It’s hard right now.
I’m out of the country, but yesterday I heard about a list being compiled by the U.S. government—people diagnosed, in their medical records, as being on the Autism Spectrum. My son is on that list.
The realization carved out a hollow space in my chest. People are already speculating about what comes next, drawing comparisons to history too terrible to name. I woke up in a panic, wondering how to get him out of the country.
Then I spoke with someone far more connected to the divine than I felt in that moment. She asked me what I feel when I’m grounded—when I move beyond panic. I took a deep breath and told her this story.
My son was diagnosed with Autism when he was three.
There was a poem circulating back then about how having a child with special needs was like planning a trip to Italy and landing in Holland instead. For me, it wasn’t Holland—it was Bangladesh. I didn’t know the language. Everything felt too close, too loud, too crowded. I wasn’t anywhere near Kansas anymore, and suddenly there was a list—an endless list—of things I had to adjust to.
The 16-page evaluation from the university’s psychology department placed him in the moderate to severe range—what we’d now call higher needs. He barely spoke—maybe three words, one of which was “train.” The string of deficits detailed in that report was terrifying. I enrolled him in a social communication study immediately. I read everything I could find.
For the first time in my life, reading made it worse.
A few months later, exhausted and paranoid, I went to a family reunion in Northern Michigan. Fifteen of us packed into a big house on a lake. My grandfather and his sons—scientists, all of them—sat discussing how to fix the world through engineering. My grandmother, who’d raised ten children, chatted with those of us wrangling kids.
As the day wound down, the kids wandered to the dock to fish. One pontoon boat sat idle—it wouldn’t start. My son climbed into the captain’s chair, playing with the throttle, pretending to drive. He was smiling, chattering in his own language, lost in the joy of a machine he didn’t need words to understand.
My grandparents came to stand beside me, watching him quietly. They knew about his diagnosis—it was early in the days when Autism was entering public awareness. We stood there, the breeze rustling through the trees, saying nothing.
After a moment, my grandfather spoke:
“That kid’s going to be fine.”
Then they walked back toward the house. I stood there, tears streaming down my face—not from sadness, but because it was exactly what I needed to hear. My fear didn’t vanish, but it softened—from red alert to a cautious yellow.
I held onto those words for years.
Through therapies, through preschool, through the Autism program, through mainstreaming, through the shift from special ed to a 504 plan. Now he’s graduating—top 10 in his class. The kid isn’t just fine. He’s thriving.
I always joke that I’m the worst special ed teacher because I tell everyone—parents, teachers, and most importantly, the kids—there’s nothing wrong with them. There’s nothing to fear.
That doesn’t mean we don’t do the work.
I did all of it—read the books, attended every meeting, stayed in constant communication with his teachers, questioned every expert. I finished that study and was so inspired by the advocates around me that I made special education my career.
But really?
The kid was always going to be fine.
Right now, things are scary.
My son’s name is on a list—alongside hundreds of thousands of other sons and daughters. That means hundreds of thousands of parents with the same hollow space in their chests. The same rising panic. It’s easy to believe that all we can do is run.
But that wise woman helped me drop beneath the fear—back into the ground, where truth lives.
The kid’s going to be fine.
And so is yours.
And so is yours.
We can do this.
We can fight this.
We just have to do the work.