When Public Figures Get It Wrong
Warning: This post discusses harmful public statements about autism, including references to ableism, stigma, and comments suggesting a child’s life is less valuable due to disability. If this is tender territory for you, please take care as you read.
There’s a moment that breaks your heart — not because you didn’t expect it, but because you did.
When a public figure, someone in a position of authority or influence, says something deeply hurtful about autism, the impact doesn’t stay in headlines. It spills into homes. It lands in doctors’ offices, school car parks, and exhausted dinner tables. It echoes through WhatsApp groups and specialist clinics and bedtime routines. And it stays there.
In the spring of 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - serving as the US Secretary of Health - made headlines for saying he would rather have a dead child than an autistic one. And here in Ireland, Mary Butler TD, Minister of State for Mental Health and Older People, implied a link between screen time and autism. Both comments have been widely criticised. But for many of us parenting neurodivergent children, they landed far deeper than that.
They landed in our gut.
Because this isn’t just about misinformation. It’s about how our children are spoken about. It’s about how we, as mothers, are seen.
Why I’m Speaking Up
I want to be honest about where I’m coming from.
My son is non-speaking. He has significant sensory and regulatory needs. Our lives are shaped by therapy appointments, meltdowns, school refusal, and a level of daily emotional load that most people wouldn’t believe.
We have lived through crisis. We still do.
So when I push back against harmful public narratives, I’m not speaking from a place of comfort or distance. I’m speaking from the deep end. And I still believe this:
Our children are not the problem. The system is.
My child didn’t break our family. The lack of support did. The years of waiting lists. The absence of respite. The chronic stress no one sees. The shame that seeps in when society keeps saying our children are too much.
What These Comments Really Do
When someone in power says a child is worse than death, it doesn’t just spark outrage. It reinforces a narrative many of us have spent years trying to unlearn:
That we are to blame. That our children are burdens. That the world would be better if they were different.
Parents of neurodivergent children already carry so much unseen grief. The grief of being misunderstood. The grief of constantly fighting for the basics. The grief of having to explain, justify, and apologise for your child’s existence.
When those in power speak with ignorance, that grief sharpens. And it isolates us even more.
The Science Is Clear: Support Helps. Shame Harms.
Experts like Dr. Mona Delahooke remind us that behaviour is communication. That regulation, connection, and co-regulation are far more powerful than shame or punishment. That our children aren’t broken — they’re responding to a world that often doesn’t meet their needs.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, a Harvard-based stress and resilience expert, writes about the damage chronic stress does to caregivers. Not because of our children themselves, but because of the constant pressure, vigilance, and lack of meaningful support.
We know what helps families thrive:
Relationship-based intervention
Neurodiversity-affirming practice
Flexible, trauma-informed supports
Mental health care for parents
Community connection
What doesn’t help? Being blamed. Being dismissed. Being made to feel like our children’s lives are tragedies.
All Families Deserve Support — No Matter the "Severity"
I also want to say this clearly: every parent’s experience is valid.
Yes, some families are dealing with severe dysregulation, 24/7 crisis care, aggression, or physical danger. That is real. And it deserves massive, urgent support.
But so do the families navigating less visible challenges — the ones with kids who mask all day and explode at home. The ones who feel like they can’t complain because their child speaks, walks, or eats. The ones slowly breaking under the weight of invisible load.
We need to stop comparing pain. We need to stop gatekeeping who gets to speak.
We are not on opposite sides. We are in the same storm, rowing different boats.
The Problem Isn’t Autism. It’s Ableism.
One of the most damaging things we’ve inherited is the belief that neurodivergence is something to fear. That autism is a tragedy. That our children must be cured, fixed, or prevented.
But pathologising neurodivergence does nothing to help real families. It distracts from the urgent need for investment in education, healthcare, and community services. It places blame instead of building bridges.
Our kids are not the crisis. The crisis is a society that isn’t built for them — and barely tolerates us.
What If We Did It Differently?
Imagine this:
Assessment within weeks, not years.
Every teacher trained in neurodiversity.
CDNTs fully funded, fully staffed.
Respite available without begging.
Parents treated as partners, not problems.
Imagine leadership that doesn’t say, “How do we prevent kids like yours?” but instead asks, “How can we support families like yours to thrive?”
This isn’t just possible. It’s necessary.
For the Mother Reading This...
If your stomach turned when you read those headlines...
If you’ve ever cried after a school meeting, or in a waiting room, or at 2am with your child in your arms...
If you’ve ever thought, “I can’t do this,” and then got up and did it anyway...
Please know this:
You are not broken. Your child is not a tragedy. And you are not alone.
The stories they tell about us are not the stories we have to live.
We get to tell new ones.
Listen to the full episode:
Next step
If this story resonates, you might find my free guide The First 30 Days especially grounding — a gentle companion for those early weeks after diagnosis. Download it here →
