How Autism Protects My Son

Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash

by Justin Rosario

My feelings about autism are not at all complicated. They are so uncomplicated that they can be well and truly encapsulated in two words: “Fuck Autism.” There’s not a ton of grey area to explore.

I love my son Jordan but autism has taken away everything he was supposed to be so autism can go fuck itself forever. If the word “ableist” is bubbling through your mind right now, this article is not for you. Move on and police someone else’s feelings.

So, yeah, fuck autism. On the other hand, as Jordan gets older, it occurs to me that his autism has become a kind of shield, protecting him from the current environment we are living in. Every miserable dark cloud has the tiniest silver lining, I guess.

The miserable dark cloud of autism

There are plenty of kids and adults with autism who are living rich and full lives. They do well in school or have jobs and families. They view their autism along a, well, along a spectrum. For some, it’s a nuisance that makes social interaction more difficult than it needs to be. For others, it’s a blessing that allows them to see the world differently.

That’s not Jordan’s kind of autism. 

Jordan’s autism is the kind that ensures he will never be able to live on his own. He was almost three before he learned how to point to things he wanted. He was five before he learned how to talk. It took another three or four years until he could speak clearly enough to be understood easily. 

Yes, part of this is an intellectual disability but Jordan’s particular brand of autism had sealed off his expressive communication—almost all of it. For instance, take the pointing. Babies learn how to point to things they want, sometimes before they can even walk. It was a titanic struggle for Jordan to learn this basic human skill. 

Oh, he understood what pointing meant, of course. If someone pointed at something and asked him to pick it up, he did exactly that with no hesitation. You see, his receptive communication was mostly fine. But the idea of expressing his needs in any way at all, even pointing to something he wanted? He couldn’t do it. If he cut his finger, he could see that it was bleeding and feel that it hurt. He could run to Mommy and Daddy and cry. What he could not do is let us know what was wrong. He literally could not point to the bleeding finger or even hold it up for Mommy or Daddy to make it better. His autistic brain did not have that ability.

He had to learn those skills the way you or I had to learn to ride a bike or drive a car. His autism had simply removed that part of the instruction manual from his brain. What most babies learn by doing and interacting within months, Jordan had to have programmed through years of intensive labor.

And so it was for language. And walking up stairs. And a million other things parents take for granted but Jordan had to learn through slow, methodical teaching. It got easier as he got older and he had a broader base to build on but “easier” is not the same as “easy.” 

Right now, Jordan is in the Arlington “Life Skills” program which teaches him, surprise!, life skills. He’s learning how to fold clothes, sweep floors, do dishes, etc. He also spends several hours a week at various work sites on and off school grounds, being exposed to different types of jobs like grocery bagging and serving food off of a cart. 

The idea is to prepare Jordan and the other special needs children in his class for a post-education life where he will be able to hold some kind of basic job and do a basic level of self-care. He does well but we are under no illusions that Jordan is ever going to be able to survive on his own. There are plenty of high-functioning autistic adults and Jordan is simply not going to be one of them. And no, you cannot “learn” to be high-functioning any more than an average person can learn to be a prodigy. You either are or you are not. 

Please understand, Jordan is not a low-functioning autistic. He is a mid-functioning autistic. He can bathe and clothe himself. He can use the bathroom on his own. We’re working on him clipping his own nails and shaving but otherwise, he generally gets the concept of personal hygiene. Or as much as a teenage boy ever does. He puts his clothes in the laundry, his dishes in the sink, and his trash in the garbage, which puts him ahead of many teens. 

But it will be years, if ever, before he can prepare food for himself. Making a shopping list and buying groceries is still a work in progress. Crossing a street unsupervised? Tantamount to suicide. Public transportation? Jordan won’t just miss his stop, he’ll forget to get off the bus until the bus driver kicks him off. 

Deb and I are very aware that the goal is to get Jordan ready for some kind of assisted living facility where he’ll be safe. 20-25 years from now, we will be in our 70s. Anastasia, Jordan’s younger sister, will only be in her 30s. We probably won’t be able to take care of Jordan by then and it’s unlikely she will be able to, either. 

The idea of Anastasia leaving him alone for 8-10 hours a day while she works is horrifying. What if there was a fire? He would never be able to get out on his own, or even think to. What if he decided to leave and got lost? What if he fell and hurt himself? It would be hours before anyone knew. No, that is not going to work. He will have to be someplace with a staff who will be able to take care of him and that comes with nightmares of its own. If you knew the horror stories we’ve heard already, you’d know why I regularly say, “Fuck Autism.”

The silver lining

Older generations love to flatter themselves by complaining about “how much easier kids have it these days.” Why, when I was a kid, I had to walk to school, uphill, in both directions! My parents had to walk uphill, in the snow! My grandparents had to fight off grizzly bears barefoot just to get to class! And so on and so forth. 

Honestly, though, I wouldn’t trade places with this generation if you gave me a million dollars. Being a teen sucks. It always has and it always will. Being a teen now? Good lord, what a fucking nightmare. 

With the internet and social media, all of the pressure that crushed us as teens never ever stops. We got to go home, go into our rooms, and shut the door. We could tune out the world in a book, a game, a tv show, sleep, whatever. Now? There is no escape from it. Ever. The internet constantly pumps whatever an algorithm decides will keep you most anxious and engaged. Social media keeps you in constant touch with the kids from school so the drama never ends.

Are you being bullied? Your phone and computer ensure that never stops, either. Bonus! Now people all over the world can bully you, too. Double bonus! That embarrassing thing you did? It was caught on a phone camera and uploaded to TikTok. Instead of a few days of teasing, you’re looking at literally years of constant humiliation.

I’d rather face the grizzly bear.

This, however, is not a concern for Jordan. While he does spend an awful lot of time on Youtube, as far as Youtube is concerned, Jordan is a 5-year-old. He watches Yo Gabba Gabba and the Fresh Beat Band. He watched Roblox videos and the Imagination Movers. Ever hear of Lankybox? Probably not but good lord does Jordan love watching their Youtube channel. Their incredibly loud and annoying Youtube channel aimed at ages 5-7.

Jordan also loves to text people but by “texting,” I mean he loves to type out the lyrics to songs and hit “send.” One time, Jordan got ahold of Mommy’s phone and Mommy’s boss, a federal judge, got 30 minutes of song lyrics at 8 o’clock at night before anyone noticed Jordan was happily typing away. Fortunately, Mommy’s boss the federal judge has a good sense of humor.

To summarize: Jordan does not use social media, does not text with people (he texts at them), and does not watch age appropriate (so to speak) material online. He is completely insulated from the two most increasingly dangerous influences of the internet that feed off of each other: Greedy corporations and violent white nationalists.

Greedy corporations like Google (which owns Youtube), Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), ByteDance (which owns TikTok), and others have exactly one concern: Keeping users engaged for as long as possible. They do this so they can continue to collect data on those users in order to sell that data for billions to advertisers. 

If the way they kept users engaged was with cat videos, it wouldn’t be the most productive use of time but it wouldn’t be actively harmful. But algorithms have figured out that things that make us angry or scared keep our attention the longest so that is what they steer us towards. The effect on our psyche has been deeply corrosive.

To make matters worse, very bad people understand very clearly how to use the algorithms to their advantage and greedy corporations enable them. Why? Because they drive engagement and engagement equals money. You see the problem. 

There have been a ton of articles about this but it feels like we as a society really aren’t paying attention. Here’s the Washington Post:

“White-nationalist and alt-right groups use jokes and memes as a way to normalize bigotry while still maintaining plausible deniability,” Schubiner says, “and it works very well as a recruitment strategy for young people.”

Schroeder saw this firsthand when she sat down with her kids to look at their Instagram accounts together.

“I saw the memes that came across my kids’ timelines, and once I started clicking on those and seeking this material out, then it became clear what was really happening,” she says. With each tap of a finger, the memes grew darker: Sexist and racist jokes (for instance, a looping video clip of a white boy demonstrating how to “get away with saying the n-word,” or memes referring to teen girls as “thots,” an acronym for “that ho over there”) led to more racist and dehumanizing propaganda, such as infographics falsely asserting that black people are inherently violent.

Right-wing extremists understand exactly how to lure young boys and men in and quickly drag them down into a swamp of hate and rage. The algorithms help this happen because, again, engagement is all that matters. The more views an extremist video gets, the more the algorithm pushes it and the more extremism it promotes. 

White nationalists produce even more videos to lure in more recruits. It’s a vicious cycle and it can happen in just a few weeks, it’s that fast. And they mostly target males. Girls and women are not unwelcome in white nationalist circles but they are relegated to a subordinate position. They have to be. A core principle of white nationalism is toxic masculinity and misogyny.

This is why I’m never particularly concerned my girls will get pulled down the rabbit hole. They’re not the target. Jordan absolutely is. Or he would be if he was a neurotypical 15-year-old white male. Under normal circumstances, Jordan would be bombarded constantly by messaging designed explicitly to draw him into a world where he is the victim of grand conspiracies to oppress him.

But even if Jordan were to come across these videos, they would be meaningless to him. You can’t teach misogyny to a boy whose idea of “porn” is looking at women in bathrobes on the internet (I kid you not). He hides his face and giggles when Lila walks by because Lila is pretty and Jordan gets embarrassed. It’s so cute and innocent that the idea of Jordan paying attention to an MRA video is laughable.

Racism? Good luck with that! How do you teach someone to hate people who look different when they don’t care what color their skin is? Jordan is not “color-blind” in a white privileged sort of way, it literally doesn’t have a meaning to him. Remember, race is a social construct. You have to learn it, usually from conversations with family or kids at school. Jordan doesn’t have conversations. He can’t, not really. He can tell you what he needs and he can listen and learn a lesson in class but he does not engage in social conversations. No social conversations, no lessons about race.

Theoretically, if Jordan started to watch videos about race he would eventually learn it but it’s kind of abstract and Jordan is not great with abstract. Also, it would be boring. Maybe if white nationalists started to make cutesy hate videos geared towards 5-year-olds, I’d be worried.

Autism taketh away and…giveth?

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most as a parent has been teaching my girls how to be the best versions of themselves. I’ve talked to them about history, civics, racism, sexism, you name it. Everything Republicans want to keep children from learning about, we’ve discussed, at great length and in great detail.

I had long given up my dreams of having those conversations with Jordan. I had hoped one day to teach him to respect women and not be a toxic dudebro. That it was OK to feel and for god’s sake, at your size, don’t raise your hands. All the things that were never taught to me because no one in my generation was taught any of that. It just wasn’t done. Being a man meant being strong and holding it all in yada yada yada. Super unhealthy stuff. This was my chance to do better and autism took it all away along with Jordan’s future. No, really: Fuck Autism.

But since Jordan will never grow up, mentally at least (he’s 6’1” and 180 lbs at the ripe old age of 15), that means I will never have to compete with the cancer of white nationalism that is forever seeking to find a foothold in the minds of young men. With the girls, it’s a matter of polishing a gem and keeping it from being buried by ads telling them they’re fat and ugly. With a boy, it’s a constant struggle to keep acid from destroying a work of art and turning it into a grotesque caricature that spews hate. Jordan is acid-proof.

Honestly, I would give anything to have spent the last several years waging that fight. I might have ended up losing it but it was my fight to have and autism took that away. But I’ve come to terms with that loss a long time ago. If I have to live with it (and I do), I might as well look for the tiny silver lining and, well, there it is. In a world filled with monsters forever trying to poison the minds of children, Jordan just skates right past them, forever impervious to their message of hate. Thanks, autism. 

Now go fuck yourself. 

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