Yes, raising a child with autism can be highly demanding, but please remember, just as you worry about your child, so your child worries about you.

However, why does it so often fail to dawn on them that if we’re smart enough to understand their instructions, we might well also be capable of understanding the everyday language that’s going on around us all the time?

What I, as a person with special needs, longed for was to be taught what role, what purpose, I could have in society, and how to attain a level of independence.

Children with disabilities might, to your eyes, look stuck in a perpetual childhood, but our thoughts and sensibilities evolve constantly. So, using vocabulary the child understands, please show them how they can live their lives to the full.

What matters to people with disabilities is how they can lead rewarding lives twenty or thirty years from now.

When boundaries of behavior are set, it’s crucial to respect those boundaries, but it’s doubly crucial that the boundaries are appropriate and realistic for the person and context in the first place.

My point: please don’t think that by not pushing someone toward a goal or by not stretching their abilities, you’re automatically making it easier for them to arrive. Life isn’t that great for turtles, and plodding along tortoise-like is no picnic either.

The conclusion is that both emotional poverty and an aversion to company are not symptoms of autism but consequences of autism, its harsh lockdown on self-expression and society's near-pristine ignorance about what's happening inside autistic heads.

When we look at nature, we receive a sort of permission to be alive in this world, and our entire bodies get recharged. However often we're ignored and pushed away by other people, nature will always give us a good big hug, here inside our hearts.