Thank you for an honest and raw piece on autism. As the mother of a 32 year old on the spectrum who can’t keep a job and stopped trying before the pandemic, I appreciate it. I am so tired of the autism is cute crowd and specials like Love on the Spectrum who make it appear as though this is a lovable and easily manageable problem for most people. My heart goes out to you and your family.

My autistic son, another Jonathan, is 28, and I agree completely about the autism is cute image. 10 years ago, the DSM eliminated Aspergers Syndrome as a diagnosis and folded it into Autism Spectrum Disorder. This gave the public a distorted image of what autism actually looks like for the overwhelming majority of families. And it created the identity politics neurodiversity movement. Because people with Aspergers can speak for themselves and people with more profound autism cannot, this spread…

Agree. I am thankful that the Asperger's term is being used again. It might be on the same spectrum, but the symptoms display very differently

Exactly. I'm actually not certain my boys would qualify (doesn't language delay exclude Aspergers's) but they are closer to that than to Jill's kids described in this piece and I feel weirdly guilty about even using the same words to describe such different levels of impairment and need.