My lovely, sweet –natured, bleeding-heart daughter Blossom recently announced to a table of her birthday guests that she was “genocidal”.
While her friends stared at her, aghast, I calmly asked, “What do you think that word means, Blossom?”
She smiled and chirped, “That you are a fan of creepy movies and stories about murder and stuff.”
Ah, the joy of an Asberger’s child. Fortunately, she was singing the song of our people and I quickly put 2+2 together to get 5. “Sweetie, I know genre means a topic and that the suffix ‘cidal’ is used to denote killing people, but genocidal didn’t come from those two words. It came from the word gene, because genocidal means to want to kill people simply because of the place they were born or group they were born into. Like Hitler wanting to kill babies because their parents were Jewish.”
Blossom looked abashed. “Gross. I am totally NOT genocidal then.”
”Also,” I continued sternly, “you are full of malarkey when you say you are a fan of scary things. You are made of chicken poo like your mother and freak out at even the mildest potential scare.”
There was a more abashed look, and a rueful admission of being inherently chicken poo.
It could have been much worse, though. I will never forget when a friend’s beautiful 15 year old Asberger’s daughter posted on Tumblr that she was “bisexual”. Her mother, another member of our autistic tribe, queried as to what said daughter thought that word meant. Apparently her daughter thought that word meant she liked men and women as equals, and that a bisexual respected both genders equally.
The poor kid was less than thrilled when her mom explained the real definition.
Living with kids on the spectrum is an adventure, people.
