The majority of autistic children and young adults are not born to upper middle class/ wealthy parents. The advantages Owen had allowed him to succeed far more easily than most. I appreciated his story, which was beautifully told, but couldn't help but think about all of the children fighting this condition with no financial help. I would love to see how most people help their child through the battle.
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Some of those meetings with his school and caseworkers showed he had an enormous amount of resources available to him.
I have no idea how much of that was privately funded and how much came from the state - but they must have had more than a dozen professionals around that table talking about Owen's move into independent living when he graduated.
I know an autistic man whose parents were dirt poor and they never got him any decent help. He's still struggling. We watched this movie together and we loved it, but it was a disappointment to see all the things he could never have.
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Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Socioeconomic status (SES) is a very real thing. With income, education, occupation and wealth comes privileges.
Life isn't always fair.
"Toto, I've [got] a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
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It isn't always the poor who struggle, sometimes it's the middle class, too. I have a child with high functioning autism, when she was small we couldn't afford her therapies (insurance wouldn't cover them, didn't qualify for school based services). At one point my inlaws were giving us $1500 a month to pay for speech and occupational therapy. I remember sitting in a waiting room with a woman who had twins and was on Medicaid...her kids were getting their therapies for free. That pissed me off. My husband is working hard to pay taxes so someone else's kids can get free therapy, and we can't afford for our own kid to have therapy. Had my inlaws not been so generous, my kid would have done without. That's messed up.
My daughter went without therapy for years because we weren't poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, and we couldn't afford the out of pocket costs.
So while it's lovely that these people had the means to help their son achieve his maximum potential, there are people stuck in the middle class who are screwed because they aren't poor enough to qualify for free services, or rich enough to pay for it all out of pocket.