Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl. And you are tuned in to Tweed Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. With April being Autism Awareness Month, I could not let the month go by without trying to find someone with some type of experience, some relationship to autism and the spectrum before the month got out. The month almost got away. But today I have with me Janet Peters, and she's a mom of one, and her daughter is on the spectrum.
Hi, Janet, how are you? You all fine, how are you? I'm pretty good. So how old was your daughter when you realized or when she was diagnosed as being on the spectrum?
She was fine. It started when she was in the school and she was making strange noises and the flat movements and all that stuff. They call it the greatest developmental disorder. But she's on the spectrum and she got ADHD on top of it too.
Then OBE. I don't know your parents, don't do this, but I was in the now. Until I saw, you know, notice that I need, you know, educate myself in that. I really didn't find a support group to maybe she was 10 or 11.
Prior to your daughter, did you have any understanding or knowledge of autism or what that meant? No, I did not. Absolutely not. So you basically had to figure it out as you went through?
Yes. Wow. Okay. And so how was that journey been for you?
It was rough at the beginning. Then, you know, once I got here, I started, you know, finding support groups to vent without being judged. And they understand without being judged and not, that's a good thing. It's like my daughter like stuffed animals for comfort.
She still play with toys. She's 15 years old. She's too big to be playing with toys. She still watch power trolling and all this stuff.
And, you know, just on the stage, I feel safe to, you know, to mention something like that. If I do that in the whole Facebook world, I don't think they really understand something like that. So how was your family then? Have they, did they have trouble understanding as well, what being on the spectrum meant?
My family's in Texas. So she do not get to see my family that much. It's been a while. But I don't think they quite get it, you know, because you know, your kids or autism, you start treating them different.
You know, they, they offer something, you know, like, let's start talking loud or something like that. But it's not, that's not the issue. And then people say autism is a mental illness. You know, it's not, I see this a lot.
And I saw it a lot, you know, what, you know, just how you found me on the body side with Matthew Worshin. They were saying that he had mental illness. No, he doesn't. He has a disability.
It's a difference. So you mentioned Matthew Worshin. And I was introduced to his story through your post. For those of you that are listening, this is a young man who is on the spectrum and had an incident where he was in a car accident.
And correct me if I didn't get any of the specifics wrong, but he was in a car accident and ended up being arrested. It took his family a pretty long time to get him out of jail because I guess it was the public defender, didn't tell him. It was like everybody was just kind of saying, well, just plead guilty. Just do this.
And you know, you're going to have to do this and not educating him or even his family on what was really happening. And it seemed like a nightmare. And you know, it's hard enough that being a person of color, having to be on pins and needles around law enforcement and then to say that you have a child that's on the spectrum, how are they going to be perceived by the police? Should they be stopped?
Because you know, there are certain things. I mean, and because the spectrum is so broad, no two people on the spectrum, if you ask me, are like, there may be similarities. But to say that a police officer is going to know and understand, he would almost have to have a child on the spectrum as well. How did that story affect you?
How did you feel about that? I feel like it was horrible, what happened to him. And I was bleeding for the mother, but she kept on fighting. She's still fighting because the governor here in Virginia Portland, but he's all, he can't drive and nothing like, but you know, then I'm just bringing some of the comments that the people saying about him, that he shouldn't have been driving the first place.
I said, this is horrible. That's my right, horrible. Some of these people say any things. Do y'all have kids?
That's hurtful. I'm reading the autism is a mental illness. No, it's not. I'm like, I'm just shaking my whole entire head up on this, some of these comments, it made me mad.
It made me mad. So, you know, before you start typing stuff out, take a pause. Let me go research what autism is. At least learn about it.
You got a parent saying who don't have kids on the spectrum. They understand, you know, you know, unless you're making that parent choose. Especially when I got a child on the ballot, you don't even got no friends. So, yeah, this because she have autism.
Now, did you find it difficult to get whatever accommodations? Was that a difficult thing to do? Yeah, that's a lot of difficulty for parents to get the right type of accommodations for their kids. Especially in school, there's a number one occurrence of school.
They always say it's the best entry so your child, we're looking off the child, no, they don't. That's a lot. That's a lot. The stuff I went through was there.
Mm-mm. I hired me at Appi. So, I tell you any parent, go find you at who know the IEP process and the pill processes. Go find you someone.
You go educate yourself. But, you know, I'm learning too. I'm still learning too. I can imagine that it's a constant learning process because as your child gets older, then maybe the things that you needed when they were little have changed by the time they get to be older.
And so now, yet there's still more things to figure out. Now, what words do you have for parents who have children that are not on the spectrum or even people who don't have children but that may come in contact with children who are on the spectrum? Educate yourself. Support.
Be careful what you say. All right. People autism have feelings too, whether they're verbal or nonverbal. They do have feelings.
So, somebody say something about my child, she has feelings. Right. That's because she does have feelings when away. I'm going to say the biggest thing is they take you up self, read up only.
I'm not saying spend hours and days on it. But, at least read up on some of the stuff. Have some understanding. It's simply.
All right. Well, that was today's episode of Tweet Trends. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope today's conversation with Janet was something that you were able to get some takeaways from as far as, you know, what a parent of a child that's on the spectrum might go through or how they might feel or even how the child feels.
So, maybe the next time you go shopping or whatever, and you see a parent with a child that you immediately want to think in your mind is just unruly, rude, or just a little spoiled brat. Stop for a second. Show them some grace. Show some sympathy because you don't know what's going on with either one of them that day.
So, if you can't think of anything else to do, give them a sweet smile. They'll hand up. Help out any way that you can because, whether it's the mom with the child that's struggling in the store or even adults around us, there are people everywhere that are on the spectrum. And they deserve respect just like the rest of us.
All right. Do me a favor before you head on out. Hit me up on Twitter at hayevet. That's at h-e-v-e-t-t-e or just look for the hashtag tweet trends.
Have a great weekend. And I'll see you back here again on Tuesday.