Cute on a shelf but useless in a crisis, her plastic, one-dimensional face exposes a problem.

For autism families, especially those more severely affected than mine, ’tis the season of incredible isolation. Lights flicker, music blares, crowds press in, and routines disappear. What is fun and festive for the average family demands constant regulation from us, as we cross our fingers and hold our breath that our loved ones, who cannot filter sensory input or flexibly adjust expectations, will hold it together.

This week, NCSA recognized National Special Education Day and International Day of Persons with Disabilities! What better way to close out this week than by understanding the legal rights and protections that these events have historically helped bring to our community. Let’s get into it. 

Criminalizing manifestations of disability before providing appropriate educational and therapeutic services is not only against the law, but morally indefensible in a civil society. If the goal is safe education, healing, and development for all students, then increased resources, funding, and training for school officials and special educators is the productive and humane way forward.  

But when the world stops, the reality of autism, especially severe autism, becomes more vivid. When the streetlights go out and the world is still, autism is lucid in my mind. Indeed, when everything else is at rest, autism can, for just a moment, exist in a vacuum. It is no longer camouflaging itself in the bustle and mundanity of everyday life. It really hits me. 

For people with severe autism, all forms of inclusion will need to occur through representation by parents, caregivers, and legal guardians. Until the disability movement understands that this is inclusion, not exclusion, oppression, or silencing, they will continue making policies about them, without them, or even worse, about mild to moderate disability, without the most severe disability.