What out for ignorance- it's contagious

Before I start in on Jenny McCarthy, please look at the picture above that Little Bug did- by himself.

So Jenny McCarthy went on CNN yesterday because her son is “recovered” from Autism. Now, lets forget for a moment that I bitterly disagree with her. I would like you to first watch the video:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2008/10/01/intv.mccarthy.cnn?iref=videosearch

First, she is a horrible spokesperson for her cause. She sounds uneducated by using words like “fricking” on CNN. She is too emotional regarding her cause. When you are a spokesperson, you need to be well educated, well spoken, and passionate- not impassioned.

Second, let’s look at socio-economic differences. She has an unbelievable amount of financial resources. She has a celebrity status- which means connections. She has the ability to not work for an extremely long time and spend every living second with her son. That must be nice. The majority of parents who have children with ASD don’t have the luxury. We work and then come home and do a different kind of work. We can’t afford therapies and are often times told that we make too much money for assistance.

Finally, I think its time we bust out the hip waders to sort through all the b.s. I feel like we aren’t being told the complete story. Did her son ever go through any other therapies besides bio-medical therapies? I would be surprised if he hasn’t, as most kiddos with ASD are recommended to have speech therapy, occupational therapy, and sometimes play therapy. Certainly, years of those therapies couldn’t have had any effect on her son- nope just the vitamins.

One quote that disturbs me is that she says to ask any mother whether they would chose Autism or vaccinations and *all* of them would pick no vaccinations. Well, I may not be a mother and I certainly don’t represent the entire ASD community and would never presume so, but you can count us out. Let me make this clear, we may not have the easiest life and the “perfect” child. Get over it. What we do have, is a wonderful child who is perfect for us. Just so you realize it isn’t all roses and sunshine, we have very bad days- days when you can just keep him safe. We also have wonderful days full of communication and eye contact. I would make the same decision a thousand times over- yes to vaccines. I would rather have him alive than dead for fear of ASD.

Now, I feel like I have given her too much attention so we are moving on. We have a new word and sign at our house- PUS! As in octopus and we know the sign too. I know to many people, this isn’t a very useful sign, how many run ins have you ever had with an octopus except for the zoo? Well, at our house, where fish reign supreme, octopus is a very important word. Great job, Little Bug- you continue to amaze me every day. It is wonderful to see how far you have come and how much further we will all keep going.