Walking beside

by Benison O'Reilly on Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Last week Seana and I were at the Asia Pacific Autism Conference (APAC) 2009 at Darling Harbour, Sydney. Over 1600 delegates, both professional and parent, attended. It was a packed agenda, with visiting international speakers such as Eric Fombonne, Francesca Happé, Patricia Howlin, and the now Brisbane-based Tony Attwood, as well as professional contributors to the Australian Autism Handbook: Robyn Young, Jacqui Roberts, Deb Keen, John Wray, Natalie Silove and Katrina Williams.  Seana and I plan to report on some of the keynote presentations in future blogs.

However, following on from last week’s blog about The Horse Boy, as he’s been come to be known as, about I wanted to talk briefly about the Autism SA conference Seana and I attended in late May. I witnessed a fascinating presentation by two bright, articulate and funny women who had both been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in adulthood. In each case diagnosis seemed to have brought relief and some explanation as to why life had proved so challenging and difficult up to that point.

At the end of their presentation questions were called for. I asked how, as a parent (a quite interventionist parent at that), I could best assist my son and not cause him unnecessary stress and anxiety. The advice I received was this:  just as long as I was ‘walking beside’ my child and supporting him in his endeavours, my parenting was welcome.  It was being dragged along and forced to do things they found very hard that had caused these women their greatest struggles.

I thought about my son, whom we are always exposing to new experiences.  There might be a couple of grumbles at the time but definitely no distress, and once he is over that initial reluctance (like at a recent visit to a laser skirmish centre), he seems to genuinely embrace novelty.

So I think we will keep on challenging him, just making sure we are walking beside him, not dragging him along behind.

Tags: acceptance, autism