Regarding that special needs child & good parenting critique…

Steps on soapbox…

A bitch’s older brother Bill is autistic…very autistic…aphasic, hyperactive, sensitive to light and touch and sound…autistic as hell.

I have spent my entire life with autism in my world, so I feel that I know a little bit about how having a person with special needs impacts a family.

Blink.

My mother dedicated her life to helping my brother find a way to cope in a world that isn’t tolerant of understanding of difference. I watched as she sank deeply into a depression that, sadly, she has never fully recovered from…all because she couldn’t find that cure or treatment that would fix my brother.

Not all parents respond like that and this bitch isn’t trying to make an absolute statement.

What I will say is this – every family needs to make the decision that is right for them…for all of them and for the family as a whole…regarding who works or who stay home or what adjustments are made.

And I know this one true thing…my brother is now in residential treatment and it takes a rotating staff of eight people to do what my mother did for the first 13 years of my brother’s life.

She got shit done...big time!

And she went to college, sorta-raised her two other kids (long story...trust a bitch) and struggled with the guilt slathered on her by all manner of opinionated people for every second she didn't spend with my brother.

So, whether Gov. Palin is a parent of a special needs child or whether she’s just a mother with a lot of chil’ren who are going through the shit that chil’ren will go through doesn’t warrant some of the knee jerk throw-back 1950's bullshit I’ve read in the last few days.

We need to replace “she should stay at home and be a mother to those kids” with “how can society and our communities best support the needs of real American families.”

I’ve seen the dark side of absolute sacrifice and that shit doesn’t empower anything but more absolute sacrifice.

And should I ever lose my mind and seek to run for some sort of political office…gulp…I pity the fool who comes at me with some bullshit about how I need to keep my angry ass home because I’m co-guardian to my autistic brother and have a lot of dawgs and tons of other shit going on.

…and then steps firmly back onto solid ground.

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