I have been getting emails for a couple of very nice folks asking for my advice when it comes to a couple issues involved with their special needs children.  While I did offer my half-witted advice, I did with the following disclaimer:

I AM THE LAST SCHELP-BAG WHO SHOULD BE GIVING ADVICE TO ANYONE.

Seriously. Let me remind you that I am the same guy who got involved in a forty minute stand off with a RUBBER SPIDER!  I am also the bloke who once made my girlfriend (and future wife) change the tire on the busy highway. 

I am the same guy who knocked my children down while running away from what I thought was a South American Killer Bee.  It ended up being a moth..

I cannot make popcorn without getting the fire department involved.

I once accidently washed my hair with Mr. Clean!

My way of balancing my checkbook is to let it get to $ 0.00

I have stapeled my finger on two occasions while trying to fix a stapler.  ON THE SAME DAY!!!

Sometimes I tell the person on the other end of the Drive Through monitor at McDonalds that my order is "To Go".



So, yes I am a tool.  My parenting advice for everyone is...if I can manage it...ANYONE CAN


Here is a small portion of something I have been working on. It is rough,  but it explains why I should be the last person on the planet who should be the father of a child with autism.  So keep this in mind when asking me for advice




Of all the people in the world who should be charged with raising a child with special needs I was most likely near the bottom of the list. There are few reasons of why that is. One of the reasons is that I was, like I have mentioned am emotionally strong as a piece of wax paper. I was also a super selfish person who put myself not only first, but second and third as well. While my weakness and selfishness are the major foundation for my belief that I was not ready for my excursion into parenting a child with autism, it is not the major one.

The major reason was that I was afraid of people with special needs.

Writing this now makes me angry at my old stupid, stinky self!

I am not certain where this fear originated from, but it had been with me as long as I can remember. As a young child I used to be deathly afraid of coming into contact with an individual who was physically or mentally challenged. Although this was a fear that started when I was young, I am ashamed to admit it was one that I carried into adulthood. I cannot say for certain what it was about special people that bothered me so much.

Perhaps as a boy I was scared because special people might have acted a little different then me. There is an optimistic side of me that believes that maybe even as a young lad I was so attuned to the universe that I was afraid of special folk due to the fact that they represented how fragile life was. That perhaps this “ahead of my time” perception of mine indicated if these poor people were so easily broken then I am one breath from having the same thing happen to me. Ok, that sounds a little too profound of a thought process for a kid who used to make crayon tacos and eat them, so I was probably afraid because disabled people just looked different. How incredibly sad and cowardly of me.

For most of my life I was a “judge a book by it’s cover” advocate. That is a nice way to put that my insight of my fellow man was as shallow as the Enron ethics manual. This attitude of mine absolutely applied toward people with special needs. I made the half-witted assumption that if a person was mentally challenged that they had no capacity to think, feel, or experience life in any of the ways I could. If they were special it meant that they were fractured beyond any repair. I never acknowledged that there was a part of me that subscribed to the horrific notion that special people did not deserved the same dignity that I demanded. I treated them like lepers in the bible. I was afraid to be in contact with them because maybe I thought they were contagious and I would get down syndrome as well if I touched someone afflicted with it.

In short, I was stupid. In fact that is probably being a bit generous of my way of thinking. I was dumber than the idea of Paris Hilton in charge of our National Defense. (note to Miss Hilton’s Lawyers: Not that I think Paris is incapable of running our military. I just believe her unique skills could be used elsewhere. Like staring in “House of Wax 2“ or opening a mall)

Life being the teacher that it is always tried to intervene on my behalf to try cure my seemingly endless canyon of idiocy. It seemed that I was kept being put in situations where I would be forced to interact with a person who had special needs. Whether it would be a new family that would move next to us next door who had a child with a handicap or a friend who would have a brother with Multiple Sclerosis I was apparently destined to face my fears. In hindsight “the divine powers that be” were just trying to get myself ready for the journey that was dozens of years away. Growing up, however, I just thought this was just another way life was trying to “stick it” to me. I never used those encounters with the disabled as the gifts they were. These were experience that were provided to get me to understand that just because someone has a handicapped it does not mean that they are not a person just like me. I was a functioning part of the silent discrimination machine that exists against special people.

One of the biggest lessons I missed on was back in third grade when our class went bowling with a class from a special needs school across town. Each of us were being paired with a mentally challenged grade schooler and we would form a bowling team together. You would think that this event would have involved myself chewing on hot coals by the way I complained, whined, and fretted over it. I did not go into this experience like many of my other classmates did with the idea that this was a great chance to connect with kids who might be struggling a bit. I went into the bowling day with an attitude of that one of the disabled kids might try and eat me. While many of my friends had a heart of service, I had a heart beating with pure unfiltered cowardice. I tried to play the “I am too sick to go to school” card that morning. My seemingly psychic mother knew better, she sent me to school despite my Daytime Emmy award winning performance that depicted a combination of mumps, polio, and a bad case of Monkey Shivers. With gloom in my heart I went to school that day knowing that I was going to be forced to interact with special children. I was a miserable little creep that day.

I remember that the young boy I was partnered with a boy named Rustin. Despite only being a year older than me he was much bigger than I was. The fact that Rustin could cast a shadow over me only heighten my anxiety over the situation. The other thing that concerned me was that he could not talk, he communicated most of his thoughts and emotions by either grunting, or clapping. You have to understand that back then, the only way I am really able to connect with people is to try and make them laugh. (That is probably a character trait of mine that still exists in some form today) As a young boy I was usually successful in this approach. Back then I was aware that if I was simply ever used the words “underwear” or “poop” in a sentence you were golden. If by any chance I used those two words in combination then I was assured a laughing audience who might need some medical attention. Unfortunately for me and those who associate with me, my sense of humor probably has not evolved much. If I can’t make someone even break a smile then I usually retreat into my usual introversive self. When I sat down on the bus next to Rustin twenty four years ago, I immediately when to work with my routine of self-recognized hilarity. I was ready to build at least some sort of relationship between the two of us that would last throughout our bowling excursion. Instead what I got was ignored. Rustin could have cared less about the “fart song” I had invented on the spot. Today I don’t blame him, however back then I was silently outraged. I vowed to punish Rustin for not getting my brilliant sense of humor by not talking to him the entire bus ride to the Bowlerama Bowling Alley.

What I learned within the first two minutes of my bus ride was that Rustin was unable to remain still. More specifically he found it impossible to keep his hands from flapping around. Many time over the course of our first ten minute ride together I was constantly being slapped in the arm by his fluttering arms. A couple times, much to my discomfort Rustin would rub his hands across my hair or face. When he did this I would kick into Melodrama mode and made it look like I was being attacked by a land-shark. The first couple times Rustin touched, or slapped me I would look pleadingly at his teacher or mine for some sort of intervention. Instead they treated his behavior as if it was normal and they gave my plight no attention. I was freaking out, how could they not be trying to contain this type of “crazed” behavior on his part? My personal space bubble was not just being penetrated, it was being brutally popped with his flaying hands. Since the teachers were not going to provide me with any support, I knew I was going to have to go all vigilante and handle this situation myself.

Suddenly I felt Rustin’s fingers sliding down the side of my head and near my ear. It didn’t hurt, but it felt like a giant spider crawling on my temple and making way to setting up camp in my eardrum. I had enough! Quickly I grabbed his hand and pushed it away from my face. With that I yelled “Stop it!” and I gave him my best B.A Barrcus (of A-Team fame) look that would indicate to Rustin I was not a third grader who should be messed with. Rustin looked at me as if I had just spoken Martian. A second later all ten of his thick fingers were tapping across my shell shocked face. My head was like a nerf ball compared to his oversized mitts. Clearly my message that I did not appreciate being treated like this did not resonate in him. So I did something that still makes my heart ache today.

I pushed Rustin, hard. I pushed him away from