We need to care less about whether our children are academically gifted, and ...

... more about whether they sit with the lonely kid in the cafeteria. – Valerie Williams

It is truly dismaying and sobering to repeatedly encounter mindsets and attitudes that perceive autism as a disease, a disaster, and something absolutely worthy of rejection, and that describe and evaluate it accordingly. Parents who are so bitter about the fact that their 16 year old daughter not only doesn't speak, but needs help and support on a daily basis that they, for one, soak up anything, really anything, that comes across even halfway scientifically dressed and tells stories of how diet, bacteria, antibiotics, and last but not least, of course, vaccinations, if not cause autism, then "cause it to break out" and "make it worse". Genetics and epigenetics are not only happily confused, but lumped together, and then it is claimed that one sees it every day in one's own house.

Visual impairments are also often genetic. However, this does not mean that all children in a family necessarily need glasses. I needed glasses from elementary school (I was six years old), I had inherited that from my father, my sister, who shares the same parents with me and also grew up in the same household, ate the same, attended the same family functions, didn't need glasses all her life. Only due to the age long-sightedness she has to use glasses for reading now.

We know from families with one light-skinned European and one dark-skinned African parent that among, say, five siblings, one child can be as light-skinned as the mother or father - or as dark-skinned, or simply brown. Skin color is not determined by diet and other epigenetic influences, and neither is genetics something that is quasi-compellingly set in stone and determines a person's life without exception. The genetic specifications are a can, but not a must. Exactly this way of thinking has led to caste systems, racism and fascism, with the argumentation that the apple never falls far from the tree and a working class child is always a working class child. But this is wrong. Today we know that epigenetic influences do have an enormous effect - but this also does not mean that the delicate brown-skinned child from India will or could become a tall, strong Swedish rower as a result of a changed environment. This argument completely forgets or simply ignores the fact that certain ethnic differences have evolved over millennia and countless generations (and no, this does not include skin color or eye or head shape, but such really important things as the ability to (better) digest raw food; enzymes in the stomach that can process milk, or the lack of these; and how a body is generally equipped for a particular climate, be it tropical or arctic).

But because autism is seen as a brain disorder, people believe they can (and must!) “do something about it."

Furthermore, such parents in their bitterness reject everything that deviates from what they themselves experience. With barely concealed contempt and rejection are met those whose autism manifests itself differently, and who may (be able to) live independently as adults. Loosely based on the motto, "If you can express yourself, you can't be autistic."

Autism is as individual as fingerprints, thank you, and it's pretty cheeky to talk about adult "autistics" in quotes, just to mention one recent example.

Autism is not a disease. But it can really be a “discapacity”, in certain situations and circumstances, for some more, for others less, in some situations more, in others less... It varies from individual to individual. And of course, other challenges can be present, mental, intellectual, physical…

But just because I need glasses that don't show my vision, and someone else needs glasses that are so thick that you can barely see their face, doesn't mean that both people don't have a visual impairment.

I myself have changed continents, climates, and the associated environmental influences several times in my life. I ate a lot of meat as a child and teenager, then none at all, then a little more, then less. I tried out a lot of things nutritionally, if only because of my life circumstances. For a while I did a lot of sports, for a while none at all; for a while I did a lot of meditation and yoga, for a while none of that.

And nothing, NOTHING of it had even a minimal influence on how I perceive the world in the neurological sense! And autism is a form of perception and stimulus processing.

The only thing I can influence is how I deal with it, emotionally and mentally, and also cognitively. When I drown in self-accusation and self-rejection, it naturally has an enormous impact on my psychological and physical well-being. The more I learn to accept myself, forgive myself, and meet myself with patience and kindness, the more I give myself what I need, and that in turn leads to an improved quality of life and less occasion for such typically autistic things as sensory overload and resulting meltdowns and/or shutdowns.

And not only since psychological studies and research we know that a child who feels lovingly accepted, develops just such a self-perception - and if s/he is rejected from the start, this leads to self-rejection, and thus to a, yes, almost endless series of mental and psychological and physical problems.

Dear Parents, I know it can be challenging, sometimes extremely so. But please: accept your child as it is! It is not as if s/he has chosen this in order to perhaps "smack you in the face"! Trust in and practice love and compassion, especially when everything seems completely hopeless. Life is not "fair", for no one. But I can assure you from my very own personal experience over and over again: if there is something that can work miracles, it is love and compassion.