The internet is currently in an uproar over accusations that Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz supposedly abused Gus, his neurodivergent teen son, while onstage and on camera as his family joined him after his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Based only on a brief moment of Walz tugging on his son’s hand, commentators declared Walz an abuser with a secret rage problem. This misreading was so misguided even Snopes.com, a website devoted to fact-checking rumors, issued an unequivocal statement: “Online users wrongly claimed a video showed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz physically abusing his son, Gus, at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.”
A similar uproar occurred in our family recently from a lighthearted Instagram post of Jason, my adult son with autism, saying – via pointing to letters on an alphabetic board – that he was so happy that we’d rented an Airbnb so he could attend one of my out-of-town book events. Jason’s autism-related behaviors are so severe — loud vocalizations all the way up to full-throated attacks, including on himself — we hadn’t dared try to travel by plane since he’d had a meltdown 10 years ago and found ourselves increasingly confined to home.
