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.
But after decades of silence, Jason has learned to communicate by pointing to letters on a laminated piece of paper. He often gets so excited while communicating, that he tires out his communication partner (often, Dad) who provides support for his spelling arm so he can spell faster; this touch also gives Jason needed sensory input. As he grew more adept at communicating, his behaviors improved to the point that since the Concord Book Festival could be reached by car, it was doable. Even better, Jason had expressed a desire to visit where his parents grew up, and Concord is Dad’s hometown, so the event offered us an opportunity to visit his childhood house. Of course, even this quick trip was not without incident — Jason ended up too agitated to actually attend the author breakfast — but that’s the nature of his disorder. On the outside, he still looks very autistic with his stims (repetitive self-stimulatory behaviors), even frightening when he does things like lunge at us when upset. Or sometimes, when he’s not upset — it’s a behavior.
“I hope we can do more trips together,” he spelled in the Instagram post.
For the record, we are not practicing the technique known as “facilitated communication,” which has caused some controversy. Jason’s pointing to a letterboard fits broadly with the Rapid Prompting Method invented by Soma Mukhopadhyay, who has worked directly with Jason in the past. I have also received parent training in that method. Jason sometimes uses an augmentative and alternative communication or AAC device, but it is not his preferred way of communicating — as he can now tell us via the letterboard. These are Jason’s words: “I can write on my own. It is is me writing, although I sometimes like getting input on my arm to help it get oriented In space. I do not appreciate having my intelligence called into question.”
It was unnerving to receive a flood of notices; the Instagram video was viewed hundred, thousands, then millions of times. From this slice-of-life posting, one of dozens from my book tour, came threats to call Child Protective Services, to have us arrested.
Therefore, I sat up in recognition when Gov. Walz was being accused of so-called anger and abuse when the opposite was true: in his big moment under the camera lights, his first instinct was to make sure to guide his son, who reportedly has a visual/spatial learning disorder, around a teleprompter stand.
The conservative commentators’ vitriol is oddly cloaked in a self-righteous insistence that they are exposing some deep dark secret of Tim Walz and therefore on a bizarre level, supposedly protecting children or the disabled. Of course this is part of an opposition political strategy (even though most standards of decency suggest not involving a candidate’s minor children) by a party that often disdain the disabled, such as when Trump mocked reporter Serge Kovaleski – who has from congenital arthrogryposis, which limits the movement of joints but doesn't affect cognition – by flopping his arm around, while saying in a singsong voice, “'Uhh, I don't know what I said. Uhh, I don't remember.'" Or how conservatives perennially push to defund or undercut services for the disabled, such as when former mayor Rudy Giuliani tapped New York City’s Office for People with Disabilities, as a slush fund to cover unauthorized travel expenses.
My son is a private citizen, but the unusual and violent reaction to his autistic spelling shows similar confluences of eager internet sleuths ready to treat a seven-second clip as a Zapruder film. People have called us “evil,” “bad parents” (a given), “abusive,” “ignorant,” “exploitative,” “criminal.” A number have claimed they have already called CPS, even the FBI. These are all people who’ve never met Jason, or us, and base their outrage on a few seconds of footage of Jason spelling out his thoughts while his father holds his letter board. Some declare we are faking the clip for attention and money. Others hear the satisfying “tok” noise of the reinforced paper and say we are abusively slamming his hand on the laminated piece of paper. The paper is now reinforced with duct tape because of how decisively Jason taps his finger on it, and he enjoys the input both tactilely and aurally.
Even more insulting, these accusations of us as puppetmasters devalues Jason, presuming him to be, as he himself points out, “the mindless dummy.” No matter how many times I include in the post that Jason is 24 years old, shaves, (well, shaved by dad) and towers over Mom, these commenters fall prey to stereotypes about neurodivergent individuals and constantly mistake him for a young child. For some reason, in popular culture, like the urban mystery of baby pigeons, there are no adults with autism.
More respectful strangers still insist we stop because the way Jason is communicating has been “proven” not to work. Trying to maintain a curious attitude, I often ask commenters to post links to these studies, but they never reply. In the end, I don’t know what they actually want. I appreciate the time if not the misplaced intention in their posting. However, a study “debunking” that nonspeaking autistic kids have the potential to communicate through spelling does not debunk my son’s words, and it should not be allowed to tarnish his incredible achievement just because commenters can’t believe that someone who looks so disabled on the outside is showing the world something it’s not used to: a person with various debilitating sensory issues, who shouts gibberish, flicks his fingers and won’t respond when you talk to him actually has a lively intelligent mind.
Jason’s communication has introduced us to a loving, protective spirit, and when I show him the comments, he can see that outside of the bombastic abuse comments, there is a much larger silent contingent of people sharing and saving the video, suggesting hope for other parents of noncommunicative kids, maybe inspiration of how life can radically change for the better when you least expect it. He wants me to keep posting, but he does not want to read the comments any more.
No studies or Snopes.com posts or comments would stop us from communicating with our son, especially not to satisfy strangers on the internet. Similarly, I appreciate that the Walz family seems unbothered by the misinterpretation of Dad Walz’s protective action. They know what loving care looks like in their family — and millions of families, especially special needs families like ours, know it too.
