For most of my life, all I knew about autism was that it’s a disability that sometimes causes kids to rock back and forth.
I learned most of that from a bumper sticker, which said: “My autistic kid rocks – colloquially and kinesthetically!”
That was accurate, but incomplete. I wish I’d also known that:
- Autism can be a disability or a super-ability, depending on the situation.
- It affects adults just as much as kids.
- Rocking is a visible action, but autism is an internal state that causes different actions in different people – including me.
There’s a lot more I wish I’d learned earlier, but that would have been a good start.