How Should I Respond Regarding My Autistic Son When People Say, “Well, He Looks Okay!”?
Most recently, I was chatting with someone who knows my son is autistic. Kindly, the person asked, “How is your son doing?” and I responded, “Well, we have our challenges. I guess it depends on what happens throughout the day.”
The person said, “Well, he looks okay.”
This made me think, Hmmmmm.
I was at a loss for words. Frankly, I wasn’t sure how to take this: a compliment, a statement due to lack of knowledge, or maybe the person was uncomfortable in our conversation and just said this out of kindness.
The one word to describe my son is: unpredictable. I never know how he is going to react at any given moment. There were many times when I thought he would love to see this or that, and it turned out that he hated it for some reason. Or I thought he might have a problem with this, and he didn’t. I never know.
My immediate response to the conversation was, “Well, you haven’t seen him during a meltdown either.”
How am I supposed to respond to a comment like this? I have heard the following statements before:
“He looks okay.”
“He doesn’t look autistic.”
“He seems social.”
“He seems normal.”
“I would have never thought he was autistic!”
It won’t be the last time I hear something like this. I did not know how to respond to this statement because, in my mind, autism doesn’t look a certain way. Maybe my defenses are always up because we are constantly judged everywhere we go. After all, I never know how my son will be in a specific situation.
So what should I say in the future?
