Ave atque Vale, Change.org

This is my last post here at the autism blog at Change.org. I relate why more towards the end. As this is my final word here, I wanted to focus on a topic that Dora and I think is important to note in writing about autism and disability, the need for critical thinking.

You can now find me at my website kristinachew.com and my new blog, We Go With Him.

Once upon a time I had a very different life.

For one thing, I taught freshman composition at a large Catholic university here in New Jersey (and, briefly, for another prominent institution of higher learning here). I was trained to teach Classics---the culture and history of the ancient Greeks and Romans---and to translate ancient Greek and Latin. I took the composition jobs because I needed to: My husband and I had just packed up and moved back to Jim's native New Jersey from St. Louis, to find the best education for our son Charlie. I first found a 0.333 position teaching Latin at a local public high school and then phoned in to say I wouldn't be able to take it, as I'd gotten a part-time position teaching composition (with benefits).

The students had to write a research essay and this meant I always had to devote one class to "Using Internet Sources." I'd go through the differences between .com, .org, .edu, .info and then show how you can't always judge a website by its "dot whatever." Like many professors, I did not allow students to use Wikipedia as a source on their papers (I still don't). We talked about peer-reviewed journals and used the library's numerous electronic databases. Students ended up with lists of bibliographical sources, URLs, and maybe the printed-out full text of a few articles.

Most of them didn't realize, that their real work began at this point: It's one thing to have a pile of research. It's another thing to read through all of it. And it's yet another to evaluate all that information, to synthesize and analyze and go beyond one's gut reactions and what just "made sense" or "seemed right." Especially when you encounter a source that makes an argument contrary to what you are convinced is right, you must demonstrate that you can, thoughtfully and carefully, evaluate the claims on their own terms, and turn a critical eye on your own views and even your own experience. You must look at the language the writer uses and at how they use the words: Is there rhetoric meant to attract a reader's sympathy? How does the writer use her or his sources---does she or he clearly and accurately represent their theses? Is there irony or obfuscation? You must go and look up the original sources rather than relying only on second- or third-party opinions.

What I often found very difficult to explain to my students was the difference between writing an essay using such critical thinking skills, and more of a response or reaction paper. Very often, students struggled to make arguments based on a careful synthesis of the ideas in their sources. They made arguments that were more akin to opinions and plugged in the sources only if they clearly supported their points.

In many discussions about autism, research, and science, on the Internet and elsewhere, the same sort of thing happens for reasons that are more than understandable.

As of June, I've been blogging about autism every day for four years. I started writing daily accounts of our son Charlie on a blog called My Son Has Autism that became Autismland. I shied away from writing about controversies. But when I started writing Autism Vox and focused more on science and health topics, I quickly found myself blogging about one "hot topic"---vaccines---after another. While I've tried to focus more on issues of education and policy here at Change.org, those "hot topics" have inevitably come up as one follows the latest in the media about autism. There is a lot---an Internet's worth---of information out there. It's become almost too easy to compile lists of sources and links and URLs, to read blog posts and Tweets and articles about all those "hot topics" and to pass them on to support the position one is taking. I know; I do it myself, though I certainly try to evaluate science and other sources for what they say.

And often in the heat of the moment, when we're trying to make a point---that something "caused autism" in a child or that a certain "treatment" is producing miraculous results---we just provide the information without sifting through and analyzing, and reflecting, and discerning, where our emotions are seeping into our views. When you're writing in the ever-changing environment of the Internet and when you're a parent honestly desperate to find something to help your child and to find support for why you're doing the crazy things you're doing, information that says just what you want it to say is hard to resist.

I know. Like many parents, I once tried to recover my son from autism, as I wrote in one my first posts here on Change.org. It's not easy to apply your critical thinking skills in the press of life, when you've just dragged yourself and your child back into the house after snatching him out of the path of a car in a McDonalds parking lot and been upbraided by random strangers who were in no mood to hear your explanation of how you don't know why your son started knocking his head at the top of the tube slide in the McPlayPlace because he can't talk and it wasn't a moment to pull out the PECS book.

Charlie doesn't do that sort of thing anymore (though we do go to McDonalds when he asks for it and, occasionally, to a McPlayPlace). He can somewhat tell us, in various ways (not always words) what's bothering him, and Jim and I have learned to understand his communications much better by spending so much time with him. It's from all that time, from watching Charlie, that we've learned what treatments, therapies, and educational/teaching methods seem to work best for him.

Parenting a child like Charlie means that you have to use your critical thinking skills. As my friend Shannon writes, you have to be able to identify and avoid autism cults. You've got to get your strategy together to advocate for your child at IEP meetings and get the school district to do the right thing for your child. You've go to be able to analyze, in a split second, why your child just got so upset in a place that he likes: Hormones? Stomachache? Too much noise? Bad day at school? Something we parents (with all good intentions) said or did?

I often say, figuring out how to take care of Charlie has been the biggest challenge I've ever faced, more than any exam I ever had to take in college or graduate school. Writing about this journey of Jim's and my life with Charlie has been the bread and butter of my blogging; it's certainly the basis for my very-much-in-progress-book about Charlie.

This is my last post on the autism blog at Change.org. In time this blog will morph into one about disability and disability rights, and I'm very pleased at this future transformation. As Charlie has gotten older, more and more of the issues that affect him---issues of employment, housing, transportation, support staff---overlap with disability issues more generally. Dora's and my posts will remain on Change.org and be integrated in the new blog. I think the almost eight months of blogging that we've done here comprise a nice oeuvre, a small archive of articles about key issues pertaining to autism and disability, from the perspectives of a self-advocate and of a parent. I have been particularly happy about the blog when Dora and I ended up posting on the same article (sometimes on the same day), but with our different perspectives.

I will still be blogging over at my website, kristinachew.com. My new blog is called We Go With Him, and I've included sections on my site with links to my writing on various topics here and on Autism Vox, as well as a section about teaching Charlie. I'm going to let We Go With Him evolve as I write it. Certainly some posts will chronicle our continue efforts to find a school for Charlie. While still following all those "hot topics" about autism and occasionally commenting on them (I just can't resist), I'll most likely be focusing on writing about being on the road with Charlie.

Thank you so very much for your readership, for letting us know what you think and for your support, which has meant a great deal. Back in December when I started writing this blog, Charlie was struggling mightily and Jim and I found ourselves facing some hard and terrible questions. Things have been looking up on the docks and Charlie has been well, very well, and we've been having a wonderful summer.

Life on the long road with Charlie is not easy, most of all for him. Life with Charlie is always very, very good for Jim and me because we have each other, because Charlie is with us, and because we're one tight team of three.

From our post on the autismfront to yours, we'll be seeing you.