GETTING IT RIGHT

Get your facts right, Know-it-all.

Excuse me? Are you really asking me if my daughter is mentally ill?

Are you insinuating that Autism is a mental disorder?

Autism is not a mental disease and it angers me how some people associate them together. Surprisingly, in this digital era wherein information is just a few taps away, there are still some people who choose to remain ignorant. Even some of those "educated ones" readily pass judgement as they smile and offer their best "educated nod" after you tell them your child has Autism. Just amazing.

People with Autism are not mentally ill; their brains are just wired differently. They just think in pictures and not in language. They just need a structured environment to learn. They just have difficulty in communicating and relating to other people. They just have sensory processing difficulty. Autism affects information processing in the brain but they are not dumb. They understand you, they just can't say they do.

Again, they are not mentally ill and it is not nice to ask if the child is "mentally healthy" when you are talking to a parent of a child with autism. Saying "mental problems" and "psychologists" do not make us feel any good, you know. Autism is not a psychological disorder.

People sometimes pass judgment even before getting their facts right. What a shame.

I sincerely hope that there WILL NOT be a time that their own children, children of their children, children of their children's children, will have autism and be judged the way they are judging my daughter.

                       Source: familyshare.com via sophia on Pinterest

Well, the latest estimate for Autism is 1 out of 50, and prevalence figures keep growing. Just saying.

(This post has been modified to reflect the updated estimate.)