Love, my son

A long time ago my son received an autism diagnoses. We had had a hunch he had a mild form of autism from our own observations and a medical intuitive. At different times when he was little it flared up and we were able to treat it with homeopathy and diet. But every time the "energy" or a situation was adverse for him, he would manifest more dramatic symptoms. When he first started school in North Carolina he was sweet, compliant, a teacher's ideal pupil - just not particularly interested in joining the play style of the boys and he happened to be in a class that was disproportionately boys. That didn't work for him. The amount of hyper boy energy and the stress of the teacher trying to manage it was not good for him. He expressed his needs, but the classroom basically wasn't a fit. Finally we had him tested so he could get an IEP. I wanted to offer him the option to part time homeschool and part time school. during the process of looking into that, he saw a letterhead that included his diagnoses:
Me to Gabriel after he read the school attorney's letter advising me on what I needed to do to submit our request for a shortened day to the board:
Gabriel, how do you feel about the word "autism?"
Gabriel: "Am I your love?
Me: "Yes"
Gabriel: "Am I your sweetie?"
Me: "Yes"
Me: "Do you not really care about the word autism as long as you know you're my love and my sweetie?"
Gabriel: "The only thing I care about is love."
I have written before about how symptoms of behavior and mental illness are often symptoms of societal disease manifested in the individual. Where there might be a tendency toward___________(whatever) it is the ecosystem in which we live that often determines what epigenetics express, and what arises as our authentic response to life. Our ecosystem includes the actual structures of our world and how we interface with them. Do the structures (physical and otherwise) have enough freedom and enough form? Are they built harmonically with nature? Is the intent control or nurturance of empowerment? Water itself can be structured. Space itself is structured. It is not just the outer structures but the inner ones that impact children. Children on the spectrum KNOW when the motive is LOVE and when it is complicity in fear or a milieu of control. Many administrators have forgotten their own childlike ability to be creative, to evolve. I want to encourage those who work with children to validate children's feelings, expressed or silently witnessed. The children are very, very often right. The adults who say, "this is the policy" when the policy hurts a child and there is a better way that is possible WITHOUT THE POLICY are forgetting Who They Are as entrusted with lives of huge beings in very tender vessels that are extra sensitive - sensitive to light and noise but also to truth. Often well trained and "qualified" adults feel obliged to enforce things that cause harm. Sometimes they truly believe they are right (kids KNOW when this is a falsehood) and sometimes they feel that there hands are tied. It's time to lovingly, fiercely untie our hands, first in the inner layers of our being, then in our outer actions of courage to express whatever is our soul truth in the ways that are aligned from the highest levels we can access, in the most fully embodied ways we can, for the highest flourishing of all life on earth, Now.
"The only thing I care about is love."