There is a blogger in my home town; she write for other places which is why I "know" of her. Anyways, I saw this blog post she had written basically saying that kids with autism shouldn't be included in mainstream. You can read it here. I had to respond and as of now I see my comment hasn't been approved. I believe mine is a message that is important and needs to get out. I will publish here what that comment was so others can see the response.
"There's this little law out there called IDEA that entitles my children to something called the Least Restrictive Environment. IDEA was authorized in 1972 if I remember correctly. So, for 40 years children with special needs have had thee rights to go to a public school and not be turned away.
I am quite thankful for this law. You see, as a resident of the same town in which you live in, I happen to have 3 kids who are on the spectrum. I take what you say very much to heart. You, as the mom of a typical kid, get to worry about things like "what outfit is he/she wearing today" or "what lunch am I packing for them today". I have to worry about people's perceptions of my children. My beautiful boys...my boys that people are afraid of simply for one word...autism. I have to worry about the kid on the bus calling my kid "diarrhea breathe", hitting him, stealing his hat, etc. I have to worry about my child not being able to read, reading programs, math programs, etc. I have to worry about my 5 year old not being able to communicate what he wants and crying for his "mama" in school. I have to worry about the alphabet soup called IEP, LRE, IDEA, 504, etc.
I have to worry about my 1st graders and people going into their classrooms, not knowing that my boys don't know they are "different" and someone pointing it out to them. We have talked in our house about autism and what it means. To us, autism is just a part of who my boys are just like their eye colors and hair colors.
I implore you to contact me. I know you have seen me; I have run for school board, am co-president of the HPAC in our town and work hard to help make the "stigma" of special needs go away. To us normal is a setting on our dryer, not a character trait. I would love to help you understand there's no need to attach a stigma to any special need."
2 comments:
Kudos to you for sharing your comment and I really hope it gets approved and appears on her blog as well. It infuriates me that a person armed with little knowledge and NO personal experience is spewing her opinion everywhere. The incidents she describes didn't even happen to her and are heresay! Yours was a powerful, respectful and thoughtful comment.
Oh, her post pissed me off. She has ZERO clue about autism and therefore should NOT be writing about it like she does. And while she might have heard those stories from friends- they are two isolated incidents AND told from the perspective of an outsider who also has no clue about autism.
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