DAY ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY: #masking

“BUT I DON’T WANT MY CHILD LABELLED”

OK, but here’s the thing. If you have an autistic child, they’re being labelled anyway. But with labels that don’t fit, labels they don’t deserve, suffocating layers of labels which gradually cover their whole face until they don’t recognise themselves anymore.

Lazy, obnoxious, difficult, unteachable, miserable, selfish, stuck up, rude, retarded, defiant, too loud, too boisterous, too quiet, too weird. Too much.

Trouble.

A problem.

You might feel that by attaching a different label, like “normal”, “able”, “neurotypical” your child will somehow mould to fit the mask.

They won’t. They can’t. Their neurology was determined before they took their first breath of air and will still be there, autistic as fuck, the moment they take their last. You can’t change it, they can’t change it. It’s who they are. Your alternative non-autistic child doesn’t exist and never will.

And that’s OK. Better than OK, that’s beautiful.

Almost all autistics diagnosed later in life say they desperately wish they could have been diagnosed in early childhood. That they could have avoided the years of alienation, blame, guilt and pure exhaustion of trying and failing to keep the heavy, slippery mask on their faces.

Ashamed of every innate quality about them.

Performing “normal” is exhausting work which breaks many of us again and again. It isn’t sustainable and in my opinion it isn’t even desirable in the first place.

Autistics aren’t broken neurotypicals. Autistics aren’t failed projects or rejects. Autistics are different, not less. There’s no shame in speaking our name honestly.