About 3 years ago, my wife and I were called into school for a special meeting during which my daughter’s teacher first said the word autism to us. We grappled with it. Our girl? She’s eccentric, sure, but does it require a formal label, we thought? The next year of school, real school, when kids start reading and doing math, and all those important things, is when she began to crash and burn. Our daughter simply couldn’t keep up with what was expected of her in a classroom of 30 kids, and it began to take its toll. Rather than acknowledging and addressing possible sensory overload, or differences in processing information, the school we had enrolled her in chose to view her obstacles as disciplinary problems and quickly initiated a color-coded scale which was meant to dictate her behavior for the day, green being compliant, and red being disagreeable, needing to be sent home. Low and behold, our daughter spent a lot of time at home that year. Shortly thereafter, she was formally diagnosed with Autism. My wife and I spent more nights than we wish we’d had cursing the teachers, the institution, the society which was surrounding us. It felt like we were completely alone in the struggle to give our amazing, beautiful, smart, talented daughter the educational experience she deserved. Even worse, it seemed like she was making associations with the concept of school in general as being something blanketly bad and impossible. How would we ever break this? For about a year, my wife and I had been discussing moving out of The Hague, Netherlands, where all this had transpired, which is odd because The Hague touts itself as one of the most inclusive and forward minded cities in the country where we live, but in action it seemed to be the exact opposite. My wife comes from the south of the country, down between Belgium and Germany in an area called Limburg, largely considered to be the opposite of The Hague’s open minded mentality, but full of open space, and most importantly full of my wife’s family, whom we were sorely missing.

@Harrison Young Welcome! As the first parent to join you win a color TV! JK, but so good to have you here, buddy.