Sincerely, Your Autistic Child Quotes

“when I was a teenager I was planning out how to live in the woods as a hermit, to avoid permanent institutionalization. And when I realized that wouldn’t work, I was planning my own death.”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“Don’t pity me or try to cure or change me. If you could live in my head for just one day, you might weep at how much beauty I perceive in the world with my exquisite senses. I would not trade one small bit of that beauty, as overwhelming and powerful as it can be, for ‘normalcy.’”2”
― Emily Paige Ballou, Sincerely, Your Autistic Child: What People on the Autism Spectrum Wish Their Parents Knew About Growing Up, Acceptance, and Identity

“This is also true of disability. Being autistic is not the norm, but it isn’t wrong. The lives that autistic people build for themselves may not be conventional, but they aren’t inferior.”
― Emily Paige Ballou, Sincerely, Your Autistic Child: What People on the Autism Spectrum Wish Their Parents Knew About Growing Up, Acceptance, and Identity

“Don’t fall into the trap of believing that if we are good at one thing, we will be good at some totally unrelated thing. Don’t make it sound like any autistic person has a certain level of skills across the board. Autistic people’s skills are described consistently since the 1940’s as being very uneven. There’s a reason for that.”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“I feel intensely. I smell mold and bad food before others. I hear fluorescent lights. Clothing hurts, noises invade, colors take my breath away. My daily reality is governed by too much sensation and not enough sensation. Patterns are soothing because they create order in what feels like chaos. Sometimes I shut down and I lose language. Other times I get overloaded and act it out in ways that get me in trouble. My world is intense, rich, real, sometimes painful and definitely different. Understand”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“There is so much that autistic women and girls can give to each other, including love, laughter, joy, kind smiles, critical thought, understanding, and true safety. Instead of striving to conform to a neurotypical norm, these friendships can let our young women be who they are on their own terms. Navigating the complicated social rules of girls and women is so very difficult. Doing it with a friend or two who truly understand and like you for who you are makes it, if not easier, at least less painful.”
― Emily Paige Ballou, Sincerely, Your Autistic Child: What People on the Autism Spectrum Wish Their Parents Knew About Growing Up, Acceptance, and Identity

“We exist, full stop, no qualifiers needed.”
― Emily Paige Ballou, Sincerely, Your Autistic Child: What People on the Autism Spectrum Wish Their Parents Knew About Growing Up, Acceptance, and Identity

“I urge you to read books, articles, blogs, poetry, and whatever else you can get your hands on authored by actual Autistic women. These people, these Autistic women, are the experts in growing up Autistic. A hundred degrees on the wall from top universities may make you an expert in the field of a disorder, but they will never make you an expert on being Autistic.”
― Emily Paige Ballou, Sincerely, Your Autistic Child: What People on the Autism Spectrum Wish Their Parents Knew About Growing Up, Acceptance, and Identity

“There are a lot of things I am not likely to ever learn how to do. Or if I learn how to do them, my movement disorders will prevent me from applying that knowledge. So if I’m going to put in the extreme effort it takes for me to learn and sustain a skill, it had better be a skill that makes me happier (like crocheting), not just a skill that makes things easier on everyone else (like making my bed).”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“It seems that between one-third and one-sixth of autistic people lose major skills in adolescence. Of those, about half will gain the skills back eventually, and half won’t.”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“It’s one thing to know in theory how skills work. It’s another thing to put them into practice with nobody guiding you or prompting you along the way. Worse, I was losing skills, including speech, at an alarming rate. The more skills I had to manage on my own, the less energy I had to put into other skills, and the more behind I got. This had been going on since early adolescence, but it really picked up the pace when I moved out on my”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“I was the hardest working person, getting nowhere, who I knew. The older I got, the more I was able to hide. I was driven into my own world.”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“I learned that people won’t believe me when I say I need help, and so I stopped asking. I found passive or covert ways of getting help, which ultimately led to poor self-advocacy. I learned helplessness.”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew

“Just because I can explain how matrilineal descent works, doesn’t mean I can figure out what to order from a restaurant menu. Just because I can be really articulate and give a television interview doesn’t mean I am able to speak up when I’m emotionally distressed or threatened. I”
― Autism Women's Network, What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew