That elephant in the room? It has a right to be here too.

It's Saturday morning.

Upstairs the teenagers are still in bed. Downstairs, my youngest child - tangle-haired and barefoot - draws at the kitchen table. Outside, the birds are singing and bouncing on the blossom-fat branches of the apple tree. Inside, the rolling burble of the boiling kettle rises.

I spoon coffee from a jar, and close my eyes and breathe. And smile.

The half-term holiday is here. Thank God. 

Grace has got through another term. Last week we went to parents' evening. Teacher after teacher smiled to see my beautiful girl - who has grown now to stand shoulder to shoulder with me - and teacher after teacher shook my hand enthusiastically. We went home beaming. Grace's report card had 'excellent' on every line.

She is exhausted. Pale with the strain. She will no doubt sleep until lunchtime if I let her. But she has done it. She has overcome real hurdles. There has been hurt and difficulty, again. Young people are often not kind. Adolescence is not kind. A learning environment tailored to other people's strengths is not kind.

But she has done it.

I make breakfast and chat with Betty. When she has finished, and slipped off her chair to go and potter upstairs, I pick up my phone and start to flip through the newspapers.

One of the first articles I read begins: "Keeping children with special educational needs in mainstream schooling can deprive them of expert care - and their classmates of a decent education."

Don't read it, I think. Don't read it. You don't need to read it.

I read it.

The article is written anonymously. (Of course it is. These are the rules of social media now. Be daring, be divergent, but above all be undetectable. God forbid you should take responsibility for your own shitstorm.)

The unnamed author is a teacher. The teacher writes that our country's insistence on 'inclusion' in schools means that we are turning a blind eye to the elephant in the room, which is (I am summarising) that we're not actually including children with special educational needs because their needs mean that they are not undergoing the same experience as everyone else on the premises.

Furthermore, the 'normal' children on the premises are at best disadvantaged and at worst scarred by having to share their education thus.

I feel like I've been punched in the stomach. But then I get to the comments at the end of the article.

There is a lot of praise for it.

"How many parents of SEN children are actually deluded or just plain ignorant of the pros and cons of 'inclusion' and insist on a right which may suit their own prejudices rather than the wellbeing of their child?" is one comment.

Another asks: "Why are we investing in a full time staff member to control the behaviour of a child who is basically uneducatable?"

That prompts helpful advice from another quarter: "Being able to remove the troublemakers and have them educated in specialist units better suited to them would make a vast difference."

I can't bear it, and I write an online contribution saying how sad I am to see parents and teachers at loggerheads again instead of supporting each other in a system that puts both sides under intolerable strain.

I get an answer back explaining the teachers are fine, it's the parents that are "ignorant, self-entitled and pushy." 

I sit back in my chair and exhale, a bit shakily. I wonder what to do. I should walk away. Put down my phone and go and shower and move the day along from this. But walking away isn't an option for Grace. She will attract this crap her whole life. So I can't walk away either.

The problem is that inclusivity requires three things: money, training and tolerance.

Right now the education system is thin on all of those.

I sympathise with teachers who are struggling to teach classes of 30 children or more with limited resources and little appreciation. I sympathise with parents whose children feel uncomfortable around or frustrated by the child in their class who is not like the rest of them.

But what, exactly, is it that Grace and I are supposed to do?

Are we supposed to just shuffle off?

Do any of these people think we enjoy feeling forced upon the system?

Do they think we're just brazening it out for the hell of it? That I greet Grace at the door every night with a high-five and a "you go girl, how many people did you piss off today?"

I'm not ignorant, or self-entitled. (I'll admit to pushy, but needs must.) I had to learn a lot about autism, fast, when Grace was diagnosed. I had to give up all expectations of the life to which I had thought myself entitled, and learn instead to go what I'd been given.

I work hard with my daughter to teach her to cope in a world that frequently overwhelms her. I work hard to help her to control her anxiety, try to make eye contact, think of appropriate conversational responses. I have taught her about considering other people's feelings. She works harder than I do. She tries and tries and tries. The onus seems permanently to be on her to fit in with the rest of the world, while the cruelty and impatience of the other children (and some of the teachers) is accepted as just the way things are.

Talk to most parents of a child with SEN struggling in a mainstream school and they will tell you that too often the teachers are at best overworked and at worst untrained yet convinced they know better, while the parents are not listened to and their child blamed for class distractions and turned upon by their peers. 

Thousands of parents choose to home school rather than go through all that. Others manage to get their child into a specialist unit. But most of us struggle on, because we have to pay the mortgage, so opting out of the world of work is not an option any more than finding a different school when getting a statement of educational needs is like panning for gold and the specialist units are few and full anyway.

People may write that mainstream education is not the best option for my daughter. 

But what if it's the only option there is?

If mainstream education, as messy and difficult as it is, really is the only option for most of us, then perhaps we need to consider it differently, while we campaign for more money and more training? (We shouldn't need to campaign for tolerance. But many of us do.) 

Inclusivity isn't easy. We all talk about it as though it is, but sometimes it really isn't. It can be hard to welcome all, and embrace difference. That's ok. We just have to keep doing it until it doesn't feel uncomfortable. 

Because teaching children to pass exams is not the only reason for them to go to school.

Children also go to school to learn about the world.

And the world is diverse.

Society flourishes when it embraces the diverse. Society is fairer when it listens to the people within it who think differently.

So let's think differently, and flourish. 

Together.



My book Grace Under Pressure: Going the Distance as an Asperger's Mum, is published by Piatkus and available here.

In November I will be running the New York Marathon to raise funds for The National Autistic Society, which campaigns for better understanding and support for people with autism and their families.  These days there are lots of voices calling for charitable funding, and many people running, cycling and swimming to show their dedication to a cause. Grace and I would be most grateful if you would pick us out among that worthy crowd and show us your support here.

Can you swim a marathon?

I used to be able to complete a mile in 9 and a bit minutes on a good day.

For the last year it has taken me about 40 minutes, and 70 lengths of my local swimming pool.

Most of that time, I've felt as though I was competing in the wrong event. Managing to get along, sure, and even do it quite well a lot of the time. But nonetheless I've always still felt as though I was not really doing the right thing.

Sometimes I watch my daughter and I wonder if she feels the same way. She's a fabulous teenager these days. While many things are much better than they were when I used to write on here about her primary school years, some other things are not better at all. Grace has some wonderful days but she still has very tough ones, when her experience of the world seems to be light years away from everyone else's, and the gap between her understanding and everyone else's causes her pain.

On those days I feel that whatever I'm doing for her is not enough. On those days I ask myself how else I can help. It doesn't seem fair that she goes out to a daily challenge and I don't. It doesn't seem fair.

Lately, I have wondered whether the injury that has been kept me in the pool and away from marathon training and fundraising for so long might need to be tested again.

As I have ploughed up and down the blue-lined box of the swimming pool, constrained by the bobbing orange ropes and the other swimmers in front of me and behind me, I have chafed more and more at the feeling of being hemmed in and thought back to the glorious ten- and fifteen-milers of last spring before my knee popped and I limped over the London Marathon finish line an hour later than I wanted to, and all the running had to stop for a while.

When I hug my daughter and kiss her upset away, I sometimes smell the chlorine on myself and it makes me think again: I am not doing enough. I need to get out of the pool and back into the real world of tough training. Grace's days are hard. Mine, though sometimes I find them so, are really not.

So I've taken the plunge. To get out of the pool, that is.

In November this year I'm going to take part in the New York Marathon for Britain's National Autistic Society (NAS), to raise awareness of autism and support my daughter and many more thousands of people like her, and, I hope, to attract many generous donations so that the NAS can continue to provide information and support and pioneering services. So that together we can campaign for a better world for people with autism.

I'm a bit nervous about this, I confess. I don't know if my injury is healed or just keeping quiet until I really test it. But what's the worst that can happen? Living with autism must, I think, feel a bit like trying to swim a marathon.  Or maybe cycle a swim-athon. Or run a bike challenge.

All I have to do is complete 26.1 miles with a slightly busted knee. It's really not much, by comparison.



If you would like to support Grace and me please click here. I'll be posting more regularly on this blog as I get back into training. Thank you for reading, and for helping us both to keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

One by one (by one, by one)

There's a small woman hopping up and down on my right shoulder. She looks a bit like me, but for some reason she's speaking with a gorblimey accent. She's leaning forward with an agitated air and saying into my ear: "Don't. 'E's not worth it. Walk away!"

I try to listen to her. I take a deep breath to calm myself. But it doesn't work. So I turn, and stride along the aisle, past eggs and dried fruit, in the direction taken by a young man a couple of moments ago. At the top I look left, only to see him disappear behind swinging doors into a staff-only area. I exhale, and square my shoulders.

"'E's not worth it!" hisses the mini-me again.

But I'm walking over to the door, beside which a senior-looking staff member is ticking things off a list. 

"Excuse me?"

She looks up. Beside us, an industrial-sized rotisserie splats and fizzes, turning rows of browning chickens.

"Yes?"

It's been a good weekend, so far. I've seen friends and relaxed and felt enthusiastic about things again. In slightly giddy mood I went to Waitrose and piled my trolley full of rich, tasty food, planning to cook a big meal for my family. I thought: I am nearly well, my loved ones are all well - Grace is calm, happy and productive - January is nearly over. Tick, tick, tick, tick.

Then I turned a corner and two young people, dressed in the supermarket's uniform, came towards me from the opposite direction. The young man -  jaunty walk, shoulders back - was just about to arrive at the punchline of a story that was already making his female colleague giggle. As he walked past I caught the end of his comment: ".. like a special needs one, you know? So you have to look after 'em!" His colleague smothered laughter. They walked on.

But I was stuck. A victim of a walk-by shooting in the bakery aisle. I felt like I'd been splattered against the shelves of finest organic flour. Someone was laughing at my daughter again. I felt sick and sweaty. I felt like I was overreacting. I felt like I wanted to run after that young man and shake him til his teeth rattled.

I looked at all the food in my trolley. I didn't want to eat any of it. Up popped the worried little woman on my shoulder - the one who fears being a spoilsport, a humourless, professional complainer. I batted her away. One by one, I thought. I have to keep tackling them one by one, until there are fewer people who think it's ok to make Grace an object of fun.

Thus, when the senior-looking staff member looks up and says "Yes?" - I say: "I've just overheard a member of your staff make a joke about people with special needs that I found offensive. Do you think I could speak to him?"

The woman blanches, and says very quickly that she will go and get the duty manager.

"It's just - " I begin, - "I have a daughter - "

She stops me and says: "Me too. I'll be right back."

I wait for five minutes. I still feel sick. Then two young men walk up to me. One is the duty manager, who looks very uncomfortable. One is the young man who spoke. His face is a perfect blank. He looks at me, and fixes a bland smile, and clasps his hands together.

"I would like to apologise for my comments," he tells me. "They were taken out of context."

Wait, what? Out of context?

"That doesn't sound like an apology," I retort. "Whatever is going on in your head you should not be voicing it here. Do you have any idea how upsetting it is to be here and shopping and overhear someone making a joke about that?"

Urgh. I am so very un-eloquent.

He smiles blandly at me again, and presses his hands closer together. His expression doesn't change.

"I would like to apologise for my comments," he says again.

Go on then, I think.

There's a pause.

"I have a daughter with autism," I tell him. "And I'm sure I'm not the only person in your shop right now who is living with someone who has special needs. Do you have any idea what my home life is like?"

Double-urgh. Why one earth did I say that? Why can I not explain such an uncomplicated thought. Use your words, I tell myself, as though I am four.

The duty manager is still silent. The other man smiles blandly at me again.

"I would like to apologise for my comments."

Oh, enough.

"Ok then," I say tiredly. "Thank you. Please don't do it again."

I walk away and I don't look back. I think: I don't think I did that very well. I think: That was embarrassing. Then I think of Grace, and I think how glad I was that she wasn't with me, to overhear someone walk past and mock her so blithely.

One by one. It doesn't matter if it doesn't always come out right. It just has to keep being said. Until maybe, at some point, we don't need to say it at all.


Postscript: On Monday Jan. 26 Waitrose contacted me at home after seeing this post, widely circulated on Twitter. A spokeswoman said: "These kind of comments are not expected and not allowed. We will be contacting our learning and development department to comment that this has been happening, so it can be incorporated into future programmes, and a team sent out to reiterate our policies."

From across the divide, a sign of hope

Living with a person who says 'No' a lot is hard. It's a life of protracted negotiation without resolution, where things stop before they start. It's a life of knowing any tiny step forward is unlikely and would in any case be followed by ten steps back. It's an existence that requires many deep breaths a day.

It's hard living with a person who greets you in the morning with a No. It's hard living with a person who glares at you when the light is still not fully in the sky and you are still coming around from sleep and figuring out how to feel about the day. It's hard at the other end of the day too when any feelings of satisfaction or lightness about other aspects of your life must be weighed against the No's that have accrued from that person, who always seems to be waiting to shut you down again.

There are big No's that are like a punch in the face. There are slightly smaller but no less insistent No's that are like having a wall built around you. There are tens and hundreds of still smaller No's, on the surface less important, but that still fall like someone has upended a bucket of nails over your head.

It would challenge the sunniest of dispositions. Mine was never particularly sunny to start with.

Yes, I feel sorry for myself - it's an indulgence, I know. But I feel sorrier for the person who says No. It is awful to see that person's unhappiness and anxiousness. It is awful to see how they shut down possibilities and let things go undone so long that the sadness and stress of it is crushing.

I would so dearly love to see this person looser and lighter. I want to see them learn to say 'Yes' and to see the freedom that it brings.

I have joked in the past, a bitter taste in my mouth, that this must be what it's like to live with a sectarian divide. But even Ian Paisley said Yes, in the end.

And yet.

History shows that dark years of misery are still marked by momentous days.

Last week was particularly bad for No's. As a result the weekend, predictably, saw tears and upset when the consequences came around.

Then yesterday - there is no way of writing this but that sounds mundane, though trust me it was not - there was a Yes.

In fact, there were several. One after another, after another, like the sound of bolts sliding open across a long-locked door.

And she smiled, and her heart lifted, and with it so did mine. I know what an effort it is for her to take a path suggested by someone else. I am grateful, and very proud of her.


A day like today is not a day for soundbites, really. But I feel the hand of history on our shoulders. I really do...

School trip

There's no-one else in the pool this morning. The rain has stopped and the morning sky is fine and clear, so the other early swimmers are filing past me to exercise outdoors.

I barely notice them - glimpses of feet in flip flops that appear briefly at my eye level and disappear again as I emerge and submerge, furiously propelling myself down the silent blue lane marked out in orange ropes in front of me. I want to stay indoors. I want to be alone.

This morning my girl departed on the school trip. It's a common enough event at this time of year. I wonder how many other parents are experiencing it right now. From those early spring evenings at the school receiving instructions from calm-voiced teachers, to the rather more urgently phrased summer letters home detailing travel times and required packing; the last week watching your child get progressively excited; the list making. The departing shot: "Don't worry about phoning - but do let me know you're ok!"

Push, dive, kick, breathe.

What must it be like, I think as I swim, to wave off your child with just a flicker of manageable worry - a normal parental twinge? What must it be like to see your child laughing with their friends, shoving excitedly on to the bus in a safe gaggle of chums, then sitting draped over each other, firing jokes back and forth with bright eyes and big grins? What must it be like to go back to your car with just a small tremor of sadness, knowing that by and large your child will be fine, will be happy, will have the time of their life and will come back full of tales of happy gang exploits?

What must it be like, at this event, to be the parent of a child who does not have special needs?

Push, dive, kick, breathe.

I force the air out of me and watch the anxiety-laden bubbles stream past me under water, imagining their acrid pop on the surface. I breathe harder and swim faster til I can feel the muscles taut and burning along my arms and shoulders and thighs and calves. Embedded in the rhythm of my stroke is a silent chant: Please let her be ok. Please let her be ok. Please let her be ok.

I tell myself she will be. She is brave and resourceful. She is glad to be going. She is excited. And the condition that means she will need extra help, that requires extra support and understanding, also has its own defence mechanism: she does not see many of the things I do. She did not see, this morning, how her classmates' eyes slid away as she approached to say hello, how the girls she saluted cheerily exchanged carefully flat glances at one another and replied in non-committal monotones. (I saw, and it was like being rabbit-punched in the throat - a moment of winded, gasping pain which I could not indulge. Instead I smiled brightly at my daughter and the dead-eyed girls edging away from us.)

A bit later I watched her sitting in the coach, a little stiffly, possibly a bit nervous and working her way through the feelings arising from the noise and the excitement in the air around her. I wanted to jump up and down, cross my eyes and stick my tongue out - make her laugh, and relax. I didn't do any of those things of course. She would have been mortified. So instead we looked at each other silently either side of the glass - me smiling from a pavement of chatting milling parents, who all seemed to know each other doubtless from the parties and sleepovers to which my girl is not invited - and her, beautiful and inscrutable, like a Mona Lisa among crowds of holiday pre-teens.

I looked at her and I remembered what she said in the car as we drove here today: "It's okay Mummy, I don't mind who I sit next to because everyone else will be saying 'oh sorry, I'm sitting with someone else'."

The coach driver started the engine. The doors closed. The level of noise inside went up another notch. I put my fingers to my mouth and extended them quickly towards her, hoping to send love rather than embarrassment. And Grace smiled at me finally.

They drove off. I walked to my car, keeping my face as still as possible, and drove to the gym.

We are lucky. My daughter is doing really well at a good school that understands her. Many children with special educational needs wouldn't be able to go on this trip at all. Others might go, and find it much harder than she will. My daughter is lucky. She will enjoy much of this trip.

Push, dive, kick, breathe.


In the water, no-one can tell you are crying.


I will be swimming a mile for autism on Sunday July 20, as part of a nationwide campaign to raise awareness. You don't need to sponsor me - but do join in. It's easy. Simply: 

1. Do a mile in whatever way you choose - walking, cycling, running etc.
2. Post your #AMileForAutism photo to Twitter or Facebook on 20 July (not forgetting the all important hashtag!)
3. Text AMFA14 and either £1, £2, £5 or £10 to 70070 to make a donation, then encourage friends to join in and do the same.

Click here for more details.

And still, they don't get it

In the wake of Elliot Rodger's actions, I wrote this blog about the mistaken and painful perception that a diagnosis of autism and Asperger's Syndrome can make someone a killer.

That day, I also complained to the BBC about its responsibility not to perpetuate this myth, because its online news story about Rodger pointed out his Asperger's diagnosis - which seems to have been wrong, as his family said later they "suspected" but had had no formal diagnosis - in a way that strongly suggested it might be a factor at play and, in my view, invited readers to make the link.

In the same complaint, I protested the BBC's decision to include at the end of its online news story lines of additional information about Asperger's, because it drove home the implicit suggestion that this was a major factor in the killing.

This is the very disappointing response I received today:

"We understand you were concerned that our article referred to Elliot Rodger having Asperger Syndrome.

This information was provided by the family’s lawyer and is included as background detail about the young man involved. There was no suggestion that his Asperger’s led to him committing murder or that people with Asperger’s are predisposed to such violence.

However, given his own comments in his manifesto and video, he was concerned at his apparent inability to form and develop relationships, and it could be that his Asperger’s played some part in those problems. So clearly this was information worth including. 

But like people without Asperger’s, those with the condition are individuals who respond differently to various situations, and we have neither stated nor suggested that Elliot Rodger’s diagnosis was the direct cause of the killings." 


Now, I understand how entrenched some people's mistaken views about autism and violent behaviour are. If I had not been aware of this, some of the comments left at the end of my last blog would have left me in no doubt.

But I don't understand why the BBC does not understand. I also don't understand why it failed to see the point I was making about its responsibility not to suggest.

(And I don't understand why the BBC failed to answer my complaint about the fulsome additional information included at the bottom of the Rodger news story about Asperger's Syndrome - how it's diagnosed, what it means, how some individuals might behave - though I do wonder whether that might have anything to do with the fact that those lines quietly disappeared sometime mid-afternoon that day as lots of people joined me in complaining loudly across various social media about the BBC's coverage.)

So I've written back to the BBC again. This time, I've asked: if Rodger had been left-handed, would the BBC have included that information as a relevant detail? It's about as relevant as his Asperger's diagnosis. If he had been deaf, would it have included lines and lines of detail about that medical condition? (And can you imagine the outcry if it had?)

One of the few sensible things I read in the immediate aftermath of what happened in Santa Barbara was the statement by Mark Lever, chief executive of Britain's National Autistic Society. So I'm going to give him the last word, below. And I'm going to hope that the BBC is reading.

"The shootings in California are shocking and our thoughts are with everyone caught up in this tragedy.

“We would urge the public not to jump to conclusions about reports stating that the perpetrator had Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, or to associate the actions of one individual with a whole section of society.

"The vast majority of individuals with autism are law abiding and respect the rules of society. Indeed, in many cases, individuals with autism are unusually concerned to keep to the letter of the law, due to the nature of the disability."

Violent and wrong: Elliot Rodger's crime should not taint my child

Another boy, another gun.

A little later, another photograph.

Brown hair, brown eyes. Slanting cheekbones. A way of tilting the head.

Scrutiny. Debate. Then - aha! He had Asperger's.

The pain of the parents of the children killed by Elliot Rodger is unimaginable. The pain of the parents of Elliot Rodger is unfathomable.

What I can describe is the pain of a another parent, one whose child has Aspergers and who is this morning trying to formulate a response to yet another story in which their child's diagnosis is being held up as an explanation for murder.

While I type this, my daughter is asleep upstairs. It's half-term, and she's tired. Her room is still dark, the curtains closed. I went in earlier to wake her, then changed my mind. She was so fast asleep, so lost in her dreams, that I couldn't bear to disturb her. Instead I stood in the shadows and listened to her soft breathing and to the spring rain pattering on the windows. I looked at her and I thought: my little girl. What will the world make of you now?

I haven't slept. I am indignant, fearful and full of rage - like many others out there adding their voices to this collective shriek of pain. I am in the worst possible state to attempt to present an argument. But when others are shouting such nonsense so loudly, I feel as though I have to try.

For as long as I have known that my daughter was autistic, I have fought against autism stereotypes. My daughter's autism is an essential part of her, but it is not the essence of her. She is sweet and funny and clever and sparky and eccentric and arty .. for so long my biggest frustration was that everyone wanted to label her as Rainman. The number of times Dustin Hoffman's stuttering mathematical genius has been cited in conversations about my daughter's diagnosis is so many I have lost count.

But faced with the conversations I am reading today - the ignorant, block-headed tweets and comments about "kids with Asperger's disease who kill other kids" - I could almost wish back those days of clumsy cliche. They seem so innocent now. That my daughter's diagnosis puts her, in so many lazy, unthinking people's minds, alongside the likes of Rodger and Adam Lanza, who fatally shot twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school, is horrifying.

It's very hard to speak for all people with Asperger's Syndrome. To those denouncing them all this morning as potential mass murderers, I would point out that when you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. However, if I may be allowed one generalisation with which to fight back - most people with Asperger's don't want "revenge against humanity." To say today that all people with Asperger's are potential killers is as reprehensible and wrong-headed as Rodger's own assertion that blonde women were collectively to blame for his unhappiness.

Listen to me. Listen to me.

Autistic people are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.

Some people with autism have difficulty understanding other people. But it does not follow to say that every person who has difficulty understanding other people is like that because he or she is autistic.

To say that Elliot Rodger did this because he is on the autism spectrum is like saying Elliot Rodger did this because he was a man, and white.

Autistic people who commit these acts are no more representative of  people with autism than white male serial killers are representative of white males.

Listen.

As Emily Willingham wrote in her fabulous paper for Forbes earlier this week, the real unifying feature of most mass murderers isn't autism or brain injury, "it's anger and rage, often blasted outward at innocent targets by means of easily accessible firearms."

And in this case, not only is the role played by firearms far more relevant than where Rodger might have been on the spectrum, but - as Jessica Valenti writes in the Guardian today - to dismiss him as a madman also glosses over the role that misogyny and a sexist society played.

I would write more, I would write on and on, but my daughter has just woken up and come down to see me. She is standing in front of me smiling, hair mussed, anticipating a good day. I tell her I love her. She tells me that she loves me back, then goes to cuddle her little sister.

There is a lot to be sifted through and assessed in the Santa Barbara killings. Of all of these things, Asperger's is a detail. It is not a pre-determination.





Grace Under Pressure: Going The Distance as an Asperger's Mum is published by Piatkus in the UK and by New World Library in the U.S.

On World Autism Awareness Day, an invitation to the teaching community

Right now, in many countries, lots of young girls are getting ready - with great reluctance - for school. They are getting dressed and brushing their hair, while their stomach knots with apprehension. They are fastening shut their schoolbags and putting on their blazers. They are moving very slowly, putting off for as long as they can the moment when they have to leave.

Later, when they come back, their parents will ask how their day at school went. Some of these girls will say nothing. Some will say something. Some will shout. Some will throw things, or hit someone.

Many of them will go quickly to their bedrooms, to a safe place. And there, when they are alone, one or some of the following things will happen. They will cry. They will make themselves sick. They will cut or harm themselves, until they bleed and feel better. They will do these things again and again.

The parents may know. They may not know. They may find out now, or they may find out later. When they find out, they will most likely go to the school. They will likely say: "Please can you help us. Our daughter finds school very hard. She has autism."

They might add, by way of explanation: "The stress of the social environment - the noise and the scrutiny and the rules - along with worry about grades/friendships/bullying/ is making her ill."

When this happens, here's what the school will say:

"We are very sorry to hear that. Let us work together to get your daughter the support she needs."

Actually, that's not true. Or at least it's so rarely true that it's not the story I'm going to tell here. Here's what the school - the headteacher, the teacher, the head of year, the special educational needs co-ordinator - more often say instead (and these are all examples of what they have actually said to some of the many parents of girls with autism that I talk to):

"Well, she's fine in school, so it must be a problem at home."

"She needs to be less sensitive/get a thicker skin/toughen up a bit."

"She needs to learn to shut out distractions."

"She brings it (the bullying/the stress/the tears) on herself."

"It's better that she doesn't tell anyone she has Asperger's Syndrome. It will only make things worse."

"There's no point applying for a statement of educational needs/extra teaching support because she won't get it. She's fine in school, you see .."

This time last year, on World Autism Awareness Day, I wrote this blog about the process I had undergone, following my daughter's diagnosis, of learning to understand and be fully aware of autism.

This year, on World Autism Awareness Day, I would like to extend an invitation to the teaching community to do the same.

Teachers, particularly in Britain, are under a lot of pressure. Bureaucracy and paperwork and targets and endless new demands, combined with cuts to pensions and salaries, and the morale-sapping decline of respect for their work, are causing droves of teachers to leave the profession. Many of those who stay are wondering how much longer they can stick it out for.

But.

Teachers have a responsibility to understand the children they are teaching, even if just a little. They have a responsibility to promote tolerance and acceptance of difference. Pastoral care is not a 'nice to have' when it comes to teaching.

If you are a teacher you should know that autism rates are rising. The latest report on this, from America's Center for Disease Control and Prevention just last week, says that 1 in 68 children now have autism. That's a 30 percent jump in two years. It's not because vast numbers of children suddenly 'got' autism overnight, though there is certainly something happening to increase the incidence of autism worldwide. In part, these new numbers are because doctors are getting better and better at spotting autism, and diagnosing it.

If doctors are starting to understand and to see autism, shouldn't teachers?

My daughter goes to a great school with excellent support. We are very lucky. I know some fantastic teachers. One is my clever, sensitive sister, who recognised some of the symptoms of autism in my daughter while I was still a long way from understanding.

But there are unfortunately a lot of teachers out there who are not fantastic. There are a lot of teachers out there who do not know much about autism, and have no interest in finding out more. There are a lot of teachers who think autism is something that happens to other children, not the children who come to their school. Not the children they teach.

Let's change this. It's not that difficult. It doesn't require new tests, or benchmarks, or quotas. It just means reading a few things - like this, perhaps. It means applying empathy - yes, that thing that autistic children are supposed to be so short of. (If my daughter saw someone upset or in trouble at school it would never, ever occur to her to think that they must somehow have brought it upon themselves.)

It means making the job of SENCo - special educational needs co-ordinator, as they are called in Britain - and its equivalent elsewhere, into a job that is valued and important, and done properly, rather that the thing that someone does one day a week, or the role that gets given to the teacher who's killing time before retirement, or the job that gets given to the teacher who's not very good at anything else but is too hard to fire.

All of the examples I gave at the beginning of this article were about girls for a reason. I'm not suggesting for a moment that boys with autism don't suffer at school too. But I don't have a son with autism. I have a daughter, and from what I see and hear from other parents of daughters, our daughters are suffering. They are suffering particularly hard. When teachers don't understand autism, they particularly don't understand girls with autism. They don't understand that girls are more likely to hide their autism, to copy their peers, to camouflage and keep quiet while they suffer. They don't understand that girls with autism are suffering serious mental health issues because of the strain of being taught by people who have no idea of what their lives are like or who they really are.

I don't claim this as the most important battle in understanding autism. But it is one we must fight.

And yet - it doesn't have to be a battle. We are the parents who are interested in our children. We are the parents who appreciate the importance of our childrens' educators, and the difference that they can make to their lives. Invite us to our children's schools, and we will come. Ask us to contribute to our children's teachers' efforts and we will. We already are. We have enough battles to fight already. So, by God, do teachers.

Awareness of autism starts with understanding how much we still don't understand about it, in order to learn what kind of support to give to those who need it. It's ok to say you don't know very much about autism, or how it can look different in boys and girls. Here's your chance to change that. Can we talk?





To find out more about autism and World Autism Awareness Day, click here

To find out more about how you can help children and young people with autism thrive and achieve, click here

Want to make a difference? Support me on April 13 and your money will go directly towards helping improve services for children with autism and spreading understanding and awareness of the condition.

Grace under Pressure: Going the distance as an Asperger's Mum, is published by Piatkus and available here