Autism Vox

From Silicon Valley to the Garden State

by Kristina Chew, PhD on February 16th, 2007

Susan Etlinger, mother of a three-year-old autistic son, reflects on well-known Asperger’s expert Tony Attwood; a “suburban legend” for why Windows NT has its moniker (”Windows so easy, even a neurotypical could use it”); and how where you live can affect your understanding of autism as a “spectrum.”

Living here in the Bay Area, it’s easy to understand why autism is considered a spectrum. This is a place where many of the diagnostic markers–social awkwardness, intense specialization, disinterest in or unusual patterns of communication–are, well, valued………

As the wife of a man who keeps a running tally of the number of minutes he exercises each year and who multiplies large numbers in his head for fun, and the mother of a three-year-old, diagnosed on the spectrum, who likes counting by eleven and thinks that the height of hilarity is to recite Goodnight Moon by replacing the first letter of every word with the letter “D” (”Din de dreat dreen droom…”), I have a profound love and respect for what I can only think of as “neurological diversity.”

I grew up in the Bay Area. To be more precise, I grew up in Oakland and in Berkeley, a city particularly known for its accommodation of the full diversity of persons and perspectives. Now I live in New Jersey, the state where 1 in 94 children are on the autism spectrum. More than a bit of that Bay Area/Berkeley valuing for neurological diversity runs deep in me, and—while I am glad to be living in a state and in a town that has so far provided a public school education that is the best for my son Charlie —I do not see that 1 in 94 figure as reason for “defeating autism,” or that there is “something about New Jersey” (such as the state having the “highest childhood vaccination rates,” as one parent of an autistic child notes in the February 19th Long Island Press) that would result in more children “getting” autism here. Rather, it seems to me that, as the head of Clinical Services for New Jersey Center for Outreach and Services for the Autism Community (COSAC), has said:

“New Jersey … is much more knowledgeable about autism than other states. You’re working with professionals in the educational system here who are much more aware of autism than professionals in other states.”

And so I echo Etlinger in saying Blessed are the Cheesemakers.

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POSTED IN: Asperger's Syndrome, Parenting, Technology, Weblogs