Autism and Michael Savage

I am not only a biker, but I'm a Mom with kids with autism. My bike brings me a lot of peace in a chaotic world, and I am blessed when I can ride and eschange the burden of autism for the freedom of the road. I am one of the really fortunate ones. Too many parents are alone in their struggle. Were it not for a loving husband and my friends at church, I wouldn't know the peace of the road.

Below is a blog post I wrote on my other blog after I hard the inane remarks made by Michael Savage. You can view the original posting at http://homeschoolblogger.com/KarlaKAkins/563970/

If you think this post might help other people understand autism better, please pass it on.

Thanks.

Jul. 21, 2008
Michael Savage, Glenn Beck and Autism
"Brats," "idiots," and "morons." These are a few of the words that WOR New York Radio commentator Michael Savage used to describe children with Autism. He also called Autism a "fraud and a racket." (See Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,387662,00.html).

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Michael Savage doesn't have a child with Autism or have an intimate relationship with anyone living with it. If he did, he would have weighed his words much more carefully. (He is now backpedaling and saying that kids who are misdiagnosed with autism are the "brats, morons and idiots." But I object to calling any child such vile things.)

Here is his retraction:

"My comments about autism were meant to boldly awaken parents and children to the medical community's attempt to label too many children or adults as "autistic." Just as some drug companies have overdiagnosed "ADD" and "ADHD" to peddle dangerous speed-like drugs to children as young as 4 years of age, this cartel of doctors and drug companies is now creating a national panic by overdiagnosing "autism" for which there is no definitive medical diagnosis!"

Really?

Obviously, he has no idea how difficult it is to obtain a diagnosis of Autism. He has no idea the pain we went through for four years trying to get doctors to listen to us and notice the self-injury our twin sons were doing to themselves when they banged their heads on concrete sidewalks and bore scars of bite marks they gave to themselves and each other.

He is going to awaken us to a misdiagnosis? Uhm, when my children were screaming nonstop from the time they woke up in the morning until they fell asleep exhausted at night, I had a little bit of a clue that something wasn't right about my children. I didn't need to be awakened. I didn't even really need a diagnosis to know that something was wrong. I needed the diagnosis to be able to help them appropriately.

It's the medical community that needs to be awakened. There's a generation of kids whose nervous systems are wrong and families who are drowning just trying to survive the next five minutes. We want to know why.

I challenge Michael Savage to come spend a day with a child with Autism and then tell me who the moron is. Come tell a mother of a child who bangs his head and bites himself and screams everytime something is out of place that the diagnosis of Autism is just a racket for her to get some money. What money? I want to know where the money is! If it's a scam and a racket -- why aren't families with Autism rolling in the dough? Why are their houses mortgaged three times to pay for therapy? WHERE IS THAT MONEY?

If Michael Savage has true answers to the Autism thing, then I welcome it! I want it! Because Autism has stolen much from me, my family, my marriage, my other children, and my children with Autism. I want to recoup that loss. I want to look into my handsome boys' faces and know they are going to grow up and fulfill all their dreams. I want to see them behind those blank looks, looking back at me with their presence, not their emptiness.

It must make Michael Savage feel mighty important to pick on people who can't speak for themselves. I didn't hear my boys speak for eight years. It was eight years before they could say Mama. It was eight years before they were out of diapers. It was eight years of cleaning feces off the walls, and facing urine soaked pajamas and beds every single morning. Wake me up? How much more awake do I need to be to deal with such things?

Tonight on the Larry King Live show, Glenn Beck was the host (filling in for Larry). I'm not a Larry King fan, but I am a regular Glenn Beck watcher, and I usually agree with much of what he says. But tonight it was clear to me that the public has a misconception about how medication helps children with severe neurological disabilities.

Risperdal gave us our life back.

Glenn Beck purports that medication will change their personality. On the contrary, medication gave my sons the ability to stop screaming and begin living. I am thankful every single day for that medication. Without it, they would not have made the progress they have made. Without it, they would not have been able to be themselves at all. They'd still be sitting in a corner rocking, screaming, biting and hitting their head against the wall. My boys are two of the blessed ones. Many, many children with autism have no positive results from medication at all. I thank God everyday for the people who invented Risperdal.

I have friends who never go out to eat or participate in extended family holidays because their children with Autism can't eat flour or milk products. They spend a fortune on gluten-free food to help their children. A racket so parents can get into special programs? Who would want to have to live like this? And trust me, no one is paying for these kids' special diets except the parents. There aren't any programs for that. Insurance won't pay for it.

I have another friend who is always trying new protocols to help her children with autism. It is grueling and demanding to measure this and measure that and give this supplement and not that one. She is an amazing woman with five children, two of them infants -- and she fights everyday to help her children with autism through diet and supplements and schooling them at home. She is constantly saying "no" to her children: "no" to ice cream; "no" to dessert; "no" to a slice of bread. But according to Michael Savage, we all just need to be better disciplinarians. He has no idea how many times parents of children with Autism have to say "no" to their children! "No" is a constant mantra!

And who is rolling in the dough in these family's houses? Who is doing all the hard work? Not the government. Not the medical community. How can it be a scam when we are all so alone in our fight?

Who is cheering on these moms and dads fighting for their children's lives, hoping against hope that they will find a cure, a breakthrough, a way to reach their disappearing children?

Not Michael Savage.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health the cost of caring for a person with autism for their lifetime can be as high as $3.5 million. Oh yeah, some racket us parents are involved in.

Guess what I get paid to homeschool my children with Autism?

$0.00

And have my boys with Autism made progress?

You better believe it. They have made so much progress that people who knew them before I pulled them out of the public school program they were in (another article for another time) that people don't even recognize them. They have made so much progress that people who watch TV programs on Autism tell me "how lucky" I am that they aren't as severe.

Luck had nothing to do with.

God's grace, and hard work -- without government money to pay for their education, mind you -- has allowed my boys to at least be able to go into a restaurant and blend in with other people there, to attend church, to go on field trips like other kids. Yes, they used to have severe autistic behaviors. But they aren't as severe anymore. My boys are making progress. They are joining me in my world more and more every single day.

Do we still have meltdowns? Yep. Do we still have self-injurious, aggressive behavior? Oh yeah. But it's so much better now. We have a long way to go, but we've come a long way, too.

We don't live in a perfect world, and I know that it is possible some children are misdiagnosed and may even be overmedicated. But just because a few children are doesn't mean all of them are. In fact, it just proves how ignorant people really are about disabilities, and how important it is for people to have a better awareness of what families living with disabilities are dealing with.

I am regularly overwhelmed with daily survival. My children require 24-7 supervision. I can't be spontaneous, have company over to my house, or even CLEAN my house because I have to watch my boys. I can't just decide to run to the store to get lettuce without making elaborate arrangements for their supervision.

How on earth can a lifestyle like this possibly considered a racket? (Unless of course it's the sound of the twins tearing the drywall off the walls. . .)

Michael Savage, my house bears the scars of raising these children. If I am involved in some kind of racket, please explain the holes in the walls, the ripped up linoleum, the stained carpets, and the freshly "painted" doors in my house.

At first, I was so angry at Michael Savage, I wanted to call him the same names he called my children. But then I realized, he is just ignorant. He is unaware. He simply has no clue what it means to live with Autism. I have to believe that because I can't embrace the idea that someone who really knows what this condition is like could possibly say the things he did.

So, I forgive him.

But I won't forget.

This has shown me that somehow, someway, we parents and caregivers in the trenches have to find a way to be heard. I am hoping that God will use this to bring the truth to light about this disease. We have to educate people about the truth of Autism, so that people don't embarrass themselves with their blatant ignorance of this overwhelming disorder.

But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Genesis 50:20