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In 2006, a little over a year after Toe was born and about 4 months before he started showing signs of autism, the Harvard School of Public Health released a study that estimated it costs about 3.5 million dollars to live a lifetime as autistic in America.  This esitmate included everything from traditional therapies and educational supports for ASD kids and adults to special home life needs and lost wages. Dang, that's alotta dead presidents.

Now you know why I hashtag a lot of #insomnia at 2 a.m. on twitter, why "DIY" is not a hobby phrase around our house, and why I am currently wearing a pair of pants from 2006 (but, hey, at least I am wearing pants!). Really, earning and putting aside money for our kids' life needs around here is like trying to fill the ocean with an eyedropper. 

I know you people with neurotypical and healthy kids feel some of the very same worries too, and I half expect that by the college years all of us with kids will be bidding for "higher education" on ebay or maybe haunting Craigslist to score a cheap seat in "Intro to Micro Economics." I read somewhere it's cheaper to have children in bulk-- kind of treating one's uterus like a human Costco--because in the cost/ benefit analysis having a whole herd of potential little laborers has a bigger payoff for nearly the same investment. I have one perpetually pregnant friend I suspect is acting on this theory with her husband, but her dead eyes and frequent use of the phrases "living abyss" and "sweet relief of death" lead me to believe the approach may not be worth it.

As Chandler once said to Monica on Friends, "We'll just pick our favorite child, and that one can go to college."

Anyway, unless you are a Gates or a Zuckerberg or hold the royalty rights to Squinkies, autism takes the option of parental provision into the realm of impossibility. For my kids, it's going to take a village, the Department of Health and Human Services, affordable healthcare and anti-poverty legislation, private grants and non-profit resource agencies to get my kids what they need, no matter how much blood, sweat and tears I shed.

And luckily I have a loving God who has promised (not said "we'll see" or "if you only do x, then," but promised!) that he will provide all his children's needs--material and otherwise.  He does this through our obedience to his command that we all care for each other--that we love one another was we love ourselves. That's not just Christianity, that's the origin of all social justice, and anyone who tells you the two aren't compatible is making billions of 7 million dollar mistakes.
 


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