Two Simple Things You Can Do for Autistic Persons of All Ages

Many teens and young people with autism have been receiving special services during their school years. They will age out of these services at age 21. What will they do then?

Many poor or minority families don't have access to their state's Medicaid or may not know about it. Their autistic children may not even be diagnosed yet.

A couple have gotten divorced because one spouse was fed up with the other's "weird" ways and seeming inability or refusal to communicate or understand. The spouse has udiagnosed autism.

A family in a poor apartment complex have a child that they don't know what to do with. Neighbors see him as a little brat. This child has undiagnosed autism.

A man has been fired from every job he ever landed because his bosses thought his lack of eye contact was contempt for them. A woman has a history of failed relationships because of a lack of communication skills. Both have undiagnosed autism.

Lack of services or aging out of them are what all these scenarios have in common. Why should we be interested in this? What does this have to do with us? We should be interessted in this because when peopele's basic needs for acceptance and understanding are not met, they may get angry and bitter and take it out on us. They may end up on benefits like Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability (SSD) or enter the mental health or even the criminal justice system. In any case, we will all pay. The moral reason we should care is that these are people who also have the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

If you are one who believes that autism is a disease that children outgrow and that there is a cure for it, you should still care about this. The reason is that many poor or minority families, as I already mentioned above, have children who need services though they can't access insurance or pay for these services. You should care because of generations of autistic children who are not yet born.

Click here to sign this autism petition

Click here even if you have signed this petition. Share it!