"We have to learn to live together"

"The world has spent years learning how to help autistic children. Now, those children are growing up."

That's the description prefacing a July 12 Arizona Republic article (via the Asbury Park Press). The article's title is "Children of autism approach adult world" and it makes the point that autism isn't only for children, despite what many an autism organization's marketing campaign might tell you.

"For the past 20 years, we've been talking about how horrific autism is.....And now we are saying that we need these young people to live with you. To be in society."

says Denise Resnik, whose 18-year-old son, Matthew, is autistic. Resnik is a co-founder of the Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center (SARRC). I can't agree more with her words: Talking about an "epidemic" and the "horrors, awfulness, nightmare," etc. of life with an autism does get attention, but (aside from making people feel sorry that one is autistic and that one has an autistic child), it doesn't help the public perception of autism, or public attitudes about having autistic individuals living in the community, in group homes or support apartments or other situations.

SARRC's employment division has trained some 100 adults on the spectrum, with 25 placed in jobs. Matt McMahon owns 18 Outback Steakhouse franchises. His 12-year-old son is autistic and he's committed to having at least one adult on the spectrum working at each franchise. Erin Onacki helps to train individuals for jobs and notes that other people need training to learn "how to work alongside the autistic "; as Resnik also says,

"We have to do this.........Autism does not go away, and neither do the people living with it. We have to learn how to live together."

For the past week my son's been rearranging the furniture in our living room. He moved one couch back under the window where it had originally been and then, yesterday morning, started moving around the two (quite heavy) pieces of another black couch. We'll rearrange things eventually (there's a bit of an obstacle course right now to get into our kitchen) but Jim and I have been sitting down wherever the furniture is. We've gotten some different views of the house and of things with the new arrangement---yet another change made by Charlie in our lives that's brought us a new perspective and that we've learned to accommodate ourselves to and that works, in a different way. (And gives Charlie a large empty space to gambol in at one end of the living room.)

It's not just that individuals with disabilities need to learn what to do in the workplace. The rest of us also need to do things differently and change the workplace---the world---ourselves. As Resnik said, "'We have to learn to live together"---my emphasis on "we" and "together" added---and ss Dora wrote, autistic adults are not large children.

[The room in the photo accompanying this post is not of my living room, but from Nibsblog.]