My daughter is a high school senior. F wants to go to art school and become an animator – or maybe a voice actor. Or both. She founded the Dungeons & Dragons club at school. Her report cards are largely dotted with As and Bs.
F is also autistic. Proudly so. She attended a district preschool that specializes in working with special needs kids, and she flourished with early, non-ABA-type intervention there. She has learned over the years how to manage her time and energy and not burn out under the kind of academic pressures she and her classmates face, even though she’s been in honors courses throughout high school.
The more we learned about autism, the more we saw that (a) it is not a death sentence, and (b) it is hereditary. C and I realized that we are likely both neurodivergent, sharing multiple tendencies associated with ADHD and autism. My late sister often mused that she was probably ADHD and possibly autistic; the latter part of her life bore that out as she struggled with severe overwhelm and basic living. None of us have been officially diagnosed, but our experiences align with those of actual neurodivergent people.
And yet. Here we are in 2025 and we have to hear this administration screech about vaccines and – horrors – Tylenol causing autism, and that everything villainized in relation to autism must be stopped because the president and his anti-science flunkies have “very strong feelings about autism” and say it must be stopped.
Fact is, autistic people have always been around; they’ve just not always been identified as such (and often were institutionalized before – or even after – scientists first identified autism). This so-called epidemic stems from greater awareness of autism and expansion of diagnoses beyond the stereotypical white males long identified with this neurotype. (Also, it should be noted that autism was first diagnosed in 1943; Tylenol was invented in 1955.)
It’s deeply unsettling to know the president and his ilk don’t believe people like my daughter should exist or are not fully human. She and all autistics deserve to live their lives as they see fit with the love and support that all people should have.