Oh, you have autism? Well, that's curable.

The title of this post is a sort of summary of TH's take-home information from an episode at school. He has another child in his class with autism whose autism is, as TH puts it, "worse" than our son's. This child's mother, Ms. Grossmund, came to class to talk to them about her child's autism, a sort of circle of friends minus the circle of friends, parent letter, or, as it seems to turn out, accurate information.

When I picked TH up from school Friday, I got this sense that something was on his mind. He denied having anything in particular to talk about, but I IM'd his dad that I felt there was something going on. That night, at about 10 o' clock, TH came downstairs. He does this often in the late evening...sometimes, it's just to make a final connection with me, sometimes it's to take me into our home office so he can tell me something that to him is very personal, and sometimes, it's confessional to both Mr. DMFP and me. This night, it was this last.

He sat down, paused for a bit while I hugged him, and then blurted out, "Ms. Grossmund came to our class today to talk about (her son) and to tell us that he is autistic." Mr. DMFP and I locked eyes over TH's head. He went on to tell us that she had talked about her son in specifics about how he communicates and so on, and I asked, "Did you say anything?"

And TH said, "I raised my hand and then said, 'I have autism, too.'"

I've thought about this a lot since Friday night. Maybe it's misplaced. Maybe it's too soon. But I felt a flood of maternal pride and respect for my son, for his courage and for his capacity for self acceptance. First, he had the courage to raise his hand in front of a total stranger and his entire class. That's a big deal. And then, he manifested total acceptance of who he is, openly, without shame or embarrassment. This is a child who still has to take 15 minutes to get used to his grandmother's entering the house.

The story gets garbled from here. At some point, another child in TH's class--actually, his best friend--raised his hand and asked, "Is there a cure for autism?" TH, who still has no real concept of time or linear ordering of events, cannot tell us whether this occurred before or after he told the parent he has autism. But he was fully able to tell us what she had to say: Autism can be cured. Some people get "better" and will actually become like "normal" people.

I've never seen Mr. DMFP so pissed off, in his way, about something. We both explained to TH that what he has--which is Asperger's syndrome--is not a disease. It's not something that requires a cure. It's not something that we've ever thought needs to be cured. That there is no such thing as normal. Everyone carries with them things that are difficult, things that they have to work on, to try to improve. His suite of difficulties simply has a name: Asperger's. That doesn't make it a disease. He's just like everyone else in that some things are hard for him, and he has to work harder on those things.

Finally, I also told him that (a) we think he's incredible just the way he is and have never thought he needed to be "cured" from anything, and (b) people with autism don't get "cured." Like everyone else, as they develop and mature, they may improve or overcome some of the difficulties that come with autism. Not all, maybe, but some. But the things that make them autistic--the great things, the neutral things, the difficult things--don't all just "go away" any more than someone's tendency to anxiety or depression or manic behavior or impulsiveness or creativity or math genius or good comedic timing just "goes away."

Mr. DMFP and I talked a lot about this over the weekend. He worried that TH came out of that classroom experience with the impression that his Asperger's is something that people view as a disease, something that needs to be cured, or something that he should hope will just "go away" someday so he can be "normal." So, I asked him, "Did that make you feel bad? Do you feel like you need to be cured from your autism?"

And he said, "No," and expressed to me, in his way, that he's genuinely comfortable with who he is.

I believe that someday soon, TH will probably begin to have an even greater awareness of some of the disputes that take place in the world of autism. Diets. Cures. Chelation. Disease. Way of being. Acceptance. Rejection. Right now, he's eight years old. Right now, he's in third grade. Yet, already he's showing a maturity beyond his years, one that bodes well for what I've stated here before is my goal for my children: that they achieve true happiness by understanding and accepting themselves. Part of that will likely involve encountering and maybe even confronting misconceptions and misinformation about who they are. I simply hadn't guessed that the process would start so early.