In this installment of Transformation Tuesday, this one makes me really cringe.

I have written in the past about “family support”, why should a disabled child be only entitled to family as a support, as the state has pushed the Community Based Supports? Why should siblings feel the need to be obligated to take care of their disabled siblings at the expense of their own individuality, even if they deny or not even realize it? Why is it immediate family, what about the child’s cousins that don’t-get-them?

With the rise of autism moms, the so-called “sharenting”, the publications like the Age of Autism, and other mommy-bloggers like Finding Cooper’s Voice and Carrie Freckin Cariello it seems to me that it would be illresponsible to call out the bullshit that is “family supports’ and really call it co-dependency. While this clinical word is pretty clinical, and so few are aware of this mentality, I think mix in with co-dependent siblings and parents who almost make it a rite of passage to go to the courts the moment the hiarchial child turns 18 to get full guardianship so they can control their child like they’re a still a perpetual baby.

In drafting this piece, I came across this video last week from a podcast featuring Dr. Ed Adam’s, an expert on enmeshment. Also known as emotional incest or even covert incest. Dr. Adams even argues that emotional incest is worse than sexual in nature. If you see content from autism parents or Age of Autism those parent writers often talk about their now adult children with very personal details without much consent and not much guilt. There seems to be a fetish to the female audience about their autistic daughter’s menstrual cycles  as if autism could block menstruation or something perverted like that. Or another mom talking about their kid’s “crapisodes”.

These non-consenting children even if they have severe cases of autism, does rob them of any originality.