is much less severe than many people are making it out to be. Just my two cents.
I don't think any parent should be lazy with there child! I say "you weren't lazy about making the kids so don't be lazy raising him or her!" =)
@IamKelleyK@xanga - I agree. I have ADHD, but I've actually been diagnosed by at least 3 different doctors.
I have this friend, that like this first mom, brags (well, just goes around talking all the time). She claims she has ADD, and she takes medicine... she even brags (actually brags... and blames) her problems on her bipolar disorder and ADD. I mean I believe she has both, I've known her since 6th grade. But the thing I have a problem with, is that she blames her bad grades on her ADD and the stupid medicine. In my head I say, maybe it's just your lack of try.
I think the first mother is just plain lazy.
It is easy to judge when you are not walking in someone else's shoes. I tried every toy imaginable and outside activities as well, and the only way to keep the peace was to let him have his movies and games. A friend of mine had a child with similar issues, and she was always taking away those things to punish the child. It had the opposite effect, he became depressed and totally withdrawn.
If you think you know what to do with the child, why don't you offer to be a mentor. Maybe the parent is tired and depressed-as I have tended to be when I have tried everything I know to do, and have gone to every expert imaginable for ideas.
Children with these issues do not respond to the usual parenting methods such as withholding pleasures as rewards, as these children often cannot process the concept of time . . .
Bottom line, it's not as easy as it looks!
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