Autism & Trolls

 The autism veterans among us use a mantra that saves us much time, energy and ophthalmic health.  

Ophthalmic health, because the well-being of our eyes is challenged hard.  

First, we cry lots.  Second, we don't sleep much.  Third, our eyes roll in their sockets like incredulous dynamos at the bullshit we have to see through.  

The mantra is, don't feed the trolls.

Trolls, we quickly learned, do not only lurk under wooden bridges and traumatise goats (for those of you who didn't grow up with Ladybird books, this is a Billy Goats Gruff reference).  Trolls live among us, masquerading as normal people, sometimes appearing curiously human.  However, when exposed to the intoxicating power of a keyboard, it doesn't take long for their inner swamp-monster to emerge.

The weird thing is that it's often those within our own tribe who attack us.  The scourge of special needs parents are often other special needs parents with spleen to vent and inferiority complexes to inflate.

They are also the people who wouldn't say "boo!" to you if they met you in person.  Keyboard warriors are generally cowards in reality.

Earlier this week my friend Emma pointed out (on a supposed support network) that she doesn't feel safe to explain how ABA (applied behavioural analysis) benefits her kids.  This is a therapy many of us use with positive effect to keep our kids, and us, safe and well.  However, some people really don't like ABA; it is singular in it's ability to summon screechy hell-demons.  Trolls become VERY animated at the mere mention of it, and accuse anyone who uses it of being child-abusing satanists.  

Instead of scrolling past it like normal people.  

Adult, reasoned discussions are firebombed by right-on, self-righteous high-horsiness.  Constructive, useful discourse is a bust.

Emma also highlighted the insanity of being anxious about what words we can use to describe our kids (autistic? have autism? mad as a box of coked-up frogs?).  I may have added the frog bit, but there's a lot of eggshell-avoiding in an attempt to not upset someone's delicate sensibilities.  

What the actual fuck?

Anyway, she was flayed alive, roasted, salted and then devoured for speaking about her lived experience.

On a support platform.

The effect is that most of us long-term SN parents avoid social media groups, because we end up giving oxygen to the hot air of trolls.

We can't reason with crazy, but we can roll our eyes at it and refuse to feed it.