My Boys Dont Need To Change Society Does
my boys don’t need to change
society does imagine being 20 years old
giving birth to your first child a
beautiful baby boy
curly hair rosy red cheeks absolute
perfection
it feels good right imagine after 18
months being told that he’s a test deck
imagine at 21 years old a single mom
having a second perfect beautiful baby
boy the image of his big brother
to be told after nearly two years that
he is also autistic
two gifts with their two gifts
how common is it to have two autistic
children
based on a recent study by the american
academy of pediatrics
approximately 10 percent of families
will have more than one child with
diagnosed asd
now imagine how you would feel when you
read from research that the average life
expectancy for these two beautiful
boys is only 36 years of age
just how would that fail
imagine the horror when you read on to
find out that this is because
of what society imposes upon them both
how you have to suppress how they have
to suppress themselves so much
just to fit in this needs to change
and it will change hi
i’m yumi hardy and welcome to my ted
talk those two beautiful boys
they are my beautiful boys mason and
noah
all of what i just talked about that is
my life
i am part of that ten percent i’m here
today
standing in this red dot for my sons
my boys don’t need to change society
does
we can’t start a fire without a spark so
today
i am that spark let’s go back
to february 2017. the 17th to be exact
i had just turned 20 the week before and
now i was in hospital being handed the
greatest gift of my life
my first son mason a curly haired
bundle of pure perfection his dad and i
were overjoyed
completely in love and completely over
the men
being a mom was definitely my calling
the months passed and mason continued to
grow
all was well up until he was around 18
months old
i noticed mason’s lack of speech mason
didn’t try to say
mama or dada he was silent while inside
i was screaming
every day was a battle of willingham to
say something
anything but no words ever came
i was internally crumbling i did what
any other parent is told not to do
and googled my concerns obviously
autism was the constant word that kept
reappearing
mason was ticking a lot of the boxes
mason lined up any object in the house
he could find
he color-coded the baubles from our
christmas tree and i remember being
mesmerized by what he was doing
in fact so much so i even went to get my
mom to show her exactly what he was up
to
he used to spend a round and a round
sometimes for an hour
and he loved routine from a young age
i had to explain our plans day to day in
advance to mason
otherwise he would most definitely fall
out with me
i voiced my concerns to my health
visitor who quickly referred him to
where he needed to be
mason went to speech and language
therapy but didn’t partake in any
activity
getting mason’s attention for long
periods of time can be difficult
so the speech therapist definitely had
her work cut out for her
a couple of months before mason’s second
birthday he began to talk
completely on his own his first words
were colours but not just your standard
blue or red no mason was saying things
like
cyan and burgundy how did he even know
this was beyond me
mason started talking from that point on
and has never stopped since
he’s constantly telling me facts about
microsoft windows
or when the first driver was invented
mason taught himself to read soon after
his second birthday
mason taught himself spanish before he
turned free
he taught himself to play songs such as
twinkle twinkle little star on his
keyboard
and one day we were driving past the
transmission tire and out of the blue he
says
look mummy it’s the eiffel tower
that’s just a brief insight into his
wonderful mind
mind blown right mason was officially
diagnosed with asd in november 2019.
for a moment time froze i cried
a lot of tears with the doctors not
because i was ashamed
or anything of the sort because i was
afraid of the world that we live in
and what exactly that would mean for my
son
mason is the most innocent selfless
loving little boy who thinks that a
stranger he meets in the street is his
absolute best friend forever
as his mother i worried about things
like education his relationships outside
of our family
and even silly things like would he ever
become a father himself
in november of 2017 the 13th to be exact
i had just been blessed with another son
my beautiful noah
throughout my pregnancy with my second
son the boy’s dad and i ended our
relationship
so i was now facing this motherhood
thing of my own
scary but i was determined
was the image of his big brother he was
a smiley baby
he loved to dance and was always
giggling
noah worried me a lot quicker than mason
did when it came to milestones
noah didn’t ever wave he didn’t point
and he never spoke
again i went to my health visitor and
noah has also been referred to where he
needs to be
however with koved things have not been
moving as quickly as he did with his
older brother
and he is still yet to receive his asd
diagnosis professionally
but being here before i know in my heart
without an official piece of paper
that noah is also autistic
people say that having a non-verbal
child means you never know what they are
thinking or feeling
but that couldn’t be further from the
truth i know just by looking at noah’s
eyes
when he feels anxious upset or if he’s
happy
those big bright eyes tell me absolutely
everything i need to know and more
after all our eyes are the windows to
our souls
and this is most definitely the case
with noah
we still communicate this way because at
this present moment in time
noah isn’t able to have a conversation
or explain what he wants to be verbally
but as i stand on this red dot today he
has started to try and communicate with
words
and loves nothing more than singing his
alphabet on repeat
he is so proud of himself each and every
time that my heart could burst
people used to say that noah would never
talk yet now he’s singing
i always knew that noah would talk that
he would do it whenever he was ready
imagine a world where you have to time
picking your son up from nursery
to be the last parent in the queue
because his nursery teacher is
constantly telling you that he is
disrupting the class imagine a world
where your son’s nursery teacher asks
that he be picked up one hour after you
drop him off
yes one hour imagine your son
coming home from school and telling you
that no one wanted to play with him
today
and how that makes him feel upset well i
don’t have to imagine it because it
happened to us
mason wasn’t treated equally mason was
treated like an outsider
oh your son is different we just don’t
know what to do with him
you’re right my son is different and the
most beautiful of ways
what if teachers were trained to accept
children for who they are
to embrace their gift what if teachers
had empathy
let’s fight for a world where this
becomes the new normal
let’s not accept one of our sessions or
remarks about our child
let’s fight for all of our children’s
rights each child is beautiful in their
own way
and each child should be included
imagine going into a supermarket your
autistic child having a meltdown due to
the noise of the crowds
imagine other shoppers staring
whispering
shaking their heads and giving dirty
locks in your direction
again i don’t have to imagine that it
happens to me all the time
i have had people judge me because i’m a
young mom and i should be able to
control my child
i’ve had people judge me because i must
be a bad parent
otherwise my child wouldn’t misbehave
what if people took a step back stepped
back and instead of a dirty luck
how about a reassuring smile how about
for one minute thinking
i don’t know what’s going on there i
don’t walk that path
when my son is having a meltdown he
isn’t misbehaving
he is having sensory overload give him
some space
accept him encourage him
shops should all have autism friendly
times all shops
instead it’s a case of this being a big
deal if a shop has it in place
this shouldn’t be the case it should
become the norm
do you see how the world is it’s not
made for boys like mine
judgment is constant imagine a world
where autism
was accepted without any negative
connotations
society expects people with asd to
suppress who they are just in order to
fit into their world
but what about just accepting their
gifts
the likes of albert einstein isaac
newton thomas jefferson
andy warhol lewis carl and mozart were
all said to be autistic
and only just recently elon musk
well just imagine we as a society
suppress these brilliant minds
we need to start embracing the gift of
autism
my sons shouldn’t have to reach their
36th birthday and think
i’ve made it the biggest cause of death
and autistic people is depression
why because they feel so exhausted and
so not worthy of day-to-day life because
of what society tells them
to do well i’m here to tell any autistic
person
listening to this speech including my
two sons
don’t fit in stand out be who you are
because your gifts are worth sharing
with the world and i also say this
i’m so sorry that we are still living in
a world where this is still an issue
but i will fight for the rest of my life
to help make a change
please if you’re listening join me in
this fight
i want a world where i can grow old with
my two sons
i want a world where people with asd are
treated just like everyone else
instead of being so quick to judge as a
society we should be quicker to help
spread love and treat people with
kindness mason and noah
thank you for choosing me to be your
mummy thank you both for teaching me to
look at the word through your eyes
and even a few bits of spanish here and
there you have both taught me so much
and are the absolute loves of my life
what could
you do today to be part of that change