Now, I know this is controversial but I am having trouble making some adjustments for people with ASC. I should point out here that I have two offspring aged 18 and 21 diagnosed with ASC and to the best of my knowledge me and their father don't have ASC (although that is debatable). I appreciate that noise and sensory issues cause distress, which in many cases (my daughter included) are mitigated by noise cancelling headphones but I have this repeated issue every single year related to birthday cakes. Yes, I know this may sound weird, bizarre even, but every single year since my daughter has been old enough to bake we have the annual birthday cake trauma. She is fantastic at baking but unless it is absolutely perfect she goes in to a melt down (which is almost every year) and ruins the birthday of the person she is making the cake for.
We have tried to avoid this by suggesting buying a cake, which causes another strop. So, I am asking why should we make an adjustment for someone knowing that they are going to ruin 80% of our birthdays. Why should we accept that the one day of our year that is devoted to us should be dominated and ruined by the same individual each year. Every one has their needs ASC or NT and I find this difficult to accept.
This brings me to a much wider and more controversial problem. I am constantly reminded I should make adjustments for people with ASC, and believe me I don't underestimate their struggles having had a daughter who has spent 29 months in a CAMHS inpatient unit with an eating disorder), but there appears to be no recognition from the people with ASC that an NT person is permitted to have any problems and that theirs are somewhat less important than someone with ASC. Why should I as someone who is nominally NT, constantly be accommodating to the demands of people with ASC when they agree oblivious to my needs.
If the world was run by people with ASC then the NT's would be demanding you make accommodations for us. Surely, that tells us something. We should be trying to meet some common ground not simply telling the other side that they must make adjustments for us. If we met this common ground then the compromise/adjustments on both sides would make both our lives easier but it seems that as in many things this is unlikely to happen as we each believe we have the greater rights. Adjustment works both ways.
