Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism — But if They Did, So What?
Imagine: You’re a parent with a child. Maybe you don’t have to imagine it. If you are a parent, think about your kid. If you aren’t, think about a kid you know. A niece, a nephew, a godchild, a friend’s kid.
A doctor comes up to you and says, “Your child is dying. There’s one cure, and it will save their life; but it will make them autistic. Without it, your child will die. What do you choose?”
If you even had to consider that, you should never be allowed to be a parent. Your children, if you have them, should be taken away from you.
I’m saying a lot of inflammatory statements here. Sorry if it seems like I’m being over the top, but here’s the thing: this isn’t some hypothetical, far-flung scenario. This is a daily occurrence. Thousands of parents — if not more — refuse to vaccinate their children on the basis that it could make them autistic, despite the fact that it has been proven irrefutably that that can’t happen. [Source: Centers for Disease Control & Prevention].
This often gets brushed aside by people as a weird group of parents being weird and not understanding science. And, yeah, that’s largely true. But what needs to be addressed here is that there’s a huge, horrific underlying problem: parents who say that they won’t vaccinate their children out of fear of autism are admitting that they would rather have a dead child than an autistic one.
Which is awful enough, and even more awful when you consider that there have been multiple cases of parents murdering their autistic children for being autistic. [Source: Ollibean.com, with links to further sources].
And, okay, hey. Maybe you’re a parent reading this. Maybe your kid is autistic, or maybe you’re worried they might be. Maybe the idea of your kid being autistic terrifies you. That makes me sad; but I truly believe in assuming the best of people. So I’m going to assume that your terror is coming, not from a place of malice, but from a place of concern.
A lot of people think they’ve never met an autistic person, so they base their ideas of autistic people off of what television shows and organizations like Autism Speaks say. They have a very rigid idea of what an autistic person is like, they have a very rigid definition in their head of “high functioning” versus “low functioning” autistic people, and they’re terrified of seeing that in their child because they don’t know how to deal with it.
So, I’m going to try to tell you what being autistic is actually like, from an actual autistic person.
First, two quick links: One, to an article explaining why you should leave behind high/low functioning labels [Link: TheMighty.com]; two, to an article explaining why I’m using identity-first instead of people-first language in this article [Link: The Autism Self Advocacy Network].
Now, let me tell you what being autistic is actually like.
Hi. My name is Miri, short for Miriam. I have a bunch of siblings, a handful of parents, and a very sweet boyfriend. I have an Associate degree in art, and I’m currently back in school going for a marine biology degree.
Autistic people often have what some refer to as “special interests” — things they’re super, super passionate about that they can talk about endlessly! These often change and shift overtime, but they can also be very long-term. Right now, my special interests are podcasts and the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons.
You might be thinking, “okay, that’s great; but I thought you were going to tell us what being autistic is like?”. And the thing is… I am! Everything you now know about me is influenced by my autism, because my autism is inextricable from me. If I wasn’t autistic, I wouldn’t interact with my loved ones the way I do, I wouldn’t have gone to school the way I did, and I wouldn’t be interested in the things I’m interested in the way I am right now.
And I like the way I experience things! I like the soaring joy I feel in my chest when somebody lets me go on and on about my special interest. I like how deeply, incredibly interested I can get into things. I like when I find good textures and just spend forever rubbing them. I like when I find good stim toys. I like how nice it feels to rock back and forth. I like how my hands flap all over the place when I get excited — it’s sharing with the world how happy I am!
And, yeah, it’s not all positives. Like many autistic people, I’m super sensitive to sensory input. Imagine if everything you felt, saw, heard, tasted, and smelled was amplified by — depending on the current situation — anywhere from 2 to 100 times.
Imagine this: you’re in a grocery store, and the lights are so bright they’re causing your eyes physical pain, every seam of your clothing feels like needles poking into your skin, every sound is like somebody screaming into your ear, everything is so hot you feel like it has to be at least 100 degrees, and you’re with someone who won’t let you leave and you can’t communicate to them what you’re feeling.
Do you understand now why you’ve seen autistic kids melt down “out of nowhere” in public spaces? Wouldn’t you melt down if you were in pain, people were screaming in your ears, and the person you were standing with was telling you to stop overreacting?
So, yeah, it’s not all positives. But the thing about that is that if you stop seeing the autism as the problem and start seeing the situation as the problem instead, it becomes a lot easier to deal with. You are never going to make your child stop having autism. If you think you have, you’ve just traumatized your kid enough to make them stop showing symptoms to you.
But you can talk to your kid. Like you would any other person. Talk to them and help them figure out what bothers them, what overwhelms them, and what you can do together to avoid it.
Maybe your kid can’t talk. Give them ways to communicate with you nonverbally — teach them even just basic sign language and learn it with them, give them a notepad to write on, give them colored beads on a bracelet that they can point to to show you how they’re feeling. It’s not your child’s responsibility to conform to your preferred method of communication. It’s your responsibility to figure out a method of communication that works for your child.
Figure out what triggers your child into having meltdowns, into feeling panicked and overwhelmed. Work with them to figure out how to avoid it and how to deal with it. What helps them? If the noise of a supermarket bothers them, can you give them headphones or earplugs? If being around that many people stresses them out, can you find a way to have them be elsewhere or to work on reducing other stressors so they can deal with that better?
The thing about dealing with an autistic child is that it becomes worlds easier if you realize that the problem isn’t your child. It’s not even the autism. The problem is that the world is set up in a way that’s really, really hard for autistic people to navigate. It’s not you versus your child, or you versus autism. It’s you and your child — your autistic child — , on a team together to make an inaccessible world accessible to them.
It’s gonna be hard. I’m not denying that. But you know what’s a lot harder than being the parent of an autistic child? Being an autistic child whose parents hates a part of you that’s never going to go away. You can’t stop your kid from being autistic. But you can be a good parent.
Figure out what overloads your kid, and help them avoid it. Listen when they tell you things that are bothering them, help them with it, even if you can’t understand why it’s an issue. Let your kid go on and on and on about their special interests, and listen the entire time.
Vaccines don’t cause autism. But they save lives. And even if they did save lives at the cost of causing autism… why would that be a bad thing?
