Dear Penelope,
I am so happy to have found your blog. I read What explains the outsized success of autistic applicants to college post. My 4-year-old son was diagnosed with mild to moderate autism. He has language, social, cognitive and motor delays. He is not intellectually disabled. His developmental pediatrician says that he is smart. Do these universities(MIT, Stanford, Harvard) have students like my kid? I know that these universities have students with autism, but they may be very smart and may have just social delay when they were young. I like to dream. My dream is that my kid will go to such great universities despite all the challenges he is facing right now. I feel his autism will help him get into these universities.
Dear Penelope,
Why does it seem that even people that I seem to align with are capable of finding a happy relationship, when I remain single and alone? How the hell do you do it (the normal being with another person thing, without pretending to not be you all the time? Or does ther person you are with love you just the way you are? How in the hell do I find that? Does he have a brother?
Dear Penelope,
I just made a children’s book. Literally just finished it and shared it with you.
I’m considering self publishing through Amazon (kindle direct publishing, instagram spark, or china), but I think the book is pretty good, and maybe it’s worth pursuing a traditional publishing deal. I’ve got a couple more books that are partially completed.
Never done this before and would love your opinion.
Dear Penelope,
I recently came up with an idea of doing a search engine type of thing for dance studios only. The idea is that dance studio is a HUGE market in the US but there is not enough advertisement beyond social media platforms that run by themselves. The same thing that bothers dance enthusiasts is that it’s really time consuming to find classes that interests them in their surrounding areas because of lack of advertisement.
So, with that in mind, the platform we could develop is as simple as a search engine that allows users to search up classes (using keywords or tags) and studios nearby. And for the side of Dance studios, they could register and sell their classes online on their side.
Right now it’s only an idea of mine but the potential profit even if we only take 10 percent of the sales on our app could be REALLY insane. If you think this would be a good idea let me know.
Dear Penelope,
I haven’t seen you write much about the trades, but I’m still interested in hearing what you know. My brother is a Flux core welder in Tucson and having a really hard time time finding a job. They hire him knowing he’s entry level and then let him go because he doesn’t have the skill level they want. I think we’d like to have you fix his resume, but also if you know how to go about getting those jobs where experience is required but it’s hard to get the experience without a job.
This is an email I received. I read it an I felt like she really needed to talk with someone, so I sent her my phone number and told her to call me.
Dear Penelope,
I’m a mom to a two and a half year old. turning forty in April. My daughter seems to be verbally and emotionally gifted. I’ve been at home with her since her birth. I’m a public school teacher on unpaid leave. My spouse and I struggle financially and are basically being supported by family. He’s in real estate.
I definitely have ADD, lots of trauma from a very very difficult childhood- mother is probably severely autistic, divorced parents, father got custody. Father is a narcissist he was very abusive emotionally (maybe sexually, there was an investigation in the 90’s but they let me live with him for ten years after- i don’t remember details.)
Everyone says I’m a great mother because of how verbal and advanced my daughter seems. But I struggle with socializing with other parents. I start conflict, I have crippling anxiety, i’m awkward and flirt weirdly with people, and have weird hygiene sometimes. Ok I’m autistic I get it!
I’m so scared that as she gets older she’s going to realize that her mother is a complete loser. I’m also scared that she won’t get the childhood she deserves. she deserves everything all the love, all the experiences, all the nature and community that i can’t give her. Yesterday she asked a lady in the park if her and her son wanted to play with her and she snubbed her. We know this lady and in the past she was nice and I know it’s because she doesn’t like me because of something I did or said. (She’s winning at life this woman btw this woman. A hot but down to earth pilates instructor with a gorgeous mixed raced son that attends forest school and a husband that builds shit.)
Btw my daughter took the rejection so well and made our time at the playground so much fun! She’s an old, wise, confident, resilient, soul!
The interaction haunted me all night. I take my daughter to the playground and walk around giving people mean looks because I’m dealing with crippling anxiety and fear of rejection. I act weird around the kids. I think i’m autistic although my husband says no. I feel like Im ruining my husbands life too! My daughter is very resilient, strongly attached, funny/ like hysterical, but maybe is already struggling because of us. Maybe she’s autistic too?
Anyway, Im starting a job as an early intervention coordinator so please don’t tell me to do early intervention with her. Can you advise on how to go forward? We need community, nature, and money to be good parents and at the moment I don’t have access to enough of any. We also need happy and confident parents but that’s not us either. I just wanna cry!! BTW I’m INFJ, my daughter was surprise covid baby after a short time dating my husband (we aren’t really married), I come from traditional Jewish background sort of…so lots of religious trauma. How do I help my daughter not become me and instead win at life? I need her to win at life and is there a chance for me to win also?
Sincerely, [redacted as an act of mercy]
That’s the email. She called me twenty minutes later.
I said, “What do you mean I shouldn’t tell you to do early intervention?”
She said, “I just don’t think my daughter needs it. She’s brilliant. [Blabh blah blah ten sentences about brilliance. Maybe fewer because I probably interrupted her.]
I tol her part of being autistic is being brilliant. She said she’s not brilliant. I said you are gifted. Part of having autism is being gifted. You had a mother who made you feel stupid so you have that playing in your head.
She said her mother is probably autistic but she and her daughter aren’t. Maybe her husband is autistic.
So I’m not telling you any more of the conversation. We just went in circles. She has a brilliant daughter and she thinks she and her daughter should both be shining blah blah.
After fifteen minutes she told me okay she sees that she is trying to live vicariously from her brilliant perfect daughter.
I told her don’t use perfect about a kid. It’s awful pressure and no kid’s perfect.
Why I’m writing this: I’m so tired of this exchange. It’s an every day thing for me. Every day I talk to someone who is unbelievably so clearly autistic and we have to argue about it. Because autistic people know everything. And I’m so so so so so tired of people saying their kids are doing fine when the kids are not fine but it takes 30 minutes for me to get them to say the reason their kid is not fine. I’m just really frustrated.
Just last week I had a dad tell me his kid is doing great in school.
I said, “Well, you’re autistic, so he’s autistic, so he probably has no friends.”
The dad said, “Well, he doesn’t seem to want friends so it’s not a problem.”
This did not even surprise me. It’s so frequent. I am just crushed. That’s it, really. I’m crushed. I don’t really understand why all my readers are autistic and all of them don’t realize they are. I don’t understand why people don’t see autism as a family disorder. There is not one autistic person in a family. It’s fucking genetic.
The whole problem starts with people thinking autism is a problem. It’s not a problem. There’s nothing inherently bad about it except that not understanding that the family has autism means people do messed up things to cope with autism. Like sex abuse, or yelling, or parentification. It’s so easy to see. It’s patterns. I’m so frustrated. I don’t want to be the person always arguing that yes, it’s autism. I want to be the person collaboratively learning about life with autism.
It’s so fun to talk with people who know they have autism and we can learn together. I always think the phone call will be that. I always hope for that. Okay. Thank you for reading.
How can you find out what you’re good at? Especially if you don’t want to ask anyone and might be autistic?
I wanted to move to San Francisco with my boyfriend, but we came to Boulder and lived with his parents instead so that I was not carrying the entire financial load while he rebuilt a career in SF, but I still want to spend time in SF and probably will spend some time back and forth. I like having time to be myself. I don’t know a lot of people here, so I’m trying to focus on the positives here of having a partner.
But I keep wanting to quit my job in marketing because it’s such an obedience culture and I can’t survive in it. What do you think? Any ideas?
I just got my dream job at a prestigious law firm. Everyone says I should negotiate but I don’t know what to ask for. I know women are not as good at negotiating as men are, so I don’t want to underperform on my first try.
I’m surprised to see that you’re living in Boston! maybe I’m just being cynical, but it seems like everyone in Boston is optimizing their life for prestige at every turn, at the expense of everything else, which results in a very un-interesting monoculture. I’m excited to be leaving Boston soon (we moved here for my boyfriend’s residency which is ending in July) but I’m curious what your take is, having lived a few places across the country.