The Future isn’t set in stone

Written on 21st Jun 2024 by Alex Lowery

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Often when parents of autistic children get told their child has autism they become very depressed as they feel their child will never reach the milestones they hoped for. I like to tell parents that there is usually still hope.

When I was 4 years old I mostly spoke in my own language. I thought I was talking like everybody else but others couldn’t understand me which lead to a lot of extreme behaviours. At the time: my parents likely felt that my future looked hopeless and dim. However, I have achieved things they never would have dreamed I would achieve. I bet if someone told them that in the future their son would be giving speeches for live audiences in public: they probably wouldn’t have believed it. I definitely don’t want to give false hope to any parents because there are autistic people that have a much slower level of progress. Some may never even gain language.

However, I still think that with the right support many autistic people can accomplish things that you might not expect when they’re young children. My parents were told I had global developmental delay and would never amount to much but there are still skills I have achieved. I still don’t want to minimise that there’s definitely still a lot of things I haven’t achieved though. But I think that any progress at all is still good. Thank you for reading.

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