Smockity hath apologized--where do we go now?

The center of the recent storm over other people's perception of special needs children has apologized. I've seen different levels of reaction to the apology, ranging from full to modified acceptance. Everyone will have their own perception of apologies and their sincerity, in real life and in the virtual world. It's up to each person to determine how sincere they believe an apology is. I know that when I watch my children apologize, often what drives the apology is more the concern that they're in trouble than real concern about the injured party. But I also know that when I, as an adult, apologize, I mean it. I try to apologize without qualification, and I try to model it for my children. I say, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that."

How do I view Smockity's apology? I'm glad she did it. As I have commented on some other blogs, my guess is that even pre-apology, Smockity was thinking about this episode, the furor it caused. Maybe she read some of the posts about it and understood some of the pain the parents who read her post felt. I felt that even in her defensiveness, she must be absorbing this information, and that next time something like this happened, she'd think not only twice but also more deeply about what she was seeing. That she would, in a phrase, be more aware.

Smockity describes herself as having been a teacher for several years. It's striking that in that time, she had not encountered or recognized an autistic student, but perhaps she was teaching in a specialized situation, such as a small private school, where such encounters would be more unlikely. I've run into this myself with our son, with experienced public school teachers, for example, who did not know that humming was a classic autism stim. My take-home message from situations like these is, We have much more work to do to make people aware of what autism is. While it's entirely Smockity's fault that she mocked a child, it's not her fault that she was unaware of the signs of autism.

Movies like the Temple Grandin biopic and books like the Paul Dirac biography are great starts to educating people about the spectrum and potential of autism, but I think that they tend to attract the choir. Don't get me started on the notorious and notoriously misleading Autism Speaks video or the narcissistic rantings and child vilification that goes on over at Age of Autism.

This is the month for Autism Awareness. Of what should people be made aware? I once thought that the priority was the needs of autistic people, young and old. I still think that's a priority. But given the Smockity debacle--her lack of awareness and that of many of her commenters--I think we also need to set a more educational priority. People need to know what autism really is, as autistic people live it. Mom-NOS did it at the grassroots with her classroom presentation about autism and her son. We did it, to good immediate effect if not long-lasting outcomes. How do we make that happen on a broader scale, now that we've taken a small baby step with Smockity? Do we continue on as we have, one baby step at a time, occasionally like the Red Queen in Alice, fighting a negative tide so strong that sometimes, it feels like we're running in place?