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The mother of a child with autism says she feels hurt by neighbours who sent her an anonymous letter complaining about the noise her son makes outside.

Jessica Green, of Berkeley, Gloucestershire was told to take action otherwise the neighbours threatened to report her family to social services.

Henry, three, has nonverbal autism and uses high pitched noises to express himself when he is in the garden.

The letter describes Henry as ‘it’, and the “screechy, screaming child”.

The sender also questions whether Henry is “neglected”.

“People can no longer sit out in the garden to enjoy the weather because all we hear is your child shrieking from across the street,” the letter continued.

It added that residents were “sick to death” of hearing him screaming “continuously” and stated that unless action was taken “a group of us will be talking to tenant services at Stroud Council and making a noise complaint against you”.

Mrs Green said the letter was “really hurtful” and she was “absolutely astonished” at the writer’s “ignorance”.

She has posted a response to the “vicious and blinkered letter” on Facebook which she hoped would “raise awareness and promote understanding and acceptance of people that are different to ourselves”.

‘Form of bullying’

She said: “The ‘it’ you are referring to is my three-year-old son Henry who has autism and is nonverbal.

“He uses high pitch noises to express himself and how he is feeling; be this happy, excited or sad.”

Mrs Green said the letter “shows a selfish, narrow minded and uneducated view” and “every person has a right to a voice and to be heard, and for Henry he has his own unique way of doing this”.

She added: “I have taken the letter as it was intended, as a form of bullying and of a threatening nature”.

Stroud District Council said it was offering support to the family, and Mrs Green confirmed she had filed a complaint with Gloucestershire Police.”

source

This article became international news, and of course a lot of ignorant, malinformed people had to comment on them. Also, on pages by newspaper in my country. I read some of them and really had to recover a few days. I was first going to do full translations, but decided against it. It would cost me to much energy, and to much to recover from this. I made screenshots for later reference.

I must say, that reading these comments was really disheartening. I knew there was still a lot of work, even people that provide services in job counceling know nothing about autism, or almost nothing. There is a real need to teach people about something like autism.

I’m planning a lot of things. Things have got to change. I’m not an aggressive person. Things have got to change. Action must be taken and one thing this comment section has done, is it it made a bonfire of the small flame that was already there.

Here’s the link to a great comic explaining the autism spectrum.

Please watch it and use it to explain it to somebody.

Understanding the spectrum – a comic strip explanation

“Tolerance is something entirely different than acceptance, Yes rather the opposite, a clever tool of oppression. Someone you take as equal, you embrace unconditionally, for now and forever. But by letting someone know you endure someone, you suggest in the same breath, that you think he’s a burden, a nagging pain or an u pleasant smell, where for this time, you want to step over. Under tolerance hides threat: the mood can flip with the expectation or it exceeds it.” Arthur Japin

I thought this was a very powerful quote and first saw it on a feminist page on Facebook, but thought that it would fit into the discussion about Autism as well.

Think about it for a second and Let me know what you think of it.

Alexithymia is the inability to identify and describe your own emotions. It can be a good thing, but it can also be a burden. I will explain both.

I have had many stressful situations in my life already. In my 30 year lifespan I had to endure my parents divorcing 2 times, enduring fights that my parents had with my sisters. Also, as an undiagnosed autistic, I have survived the regular school system.

Why not identifying your emotions can be a good thing?

I can have many things happen to me and almost never get angry, and when I feel I get angry, it’s at such a high level that I know, if I would act on it, it would be disastrous. I only feel the extremes: I only feel extremely happy, extremely angry, extremely sad, all those, but nothing else. When I feel really happy, I am really happy, and I want to share it with anyone. When I am angry, I know I must be really angry, otherwise I wouldn’t feel it, and must not act on it. When I am sad, I know I must be really sad and know that I shouldn’t take decisions that day, or they will be influenced by me being sad, for whatever reason.

Why not identifying your emotions can be a bad thing?

I don’t know when I’m stressed, ever. Except when my bowels start to act up, and that’s when it’s to late already. I have to do deep breathing exercises to get everything back to normal again then. The same with frustration. Some things might frustrate me or make me anxious, but I don’t know, so I only know certain things about my emotions and such when I look back at the situation. I have learned now recently, that when something is overwhelming for me, I have to get out of there. I have to leave. This is an automatic indicator that something has overwhelmed me or overstimulated me and I have to leave. Most of the things now, are automatic. Like I don’t like to go outside when it’s sunny, because the bright light and the heat are two of my no-no’s. I can go outside, but for short periods of time, and I am always glad to be back again, but I have learned these only recently (I have been enduring these for 30 years almost and never knew this until my autism diagnose. And all this, I think, because I can’t identify my emotions, otherwise I would have learned it much sooner).