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Yesterday, an older kid was chasing my child around and yelling. When the sitter asked him to stop because it was terrifying my child, the boy says,"That's weird," and runs off. After some time to calm down, my child is back to playing.
The boy immediately starts chasing her and yelling-- again. This terrified my child to meltdown. The sitter sees the older boy's mother and asks, "Your son is just playing, and everyone else is fine with it, but it's really scaring her. Would you mind to ask him to stop?"
The mother says, "He's not doing anything wrong. Boys will be boys." The sitter confirms that he's not doing anything wrong, but that my child is autistic and plays differently. She's younger, and she doesn't understand why he's chasing her and yelling.
The sitter, who is also an autistic advocate, believed in this woman's empathy. The woman replied, "No I will not ask him to stop. My child is *normal.* Normal. Yours is the one with the problems."
What most people don't realize is how much work it took to my daughter to feel confident to play around other children. What they don't realize is how much effort and time it took for her to build the motor skills to play on playground equipment.
What they also don't realize is how absolutely damn mediocre and toxic their love of "normality" is. My child sings when she plays. She does sign language. She picks up other kids' dropped toys and hands them to their owners. She claps for other kids and tells them, "Good job."
She watches the older kids play on bigger equipment and giggles. She makes the spaces she visits better for just existing in them. She is full of #AutisticJoy. She is everything this mother could ever dream to have in a child. She's not normal, and for that, I'm so glad.
But for that other mother-- her child is "normal" and so is she. It's normal to pick on or look down on kids who are different. It's normal to accept majority privilege. It's normal to just go to a place with a child and turn them loose with other children.
It's normal to NOT spend two years of having therapy equipment in your living room and going out on short trips to the playground at off hours daily to help your kid gradually build the motor coordination.
It's normal for people to see a perfectly "normal-looking" kid whose caregivers ask for "special treatment" and to think of that kid as a "snowflake” and the adult as a helicopter. It's normal to be on a playdate with friends and chatting while kids run around.
It's normal to not worry about how easily your child can be injured because of a connective tissue disorder. It's normal to not have a bad interaction that sets your kid back for weeks or months being too afraid to go to the places they love most.
But I would rather be me as a mother than like a "normal" mom. I sure love everything about my daughter. She is not a burden to me. Normal people are. Please make it NORMAL to teach children to respect other's boundaries. Please stop assuming accommodations are entitlements.
Please stop trying to fix kids like mine and instead fix yourselves. Make a new normal that doesn't involve an abject lack of empathy. Make it normal to teach children to be kind to those who are different. Because your current version of normal needs a cure.
