Acceptance & Denial

It seems to me, that within the autism community there are two camps.

Camp Acceptance promotes awareness, understanding and of course acceptance. My child is different not less. This is the way she is and we are not going to change her. This camp has great empathy for people with autism, doesn't seek to change them and is not looking for a cure so much as looking for ways to support and accommodate those on the spectrum

Camp Denial are the fighters, seeking ever more therapies, supplements, tools and strategies to treat their loved ones autism. They google the same topics repeatedly looking for new answers. If you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. They continually question and fight to deny autism's grip on their loved one.

My Tigerlily is still very young, only 6 years old and I am usually to be found in camp denial. There was a big response to a line I wrote in one of my early posts.

"  Now I'm waging war against the invisible enemy who steals my child's smiles and interrupts her dreams at night."

I would cure my little girls autism. I want a cure. I want her to be free from all the sensitivities, stims and difficulties that arise because of her autism. I want her to be able to drink a warm drink when she's cold. I want her to be able to move all the parts of her body at once and do a great doggy paddle across the pool. I want her to be able to sleep at a sleepover and fix all the things that autism wrecks. I've been fighting this battle for a few years and I've won and lost battles along the way but I am not ready to give up the fight.

Now some will argue that autism alone does not cause all the symptoms I'm describing. That its the comorbid diagnoses that go with autism. That an autistic mind is a beautiful mind and seeing the world differently is a gift etc. That if she wasn't autistic she wouldn't be my Tigerlily.

But the fact of the matter is that autism rarely comes to the party alone. She's that annoying friend who shows up at your birthday with her own little posse.
She brings along sleep disorders and gastrointestinal issues, eating disorders, OCD, ODD, ADHD, SPD, epilepsy, fragile X syndrome, Rett etc.

Tigerlily's HFA isn't travelling alone. Although I have not sought formal diagnosis its' a pretty reasonable hypothesis that she has SPD. I always expected the ADHD that runs in my family and I'm thinking she's leaning towards ODD. I don't know what benefit would be derived from having the additional diagnoses as I am already treating everything I can, anyway I can. I'm a fighter because
 without her autism she would just be Lily.


And if she was just Lily, I would still have the same hopes and dreams I had for her before she was diagnosed with autism.

The High functioning Life, some of us are better at accepting our fate than others.

HFL Mama