Autism's Parent Trap

I don't think your post is pessimistic, I think it's realistic.

What can't be cured, must be endured--and there is a great deal of enduring in parenting a "normal" child.

Years ago I read an excellent analogy as part of advice to parents who found that their eagerly-awaited baby would be a special needs child.

The counselor told them, "Look. You planned a vacation for Paris and you've just found out your plans have been cancelled and you have to go to London, instead. This isn't the vacation you planned, but that doesn't mean that parenting will be completely worthless and unrewarding.

Parenting an autistic child can be very trying and often a very sad experience.

Imagine a mother, an MD, who's at her wits end, so she puts a plastic bag over her childs head and kills her.

Why not put the child up for adoption, if nothing else sems to be working?

Sometimes when parents reach a breaking point they can no longer recognized the boundaries between the world and the child, the present and the future, the momentary and the eternal.

Now the mother is a "criminal" in the eyes of the law.