Now that I’ve spent two posts pouring my heart out to you with deeply personal information about my family, perhaps it’s time that we are formally introduced. My name is Amanda Spagnoletti, I’m a 43-year-old stay-at-home mom of 3 awesome kids, and, as my husband jokes, I’m a “recovering lawyer.” Truth is, I don’t have much from which to recover; I spent a mere 11 months practicing law—and that was probably 10 months too many for me! At lawyering, I truly suck. At parenting, I fare pretty well. And at frantically obsessing about all things autism, I excel.
Our youngest child, Nick, was born in May of 2016 and diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on July 4, 2018. Since that day, I have been on a mission to learn as much as possible about autism in hopes of helping Nick. And far more important than the reading I’ve done is the life I’ve lived for the past 4 years—the severe autism life. Needless to say, I’ve acquired a lot of autism-specific knowledge, and I didn’t really know what to do with it…
So last April I turned my personal Facebook page into an autism blog. In honor of Autism Awareness Month, I thought I’d raise a little awareness of my own experience with autism and show my Facebook friends and family what Nick’s autism looks like. The “blog” was never intended to go beyond my own friends and family, and it was always intended to be temporary. But people liked it, and I’m not going to lie—*I* liked it. It felt really good to have an outlet for all this random autism knowledge I’ve accumulated over the last few years. And it felt *really* good to be able to bring Nick out of the shadows and into the light. The videos I posted of him were, for many of my friends and even some of my family, the first introduction to Nick and to the world of severe autism.
So what’s a girl with a Facebook account and a lot of cute videos of her autistic son to do? Start a *real* autism blog, of course! I’m starting with the original posts from last April and then we’ll just take it from there. For better or worse, I’ve still got a lot to say.
My original goal last April was simply to teach people some autism jargon, so the first several posts are just me picking a “buzz phrase” of the day and then explaining it—in easy to understand laymen’s terms— and attaching an accompanying video that shows Nick engaging in that buzz phrase (where possible and appropriate). This part of the blog is really meant to be a user-friendly guide of sorts for people outside the severe autism world who want to learn more about it. It’s Severe Autism 101: The CliffsNotes Version.
After the initial educational posts, this blog will sort of morph into more of a platform for discussion of some of the pressing and controversial topics in the autism world today—of which there are unfortunately many. This is where it will (hopefully) start to become more interesting for people actually *in* the severe autism world. I’ll still throw in some videos because, hey, my kid’s adorable. But they’ll be purely gratuitous—cuteness for cuteness’ sake.
…Which brings me to my nefarious plan: I’m going to wax political on you. And I’m hoping that by the time I do it, you’ll already be so in love with Nick—and so sympathetic to the plight of people with severe autism everywhere—that you’ll have no choice but to agree with what I have to say. ‘Cause believe me, there’s a LOT to say, and Nick can’t say it. There. I’ve told you the worst of it. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Ok, now you know who I am and what I’m doing here. I hope you’ll read on and get to know the sweet little Nicholas Spagnoletti, his crazy, sometimes desperate mama, and how she learned to love without language.