Autism Parents, Don’t Let the Bullies Silence You

“I have a deep sympathy for the tribulations of autism parents and will continue to reject the wicked aspersions cast upon them.”

Parents are often shamed by disability activists for sharing stories of severe autism. Pictured: a young man with severe autism sitting in a tree with multiple iPads.

By Tom Clements

Neurodiversity (ND) advocates are a small but powerful ideological group who depend on the tacit support of a much larger group of well-intentioned social liberals. Not wanting to seem unkind, the mainstream liberals tend to go along with the trendy ideas however much they run contrary to prevailing evidence.

Through a sustained effort, social justice activists intent on reshaping the discussion around autism have effectively usurped parents and even mainstream organisations as the de facto authority on all things autism. To me and to many other advocates, autistic and non-autistic alike, this is a deeply disturbing trend, not least because of the fanaticism of those espousing such a counter-intuitive and counter-factual philosophy.

To those who understand the insidious nature of the ND movement (including the desire to de-fund therapeutics and programs for the severely autistic, and to disempower caring parents), it is all rather terrifying. In a cult-like fashion, parents, in a similar fashion to dissenting autistics like me, are attacked remorselessly if they dare transgress against any of neurodiversity’s rigid axioms. Rather than…