This is TOTALLY your fault.
Were you were too fat when you were pregnant? Did you take antidepressants at all in the year before you got pregnant with your child? Did you get pregnant too soon after having your autistic child’s sibling? Did you eat tuna while you were pregnant? Did you have a boy? Did you have your baby early or late? Did you vaccinate your child? Were those vaccines full of dead babies? Did you DARE not breastfeed? Did you breastfeed? Do you live close to a freeway? Did you use plastic bottles when you fed your child? Did you ever let your child watch TV? Did you or your child ever consume anything that had high fructose corn syrup in it?
Oh, and your child is STILL autistic? Why haven’t you cured him yet? Jenny McCarthy cured her son, and she’s a porn star…how come you haven’t cured your kid yet? Haven’t you heard about ALL of the others who cured their kids autism? You’re just not trying hard enough.
Because that’s what Autism Awareness is about! Guilt!
Sometimes, it feels like autism awareness is ONLY about finding a cause so we can find a cure. This does more to harm autism acceptance, especially for parents of children with autism, myself included. I worked hard to find out what caused my son’s autism because I wanted to cure him. I wasted time I could have just spent accepting him for who he is.
Yes, it would be nice to find out what causes autism. And I believe that we need to fund studies to get to that point. But the studies coming out lately?! Really? Who’s getting paid millions of dollars for those? Right now, the population of llamas is higher than it has ever been before (I made that up). So is the population of people with autism. Autism is caused by llamas! Someone pay me seven figures for that!
Autism Awareness needs to be about our kids, it needs to be about adults with autism who are happy with their autism. It’s about people with autism being treated equally. It needs to be about there being easier access to services, to respite, to better educational opportunities, to healthcare. And yet, here we are.
Damn girl, there you go again writing another kick ass post I am going to need to share on my wall because its so fucking awesome.
This post is so freaking awesome!and I always knew it those Llamas were to blame. Freaking problem animals that is what they are.
Love it! Autism is caused by llamas made me laugh out loud.
Oh, Lexi, I just love you! This is fantastic!
Oh yes, my son's autism is totally my fault. I haven't cured him yet. I guess it's because I'm one of those moms who works outside the home and lets someone take care of my kid. I'm obviously not as dedicated to my child as Jenny. The fact that I will need to scrape a few thousand dollars together to hire an attorney to make sure my son gets the appropriate school placement leads me to believe that those who need the awareness most are busy pointing the blame…
A-freakin'-men, Girl. So glad to find your blog thanks to Ryan Gosling! He showed me the way. =)
AMEN.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. Amazing post…it's getting shared…
I knew it! Those llamas are just plain evil.
Oh, I love this!
Hear, hear! My granddaughter is on the spectrum and my daughter didn't use pitocin (an autism mom I know is trying to see a connection between pitocin and autism). She said maybe because I needed pitocin when I gave birth to my daughter……………………llamas.
Thank you for telling it like it is, Lexi!
My son thinks that he's your son. Not that, that has anything to do with this post. Everytime I come to your page, my son say in an amazed voice, LOOK JAXEL! I try to tell him, that it's not him, but he doesn't believe me.
Your endorsement is like crack to me. CRACK.
ahahahah "problem animals"
Yep. All of those things. I'd be willing to be that future studies will show other areas where it's ALSO your fault.
Thank Sunday for that one. She's bringing together the raddest group of Autism people EVER.
I forgot that one! I had like seventeen bags of it when Casey was born. TOTALLY my fault.
Kirsten, just go with it. I'd keep him for my own anyways.
thanks – I get nervous about "giving" micah – or boo, in utero – autism all the time. ugh.question about the meme thing – so you get the blank one on Adventures and fill it in with whatever is relevant for yourself that week? Then what? write a post on it on Friday? or link up? or?
I ate a lot of BLTs when I was pregnant. It was the nitrates.My son likes bacon now too, so it worked out.Maybe April should be Bacon Awareness Month instead?
AutismWonderland – I'm lacking too and I am one of those mom's who works outside of the home and lets someone take care of both my kids. Turns out they like to eat mor than they like to sit at home with there mama.
OMG Flannery!! So did I! It's the bacon! I do love BACON!!
I craved red meat during my pregnancy, it was the hormones! Cows on drugs caused my son's Autism! Yeah, I really don't want to know why my son is autistic. If they figure out causes, great, but I don't want to know. I have enough guilt and worry as it is.
Brilliant, Lexi! You left out circumcision.
(Hope you saw that thread on babycenter or you'll think I've lost my mind!!)
SEE?! It's because more moms like you are entering the work force. That's the increase right there! Never mind all of the women who had to go to work during the World Wars. That isn't the same.
Yes. She posts the picture you can use on Wednesdays, but you're more than welcome to use any Ryan Gosling meme. Then just write something about having a kid with Special needs that you wish Ryan would say to you. Or something like that. Are you friends with Sunday on facebook? She's fantastic.
I did not see that. Now I need to go have a good, good laugh. Circumcision and autism? Please tell me you're joking.
Yeah, I opened the thread ready to raise hell about another ridiculous "study", but the person who started the thread said she "overheard" someone talking about a link. Here ya go: http://community.babycenter.com/post/a32896231/circumcision_linked_to_autism
oh yeah–it was circumcision that caused my daughters autism—thank goodness I finally have an answer lol
Also, I thought it was hilarious, at first, that a mother would even consider a connection between flippin' circumcision and Autism, but then I realized how it's complete bullshit that any mother has been driven to sit and worry and second guess every little decision she's made about her child all because she's concerned she caused her child's Autism.
Lexi, of course this was awesome, blahblahblah. Except for one thing: how DARE you say that about llamas? What the hell did they ever do to you besides offer their unconditional love and affection, no strings attached? They're innocent. Except for Carl.
Carl's a homicidal maniac.
Thank you Thank you Thank you!!! I am so OVER what I did to cause my son's AUTISM!!! This IS an AWESOME post!!!
lexi: i guess i'm the mom in left field in this group, because i am a "curebie". our DAN! stopped 2.5 years of severe diarrhea, so after seeing that with my own eyes i am a believer…and my son has made a lot of gains from dietary changes and supplements and such. but i love ya'll nonetheless. regardless of our stance on the diet, supplements, and biomed, we are all a community. even the crucified porn star?when i saw that media blitz on the "fat mamas and autism", I nearly spit out my morning coffee…food for thought, read page 11 with a fine tooth comb: from fda.gov:http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/ucm101580.pdffor those of you too busy to link, here's the direct quote from page 11 that deeply disturbed me this week {on FDA's website}:Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting.it's the llamas, right??lol…
We tried the GF/CF diet. We tried supplements. It didn't work with Casey. He didn't have gut issues to begin with. I believe that in the future, there will be several types of autism, or even different diagnoses that are now all lumped together AS autism. I think kids that respond to the gut thing have a different kind of autism than Casey. If it worked for your son, that's fantastic. But it didn't work with mine and loads of other parents. Doesn't mean your wrong or that I'm right. I think we're dealing with different processes.I don't fully believe that Jenny McCarthy, who I did not crucify here, is a part of our "community". There's serious doubts to whether or not her son had autism in the first place. Her story has changed and shifted over time. She had her beliefs, as you have yours. Just because she's in the public eye doesn't give her the right for her words to carry any more weight than yours or mine, and definitely not more than medical professionals. The FDA has those same adverse events for many common medicines. Serious incidents HAVE to be reported whether or not the event can fully be attributed to the medicine the person is on. Having "autism" on that list to me doesn't CONNECT the autism to the vaccine. If there were 100 children in that study, statistically speaking, 12 would show up with autism ANYWAYS. If you have to go through a study with a fine toothed comb to prove that autism is linked to vaccines, there's something wrong. If it really was linked, how come ALL of the other MAJOR studies, done by the government and independent bodies have NOT shown a link?If vaccines caused autism, why aren't the numbers of children with autism DOWN since this anti-or delayed vaccine movement began? What I was trying to say here is that I don't care what caused it at this point. Unless they can find some way to reverse it IN MY CHILD (you found what works for yours) what I really want this god forsaken month to be about is acceptance, access to services and respite. I truly respect your opinion because it was born from personal experience. I wish I had the same experience with my son.
My husband swears that my son’s austim is not what they consider the real austim…he feels that there is austim caused by today’s combination of external factors which overwhelmed our son’s immune system. We went into the whole biomedial knowing that it may not help. During our journey, we discovered that my son is allergic to a lot of foods…we are one of those lucky ones on the road to recovery. He went from a non-verbal 3.5 year old to being a 6 year old in a normal kindergarten class doing 2nd grade work (the paras help him from becoming bored). By the way, my son lied to me the other day and tried to hide it the evidence..which if you know anything about the milestones…austistic kids may lie but they won’t try convince you of something different or do something like hide the evidence. He may always have some social delays but at this point we hope he loses his diagnosis… remember “austim” is classified by having 5-7 different items in a list…he was at one point classifed as “severe” but he doesn’t do those items any longer… maybe one or two.
sorry, that wasn't hilarious AT ALL!
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Sorry, my math is wrong. I had it wrong in my head. If there were 1,000 children in that study at least 12 would have autism anyways.
Oh God. If Meriah gets it on this I will have to seriously start wearing Depends.
Awesome. As always. Thanks!
Lexi, I have really enjoyed your posts about autism. I don't know much about it and have been questioning all the thing that the media have been saying lately. I'm glad I could come here and read it from a person who knows first hand how and what autism is. Your kids are so cute and it is great that through it all you keep going. That is all we can so sometime because if we stop we would probably drown. Keep going girl you can do it.
I might as well get ready for Ellie then…. 36 hours of labor worth of pitocen. Probably caused her Down syndrome, too.
Leah, Lexi recently suggested going pant-free to help with the recent issues many of us have been having. But the issues are still her fault. Like autism.
What's the chick equivalent of a bromance crush? Cause I totally have that on you, now.
Obvz I love this post.
Right back at you, Natalie!
MomCrush. I don't like flowers, though. Cold.Hard.Cash.
You had me at Jenny McCarthy. How many times have people only had that hook to use when they discuss autism and my family … way too many. Freakin' *celebrity* llamas!
With you, with you, with you. I did only two things this month: I wrote a post celebrating my daughter at the beginning of the month, and yesterday I wrote a post for the AutismPositivity2012 flash blog project. Everything else in between made me more or less nauseous or furious. First, the study came that autism is dad's fault, because some men carry an "autism" gene. But, that means it's really my fault, right? Because, I picked the dad without requiring genetic testing first. What was I thinking? I've also had the audacity to get pregnant after being fat, eating high fructose corn syrup, standing under a utility pole, having x-rays, using a cell phone, eating raw honey and taking NSAIDs. Oh, oh, oh … AND … I ate a shitload of clementines when I was pregnant. You know what's in them? Folic acid – that same folic acid they preach at expecting mothers to take even before they get pregnant. Just wait. That study is coming … Now excuse me while I go pet a llama.
Two Thumbs up – Stumble upon your blog and I can say I am officially hooked
Can a momcrush be signed and sealed with jerky? For your careful explanation of the vaccine issue, I would send you a case of beef jerky. And I don't even eat beef.
Yep, amen, amen, and amen. To all of the above. "Raising awareness" is only a sweet and convenient idea, but it is high time to move beyond that as a goal. Raising awareness requires the least amount of work and funding from our elected officials, esp. our schools, the least amount of involvement of our communities and the least amount of transparency from organizations who raise money uder the autism banner. Acceptance, access to services and respite; those things require work, money, investment and a greater effort from all of the above.Great blog, BTW.
Love this! Let us all wallow in the guilt of how we ruined our children, one pathetic research grant at a time. Definitely coming back for more.
I love this! I'm going to link to it on my blog—it says what I'd like to say, but with a sassier attitude than I am usually good at!
I love you. LOVE. Anyone who offers to send me beef jerky is at the very top of my list.
I hope you do. And bring your friends. Blogging can be a lonely place. We can all make fun of each other. That's delightfulness to me.
Thank you! I appreciate it SO SO much.
ahahahahahahaaa. you should do that study. They'll pay you a million dollars.
I just heard on the news this morning that if you contract the flu while you are pregnant your chances double as far as having a child with autism.
Not only did I do all of the things that caused my son’s autism, but I also like llamas. Well, llamas that don’t spit at me. The cure is to find a school that discovers that your child is not Autistic while in the classroom. That certainly helped me.
Good read and I’d love if this “awareness” movement could highlight the awesome things about people on the spectrum.
Sincerely,
LlamaMama
I ate loads of spinach while pregnant and took multivitamins. That did it.
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