About Stuart Duncan

My name is Stuart Duncan, creator of http://www.stuartduncan.name. My oldest son (Cameron) has Autism while my younger son (Tyler) does not. I am a work from home web developer with a background in radio. I do my very best to stay educated and do what ever is necessary to ensure my children have the tools they need to thrive. I share my stories and experiences in an effort to further grow and strengthen the online Autism community and to promote Autism Understanding and Acceptance.
Author Archive | Stuart Duncan

When did ‘different’ become wrong? or Acceptance is not a one way street

By on May 28, 2013 in Autism
differences

There’s something about you that’s different

I couldn’t decide on which title I liked better so I just went ahead and used both.

There seems to be a divide growing between certain autistics and certain parents. Not all. Just certain ones. My fear is that divide is growing.

I cringe when I see people talk about how they don’t understand how “the camps” can’t work together. For me, I don’t understand how there can be “camps” at all. Yes, autistics are different from parents and children are different from adults but really, aren’t we all different anyway? Autistics are different from other autistics and parents are different from other parents.

In the camp of differences, we all belong together.

So it hurts me when I see people share their experiences and opinions and get attacked for it. Now, don’t get me wrong. If someone tells me the green grass is orange, I’ll be pretty quick to say “no it isn’t.” But really, do I need to? Is it a requirement of mine to correct them? Or worse, am I bound by some law that says I have to attack them for what a horrible person they are for believing it’s orange?

What if it turns out that the person has a condition, such as color blindness, that truly does make the grass look orange to them? Are they still wrong? Is their perception wrong? Do I proclaim them wrong because their brain interprets things differently than what mine and my friends brains do?

A parent is going to have a different perspective than their own child. That just has to be. I mean that whether the child has autism or not. If a parent shared a child’s perspective and was only interested in appeasing that child’s wants, then the child would have totally chocolate dinner every night, a water park in their bathroom and video games would replace school.

When I hear about a parent that “leashes” their child while out, or fences off their backyard or school yard, I find that it almost always accompanies people that don’t just share their own opinion that a parent shouldn’t do that, they outright attack that person’s intelligence, age, education, parenting skills, rationality, mental stability and oh so much more. People are vicious. They never once consider that person or their child’s past. Does the child have a history of dashing off? Into traffic? Is the child incapable of staying close by for some reason? Is the parent incapable of reaching their child should something happen? Perhaps they have a medical condition of their own such as bad knee or back?
The point is, maybe they just are way too overbearing… or maybe they have a very good reason for keeping their child safe in the way that they know how.

When I hear about an autistic that tries to share their experiences in just how hard life can be sometimes, I find that it almost always accompanies people that hate them for being negative when others are trying so very hard to make autism out to be a positive thing. Or conversely, there are those that hate autistics that share their successes and triumphs only because they’ve been trying so hard to paint autism as a very dark and debilitating thing. They don’t take the time to understand how hard it is to share these things or how hard the journey was to overcome the obstacles they did… they simply attack for not representing their own situation or for “giving people a false impression” simply because it does not reflect their own situation.

Everyone is different. Everyone’s perspectives are different. Everyone’s experiences are different. And for anyone, autistic, parent, child, etc to request/demand acceptance from others, they must be willing to do the same.

Instead of condemning a parent for protecting their child from the evils of a chocolate dinner, accept that they are different from you. Before you condemn an autistic for making the world think that not all autistics are like you or your child, accept that they are just different from you.

I am different. And I am proud. And quite frankly, I don’t care if you accept that about me or not. But know that I understand just how different you are. And I accept that too. You won’t parent how I parent. You won’t “be” as I will “be”. You won’t see the orange that I see.

If someone says something that I disagree with, that doesn’t make them wrong. It makes them different. And even if I do feel they’re wrong, it’s not my job nor my duty to attack them for it.

Different is not wrong. Acceptance is not a one way street.

Let’s accept the differences in those that we demand acceptance from for our differences.

Comments { 11 }

Laying the blame

By on May 27, 2013 in General

blameThere is so much blame going around, I seem to find it everywhere.

There are parents that blame vaccines or the environment or doctors for their child’s autism. There are some autistics blaming their autism for their inability to succeed. There are some parents blaming autistics for giving people a false impression to people of their child and then there are autistics blaming parents for giving people a false impression of autistics in general.

The worst is when I see advocates (you know, the people who actively try to reach as many people as they can and even influence people in some way) that blame each other for something or another. Especially when someone actively goes out of their way to either visit someone in their home (their blog or place they advocate) and attack them there or to write on their own about those other people.

I’ve written several times about how division in the autism community saddens me and I’ve felt that it’s far too depressing and, quite frankly, pointless to continue writing about. It would seem that there will always be division, so wishing for it to change just isn’t going to make it so.

I’ve grown a lot since I started writing though. I mean, I still believe now, as I did then, that people should not be fighting and should work together instead. However, now I realize that wishing for something isn’t going to accomplish anything. Even some positive words, a moment of enlightenment, won’t change anything.

What I have found, what I believe, is that the root of the problem is blame. We’ve become so frustrated with our own situations that we need to find someone or something to blame.

We can’t work together and we can never come together as a community until we can learn to stop blaming each other.

I’ve come to realize that blaming someone for saying or being a way that I don’t agree with is no way to resolve a situation. Blaming them for affecting my life or anyone else’s life is no way to bring about peace and unity.

The best that I can do… the best that I can be… is to focus on me. Improve my message, make my message a message worth hearing. Make what I have to say, better and more worthwhile than the message that I disagree with.

The best way I can bring about positivity is to let go of my own negativity and stop laying blame. If someone is wrong or is doing something wrong, they’ll have to live with that and it’s consequences whether I say anything or not. And if I do play the blame game, I myself will have to live with that and it’s consequences too.

If you can’t climb the stairs, don’t blame the stair maker. Find another way. If you can’t see the words on a page, don’t blame the author. Find another way. If therapy isn’t going your way, don’t blame the therapist. Find another way. If your finances aren’t going your way, don’t blame your job. Find another way.

Focus on you and how you can be the best that you can be. Over come the obstacle, don’t focus on who’s to blame for the obstacle.

There is zero success in blame. Your success will come from realizing there is no blame, there are only challenges to better yourself by.

Comments { 5 }

Minecraft and Autism – Putting the two together in video

By on May 22, 2013 in Autism

My children love Minecraft. It’s a “sandbox” kind of game, meaning that what you do in it is entirely up to you. You can build, adventure, fight… what ever! As I always do, to better relate and help my boys, I started playing it myself. I do this with all games that they play. I feel it’s important.

Lately, I started recording myself playing Minecraft as I was requested to show what I was working on and to create tutorials on how to make some things.

So I decided that I am going to make an effort to combine Minecraft with what I do in the autism community and that is… share.

In this video, I head out from my base and just start walking. All the while, I talk about who I am, what I do and most importantly, why.

Comments { 1 }

Until it happens to you – Honoring Mikaela Lynch

By on May 20, 2013 in Autism

Do you remember when you first heard about autism? I don’t. I’m fairly certain it was long before I ever became a parent, but I don’t remember exactly. I find the same to be true of most parents that I talk to. We just don’t bother learning about it because it doesn’t pertain to us, therefore, it doesn’t interest us. Until we have a child with autism. Then we have no choice. But what if we had learned about it before the fact? I think, and it may be just me, that it would have helped me immensely to know more about autism before I had to.

Now, as recent events teach us, elopement, or wandering, is far too real and it happens far too frequently. Both Mikaela Lynch and Owen Black were found within one week of each, on opposites sides of the US, in water… dead. All it took was a split second, their parents lost sight of them for just a split second, and they were gone. Have you ever looked away from your child for more than second? I know have. A lot. In fact, I’d wager that it’s pretty much impossible to have your child in your line of sight at all times for years, much less decades.

But these aren’t the first children to wander off. They aren’t the first to be found in the most tragic way possible. And unfortunately, they very likely won’t be the last. And the reason, I fear, is that many people will read these stories with a heavy heart, feeling much sorrow and then moving on and not learning more. Because it doesn’t pertain to them. It doesn’t interest them.

This isn’t something that you can put off or dismiss because it doesn’t interest you. This isn’t something that you should wait to learn more about until it happens to you. If the deaths of these innocent little children is to mean anything, I would hope that it serves as a lesson to the rest of us to not wait… to not let it happen to us and then wish we had learned more earlier.

autism elopmentThe National Autism Association has taken action to help people be proactive in learning more and being prepared now, not later. Their Big Red Safety Box is a great start in preventing these tragedies from hitting much closer to home than you’d like. I strongly advise that you either take them up on this offer or at the very least, read about it, learn about it and prepare in your own way.

I don’t know the families of the children and I don’t know exactly what happened on those days. I do know, however, that this could have happened to anyone. No one is to blame. No one is at fault. What those people need is support, a shoulder, a hug. No media circus, no questions about how they could have let it happen, no accusations, no guilt.

If it had happened to me, I’d be devastated. I’d be furious. I’d be at my lowest. But it could have happened to me. It could have! And I have no idea how to prevent it. Because until now, I’ve read the news stories and in time, forgotten them. Because until now, I kept thinking that it was just something that happened to other people.

I sit here, wondering if those families were like me. Dismissing the stories, forgetting the lessons… until it happened to them. Did they know about autism before their child’s diagnosis? Did they know about how often children with autism wander away from safety and into danger? Did they know how often children with autism are found later, dead, in water?

I bet they know now. All too well. Not just about their own child but about the facts, the figures, the statistics.

I’m not Mikaela Lynch’s dad, but I would like to think that if I was, I’d want other dads to learn to not put off learning, to not dismiss the lessons being taught this day and most importantly, to not forget.

I put off learning about autism until I had no choice. I’d hate to think how I would feel if I put off learning about autistic elopement until it’s too late. I’d hate to think that I had learned the risks and learned the steps to avoid it and had the chance to take it… but forgot and failed to prevent it.

I certainly can’t speak for the families of these children nor any families that have gone through this previously but I would like to think, if there was anything those people could hope to come from these great tragedies is that the rest of us learn to not wait until it happens to us before we decide to do something about it.

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I will not judge you

By on May 7, 2013 in Autism

be curious not judgementalWe are a judgmental species. We judge others the moment we meet them. How a person looks, how they behave, what they wear, how they speak, the words they use, their posture and then, if we ever get that far, their decisions and opinions. We can’t help it. We form our own opinions, not just of those traits but of those people themselves, without even knowing them.

If you feel that you are judged by everyone, everywhere you go, I want you to know that I will not judge you.

If you find parenting hard, I will not judge you. If you feel that you are struggling, I will not judge you. If you have your own vices and/or demons, I will not judge you.

If you’re a strange one, I will not judge you. If you are the “odd one out”, I will not judge you.

If have friends that others do not approve of, I will not judge you. If you support charities or groups that others find appalling, I will not judge you.

If you wish that your child did not have a disorder or disability, I will not judge you. If you wish that you yourself did not have a disorder or disability, I will not judge you.

If you screw up despite your best intentions, I will not judge you. If you screw up without the best of intentions, I still will not judge you.

Bad jokes, inappropriate jokes, saying the wrong thing or just plain old getting it wrong, I will not judge you.

If you love yourself, hate yourself, mock yourself or wish you were anyone but you, I will not judge you.

I am in no position to judge you nor should I ever assume that I am. I can’t and I won’t. You are who you are and who you are is a result of who you’ve always been. I, therefore, can pass no judgment without knowing you since birth and so I won’t. Human nature or not, I will not judge you.

It’s not my place.

Comments { 2 }