A Rehash: Rose-Coloured Glasses in the ASD World.

Many, many moons back (even more moons than months due to the blue moon last night) I entered a competition on another blog. You may remember from my reference to it in this post.

Since then I have been asked by a number of people to post my actual entry on here. It was a limit of 250 words, and the requirement was to tell your story of rose-coloured glasses... do you or don't you wear them?

This was my tale:

I have a pair of rose-coloured glasses. When they said “your son has autism, he will never socialise or have friends, you need to consider the options” I put on my rose-coloured glasses and told them “Pfft, what do you know?” As he made friends and proved them wrong, my glasses turned a deeper hue of blushing pink. When the educational professionals stated, “You are an obsessive mother who cannot accept your son’s shortcomings and thus will unduly scar him” I grabbed my hot pink glasses and enrolled him in a mainstream class. I knew in my heart of hearts he did NOT have an intellectual impairment and my glasses tinted the darkness of their words into softer hues of manageable pain. When he excelled at school and grew into this unique, confident, happy young man, open and proud of being on the autism spectrum… the glasses glowed in magenta-tinted splendiferous pride. I am going to wear them right to the end of my pessimistic life. Did I not mention the pessimism bit before? Well I am a glass half-empty sort of person, but my rose-coloured glasses thrust me blushingly into an optimistic world. A world called motherhood.

I won.

And my glasses continue to shine brightly with the reflected magnificence of my incredible son.