Gilead

In answer to my question, What are the ingredients of a compelling autism blog, an important figure in that field listed three: news, science, and personal accounts. But as I approach my son’s first IEP (Friday) I wonder what good blogging or any kind of  writing does.  If you have an autistic kid, you’re hurting.  Period.  The impulse to spread the hurt around, to share it, may originate in the need to help others when the one you’d really like to help, but can’t, is yourself. What I should have asked this established blogger is, “What’s the point?” I’ve started this project (you can listen to it on my podcasts) where I drive around recording myself addressing my son. I got the idea from the novel Gilead in which a dying older father writes down his story for the future edification of a son who will never know him as an adult. I talk to my son as if as an adult he will want to hear the details of these early days of his autism: getting the diagnosis, searching for treatment, finding a lawyer. As if when he is older he’ll emerge from his autism and be able to understand. Will he? Perhaps. Will anyone benefit from this blog? I hope so.