Shannon Des Roches Rosa, with Carol Greenburg, Patricia George, and Christine Langager The disability and empowerment-themed website The Mighty recently published a post called Introducing: Meltdown Bingo, and sparked an actual Internet meltdown. In the post (since retracted by The Mighty’s editors), a parent used the popular Bingo Card meme to detail challenging aspects of their autistic child’s meltdowns. The online backlash from autistic and disability activists was understandably swift and strong, underpinned by a history of those activists’ dissatisfaction with The Mighty coupled with dismay over yet another hijacking of autistic children’s most vulnerable and misunderstood moments justified as parenting “honesty.” But here’s the thing most backlash commentary missed or ignored: The mother who wrote the post is autistic. Anyone who clicked on the author bio for the original Meltdown Bingo post would have read the following: “Christine is an adult-diagnosed autistic mother to autistic Cameron, 8.” Also missing…
Tag: The Mighty
Shannon Des Roches Rosa Let me tell you something that may or may not surprise you: When it comes to public discussions about autism, parent and professional voices tend to dominate, and autistic voices tend to be excluded. While that dynamic is changing, primarily due to autistic advocates’ refusal to be sidelined in stories about their own community, and in part through the many communities that encourage parents to discover, listen to, and respect the experiences of those who have lived autistic lives — autistic voices too often still get dismissed, ignored, or outright disrespected. I’m not begrudging parents of autistic kids the right to tell their own stories from parent perspectives, obviously, being that I’m one of those parents myself. But I do find it unsettling when parent stories mention autistic perspectives only to belittle or reject them, as Anne Spence did recently in her otherwise thoughtful story When…