That’s as bright as it’s been really….

But at least there are the first signs of this year’s flowers.

I recently bumped into someone we got to know at Hawklad’s first school and she asked after him with the following words…..

“Is he now over his Autism….”

Deep sigh…. Where do you start with that….

What’s really worrying is those words came from a Teacher.

88 thoughts on “Sigh”

  1. When we assume professional folks have the good sense to ask the right questions…we are always disappointed. We walk away with our head shaking….so nice to see flowers again!

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  4. Oh, dear. A teacher asked this?!?! I visited a nearby elementary today–the first time in a long time. Finley and I read my little book to a precious group of deaf and hard-of-hearing amazing little humans. One boy threw a laptop about 5 feet and the screen busted into pieces. I was SO impressed with how the situation was handled. Truly, magnificent teachers and aides. Later, that boy REJOINED us and held my pup, Finley. What a win for him! I’m sighing with you. And praying for sunshine! 💛💛💛

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  11. These things both infuriate me and break my heart because these are the same individuals that interact with our kids and help shape their self concept and experience with learning. I’m so sorry, Gary. Deep big sigh indeed!

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  18. A teacher said that? Oh my word. I’d have been tempted to reply with something sarcastic like, “No, he hasn’t got around to that yet. We’ll try to schedule it in for the weekend, when his anti-Autism pills will arrive from Amazon.” What a stupid, ignorant comment!

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      1. I am shocked but not surprised. We’ve all had autism training but we had to ask and ask more times than I can remember!

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      3. Schools can be like that. We have a huge intake of autistic students and we had to beg for the training. We just kept being told, “Oh, you’re all doing fine without it.”

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      1. And I just saw a “interview” your Tory Education Minister saying that Sunak being PM proves that the Tories are not Islamophobic, and it’s like…HE’S NOT MUSLIM!!! Get to Sweden as quick as you!

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  20. A thought just came to me: for those who are not able to understand autism – your beautiful blog would be the perfect ‘teaching tool’. If all not in the know could just start reading your blog from the very first post and keep going, they’d be very different. I know how much I myself have learned from your writings. Because of that teacher’s post, from now on, whenever the opportunity presents, I will place the link to your blog in the hope that it will enlighten others, one soul at a time.

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  21. Oh dear. We couldn’t convince our youngest’s primary school teacher of even the existence of dyslexia. By the time for a move to a middle school the teacher asked to borrow books on the subject. It looks as if your teacher acquaintance was less of a learner

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  22. Wow! I know the feeling. Willie had a home coordinator from his school working with him for two week. There was a parent’s/teacher meeting and when my daughter mentioned Willie’s Autism, the coordinator said, “Oh. I didn’t know he had Autism.” My daughter said immediately, “I don’t want her back at my house.”

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    1. “I do my best to assume a lack of knowledge instead of malicious intent with questions like that from anyone, let alone a teacher.” Or my personal favorites when dealing with people who have limited empathy, and toss judgements willy nilly: “I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.”

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    1. Awesome! I love how it’s oblique…like am I the alligator, or are you?! Do you like your limbs? My teeth are sharp, how close do you want to get to them? Thanks for inspiring me to research why I love that joke for questions that stump me: “An alligator can regenerate a lost tooth up to 50 times. In what must come as good news for hockey players, researchers at the University of Southern California are studying alligators’ teeth to see if doctors could one day stimulate adult humans to automatically replace a tooth if they lose one.”

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  27. My grandson who has been through the mill, so to speak, with Autism, and has documentation going back almost two decades substantiating all of it, has been asked recently to go through further testing to ensure he still suffers! What! Are they mad?
    No, not mad, just plain without understanding. Sigh!

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