What Does Autism Awareness Even Mean?

April is Autism Awareness Month.

I'm not sure when this tradition started. Does anyone out there know? I would research it, but I'm in the middle of eating a huge, yummy cinnamon roll from Cinnabon and I don't feel like multi-tasking.

But it's a curious thing, this awareness.

When my sister and I were kids, we would play a game where we'd say a word over and over again until it lost all of its meaning.

aware aware aware aware aware

Then we'd try to think of as many rhymes as we could.

Aware, despair, somewhere. To stare.

But what does autism awareness really even mean?

I know it is a chance to celebrate the unusual, to rejoice in ideas like inclusion and integration and bright, colorful days. It's an opportunity to educate the public about why our kiddos may throw huge tantrums in Costco or jump up and down in the aisle at the movies. It's good stuff, this awareness.

When my son Jack was about nine, he would lock himself in the bathroom at 4:00 every single afternoon and have the most horrific bowel movements I've ever seen. He would take all of his clothes off and moan and wail. Then he would run all over the house and make poop-footprints on the floor and splotchy handprints on the walls.

For the entire year, every afternoon at about 3:58, I pictured myself opening our front door, walking outside and never coming back.

Does this story make you more aware of him and his autism?

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To finish reading the full story, visit The Huffington Post: Parents website: http://huff.to/1E7Tuw1.

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