Mumsnet Talk

A letter to Carol Sarler, re your article “Why can’t we face the truth? Having an autistic child wrecks your life”. Article Here

As the mother of a child with ASD, I’m used to people sending ‘helpful’ articles that make me want to stab my eyes out with a rusty nail. The “Welcome to Holland” poem, for example, attacks my deeply cynical and unsentimental soul like the norovirus and each time I receive a copy, I find myself screaming, “but I want to go to Holland! Screw Italy and send me to the place with ganja”.

However, while the other articles and poems I’ve received have ranged from mildly nauseating to defcon HURL, I’ve never had one sent that both patronised, offended and annoyed as deeply as your article for the Daily Mail, and while I’ve had words with the person who sent it to me about sullying my mailbox with such crap, I feel inspired to write this as well.

Let’s start with your use of the words ‘brave’ and ‘plucky’ to describe the mother and grandmother caring for the child you are referring to. Those words would be appropriate in 1930’s school story about daring Phyllis and her exploits on the hockey field, but in the context of caring for a child with autism they are both patronising and show an incredible lack of understanding.

Those words suggest that in some way caring for an autistic child is so terrible, so hard and so beyond the norm that love isn’t enough and you must go to battle bravely each day. Anyone who is caring for a child with special needs knows that they are not brave or plucky, they are just caring for and loving their child like any other parent would and yes, perhaps the challenges are different, but it’s not a war, it’s just how life is.

The ‘brave and plucky’ bollocks, while the verbal equivalent of a stomach bug, was just annoying rather than offensive, but you bravely (see what I did there) carried on and hit on your next piece de resistance. Questioning whether such children should get to have a life in the first place. How did you know that apart from being called ‘plucky’ there is nothing more a parent of a child with ASD loves more than having someone suggest that their child may be so dreadful, so awful and so scary that they may make people consider abortion ?

Now I can deal with pity, misunderstanding, accusations of bad parenting, sleepless nights and well meaning, but ultimately uneducated friends putting their foot in it, but questioning his right to live takes a special kind of entitled ignorance.

Yes, all of the parents of children with Autism that I know (and I suspect I know more than you do) wish that their child didn’t have the condition and many grieve that they are not ‘NT’ however not one of them, at all, ever has said that they wish that their child had never been born because of the impact on their lives, and as someone much wiser than me once said “A life filled with love is a life worth living.”

You say at the end of your article that you will never ask your friend if she wishes her child had never been born. I think you should show her your article as she deserves the choice about whether to keep a relationship with someone who uses her child to suggest screening for, and terminating babies with autism. I suspect she may have a different view to yours.

As for the Daily Mail who published your article. Well I expect nothing less from such a hate filled fetid jam rag of a newspaper,.

Yours,

BarfAndHeave
Unplucky Mother of an Autistic Child.

Oh cock. Have just noticed that the article I'm responding to was from 2009. Never mind, the sentiments still stand, even if I am a little too late.

Dear unplucky mother

Not sure which is worse...that someone writes an article like this in the first place, that someone actually publishes it, or that people go into a shop and buy this newspaper....sadly I just knew this was from the Daily Mail before you mentioned it, they publish so much crap

V depressing

BarfAndHeave - you are so right. How patronising that article is.

My son also has (different) SN. I do not think of myself as courageous or 'plucky' (such a twee word). I'm just getting on with life as best I can and dealing with it.

Yes, there are difficult days, when I feel like screaming or wailing that I can't cope, but I suspect that there would have been difficult days with NT children too. It's just part of life. Not once have I wished that my ds2 had not been born. What a nasty piece of work that journalist is.

smallwhitecat !

Someone forwarded it to me last night and I spent all night seething. A feel a bit daft that its from a couple of years ago now, but found it very cathartic to write that!

hate filled fetid jam rag of a newspaper

best description of the Dail Mail ever

And just HOW are they going to test for autism before the child is born ANYWAY? As far as I am aware (having two children with autism), it is NOT something that there is a pre-natal test for. When you consider that it is very hard to get a diagnosis before age 4yo - what is proposed we do with these dc that are diagnosed at age 4+? Because you can't 'terminate' them.

And as for that Welcome To Holland poem - what a load of setimental tripe, that I have had sent to me about 4,000,000 times in the past 13 years. I really wish I could shoot anyone else who sends it to me. <<Low in patience these days>>

I know this isn't the aspect of the article that you're talking about - but it is interesting that a DM journalist says "And, please, don't ask about state benefits for carers: these are so meagre that if it were not for Helen, Cath could not even afford the mobile phone she must have with her every time she steps outside her front door." Of course, in Jan 2009, those pathetic state benefits were the responsibility of the Labour govt. I wonder if she's had to change her views on benefits for carers since the coalition govt came in in May 2010?

What earthy reason was there for "someone" to send you such a distressing article 2 years after the event?

You'd be surprised at what people have sent or said to me since DS was diagnosed. They know I'm reading extensively about ASD and don't twig that I won't appreciate it. In a roundabout way, it may be good that I have the chance now to articulate why it makes me so so if I do meet someone in person with those views, I'll be able to elegantly explain why I'm going to chin them before I do!

I find the sentiment in the article revolting to suggest that someone who has different needs to that of the general population might not have the same right to life is disgraceful and nothing short of eugenics. Women may choose to have abortions, that's a separate matter entirely but to suggest that it is expected is just plain wrong particularly given that life is not black and white like that. Where does this stop? I often wonder how many of us would actually be alive if they could test for various other things and the expectation placed to abort life.

babyheave I applaud your comment and support you fully. You are a mother bringing up your child who just so happens to have different needs and as far as I can tell you're a great role model