Autism is freedom

Most people think of a child with autism as retarded. Lets take a look at that word for a minute. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines the word retarded as "slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress". If you ask any person on the street what retarded means they'll all mostly say it means dumb.

I will concede that my son takes longer to learn how to write his name and longer to understand about feelings, but I know from experience he is far from dumb. In fact, I think he's smarter than most "normal" people.

He decides something and does it, not matter what the outcome. I can tell you there are times it makes me uneasy, but other times I wonder at him. He has done things that hurt him, like running on the couch, and promptly falling off of it into the coffee table. Which starts a 20 minute cry fest as his mom and I trying to find out what happened. He is also able to pay with the most mundane of items, like a string, or a piece of ribbon, or a rock. I can only imagine what he's thinking about when he's playing with those things. 

We are all held back by fear, social norms, peer pressure, society or any number of things. He has freedom. He is free to choose to do, and he does. All of our choices are decided for us by what others will think and feel, not his. We have people expecting us to preform a certain way in any situation, he doesn't. We make a decision and hold ourselves to that decision, he doesn't, if he changes his mind about something, it doesn't bother him. 

He will pee in the front yard, because he has to go. To the best of my ability I explain to him that he's not supposed to do that, but what can you do? If he decides its time to wake up, and he's awake at 3:30 in the morning, then it doesn't matter if we're all still asleep or not. If he thinks we all need to eat pancakes for dinner, guess what? Yup, pancake time. 

He has a freedom many of us will never know. He is free to choose whatever path he wants. He chooses not to like someone at the first meeting, and will let them know, and doesn't usually change his mind about someone. 

He may be slow to learn about things. His emotional development may be limited or slow, and it does take him longer to learn anything academically than other people. People will also call him dumb, but I think he's far from dumb. I think he's smarter than the people who would call him dumb. I think he has control over something so many people in this world work their whole lives to grasp and never truly find, and that's freedom.