Category Archives: change

My Speech at the Mental Health Advocacy Services Celebration

I am truly honored to be standing here tonight receiving this recognition. I am honored to be here with our District Attorney, Jackie Lacey, too. It is a reminder that advocates can be high school students or politicians, or anyone else. We just need to care deeply about a cause.

As you look at me, some of you must be wondering if I really wrote my speech.
After all, you’ve probably heard that most nonverbal autistic people have low cognition, no insight, no theory of mind, no inner world and poor receptive language.

Guess who told you that? It wasn’t people with autism, that’s for sure.

I have a very misunderstood condition. My disability is caused by my brain’s faulty linkage to my motor system. So truly, I think and understand though I may look like I don’t. Add to that a sensory system that is malfunctioning, and you have an idea how tough it can be.

The truth is, autism itself is easier than the incorrect assumptions by the so-called experts and specialists out there. A locked-in, motor impaired, sensory overwhelmed child cannot escape this on his own. Consequently, few nonverbal autistic people learn to communicate. Experts comfort themselves that we can’t communicate because we don’t understand.

I got fed up with this, because all around me are smart autistic people dying of boredom and loneliness, not able to communicate one idea more sophisticated than a basic need.

My decision at twelve was to speak out and correct this misinformation.

I was denied an education in elementary school because of the expert opinion that an academic curriculum was beyond my intellectual abilities. Now I am an AP student in 12th grade, ready to go to college next year. If my parents had listened to my experts I would still be stagnating in 1+2=3 expectations.

Things are changing gradually. Other autistic typers are speaking out too. We face resistance by people who believe theories over truth. But in time I know that the current paradigm will be discarded, like so many other incorrect theories, and the nonverbal will at last have a voice in their futures.

Thank you.

The Courage to Hear, to Learn, to Change

Guts means the courage to change. My book, my speeches, and my efforts have challenged people who have gotten accustomed to seeing severe autism in a traditional way. We need rudimentary lessons. We need drills to learn words, understand emotions, recognize the people in our lives, notice gender. We need baby talk because we don’t understand English or speech. We need M&Ms because we have no motivation. It is an illusion to imagine we can be more.
So, I am honored and amazed when parents and educators write to me that my explanations changed this thinking after years of seeing it one way. One person said it “hit him like an anvil on the head.” One described how he was, “shaken to the core.” One mom wrote a long letter about how she had always believed that the potential for her son to type was “delusional,” but after reading my book she understood how he could be smart but trapped internally. Now she types with him freely. He is 20 and finally able to communicate his ideas and finally is seen as intelligent. Brave moms, Brave dads, because they now have to face systems that have to look at why their methods could not see this possibility in the person with autism.
“I now speak normally with my son and it has changed everything,” I hear over and over. “I see my students differently,” I hear as well. One brave teacher wrote that she now wonders if she has been going at it wrong for decades. Kudos to them for thinking openly. It is guts.
I will tell you one lady with guts is my old teacher from when I was small. I write in my book how I loved her in spite of my frustration and boredom in her class due to babyish lessons and repetition. Fate has plans and recently my mom ran into her many times after years of no contact. After several weeks she told my mom she would like to read my book. I knew it would be painful for her because I talk about her- not by name, but she would know. I wrote her a note. After reading my book she came to my mom with a letter for me. She wrote that she tried to read it through my eyes. She was powerfully impacted and was determined to teach differently, to see her students differently too. She has been teaching a long time. This is guts and I admire her.

Getting Back to Normal

Recently I had a challenging episode of autism at its most intense level. I can’t tell you how horrible it was to live in my body during that brief time, and horrible for people to be in my company too. I am sure I was helped by medication that stabilized my system. It is a lifesaver to have it, that’s for sure. It frightened me to have so little control over my emotional regulatory system, but I am getting back to normal. I have to make it up to the people who were near me then because I’m not happy I behaved the way I did. The consequence of this is that I have to try getting more self control during times of stress and change.