Fun Fact: We found the best place on the internet

Did you know....that autistic kids are friggin' awesome?

Content warning: Ableism.

My son wakes and starts talking before his eyes fully open. Sometimes I wonder if he starts talking before he wakes. Sometimes I won’t even hear him stir before I hear him say: “Fun Fact!”.

His greatest joy is sharing with others the constellation of things he knows about his favourite topics.

When my son was small, I was told that special interests are common among neurodivergent children and adults. I was told a special interest is a compulsion to know everything about one particular topic.

Oh, so this is why when I bought him a child’s atlas I found he’d already memorised the shape of every country? This is why it wasn’t enough to just listen to a Queen song, he has to know the length of the song and the heights of everyone in the band?

I knew my son had a drive to know these things - but I soon discovered something that I could only see in his face and hands. It was the joy in discovering and sharing.

Did you know South Africa has three capitals for each branch of their government!

Fun Fact! Sint Maarten became part of the Dutch West Indies in 1828!

Did you know that the Rush-Bagot Treaty stipulated British North America and the United States could only have one cannon on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain but it had to be less than 18 pounds?

As his mum, I’m lucky enough to be the first person to hear something new about some country’s topography or some continent’s border or some flag’s history each day.

Often as he tells me, he stutters with excitement, his brain races faster than the words can come out. His hands make maps in the air above his head.

This is love. Love for me shown in his desire to share, love for the world around him that is full of the most incredible facts just waiting to be absorbed, and love for the day that lies ahead. What will he discover? What will he learn?

Life isn’t easy when you’re neurodivergent living in a neurotypical world. My son related a lot to a social story by autistic and ADHD (AuHD) writer Kahukura Sinvold (Ngāi Tahu, Te Ātiawa). The social story talked about brains being like different phones - you just can’t make a Samsung load an Apple app. It just won’t work. That’s not the Samsung’s fault.

Sadly, this isn’t something everyone understands. I have watched my son try desperately to relate to other children the only way he knows how - by sharing his facts. And I have seen the sadness in his eyes as he tries to understand why other children see him the way that they do.

But I have also seen the pure celebration when children do understand he has a different neurotype to them. And the elation of meeting a like-minded kid who also wants to talk about the Croatia and Liberland border dispute.

There is a jubilation in his voice, in his stimming hands, in his stamping feet…To get to share with the world the thing that makes you happiest of all really does help when the world also feels hard to navigate.

Our house is a house where we celebrate special interests. We have flag bunting covering flags covering flag posters covering drawings of flags. We have atlases under globes propped up against road maps.

In this whare, we know that to have a special interest is well…special. It can fill you up when your cup is nearly empty, it can sustain you when nothing else is going right. Your facts will always be there - orderly, waiting, sure. Even if your feelings are so much harder to name, too complex, too confusing.

So, we have been a bit of a quest as a whānau to share the joy of special interests. We’ve been so lucky that people have shared with us amazing things for our son to add to his collection. Maps from all around the world, flags from everywhere, babysitters club books that would have cost us a fortune if we bought them off TradeMe…

We wondered how we could spread this joy. We decided to start a little group: Special Interests Sharing Aotearoa.

The aim of the group is to support and celebrate the special interests of neurodivergent kids. I figured there would be a few people who would want to do that but I was blown away when within 24 hours we had over 800 members.

Quickly, it became my favourite place on the internet. Parents shared the amazing special interests their kids had - from Pringles cans to The National Bank to birds of prey to fire extinguishers.

A six-year-old in the group loves the Russian, Japanese, Hindi, Vietnamese and Korean alphabets. A five year-old loves security cameras. Another child loves gondolas.

Then the matching happened. Did anyone have any old AA road maps? So many people did! A post about a child who loved foxes had offers of knitted fox hats and home-made fox badges.

A child who knows everything there is to know about capybaras was immediately sent photos of folks doing the amazing capybara close encounter at Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo. It’s in my experience the best close encounter at the Zoo. And then Te Nukuao Wellington Zoo offered up four passes for the family in celebration of Autism Acceptance Month!

Jacqui an AuDHD mama offered to make 3d printed ornaments for kids in the group! Pen pals were made and then requests came through for a meet-up thread.

I thought of the group as being like an excited child - keen to share, keen to connect, keen to celebrate.

You can probably guess this awesome child’s special interest!

As my son sat writing his letters to his newly found pen-pals I checked my messages and discovered one that grabbed my attention. I asked for permission to share.

Growing up, I thought there was something wrong with me. I found I couldn’t talk if I wasn’t talking about my special interest which was trains and train schedules. I felt like everyone else had a different language. I am going to send some of my collection to a child in the group but I’m also going to start talking about my special interests more because your group made me realise there’s nothing wrong with me as a person. I have a lot to offer people.

At night when I’m trying to calm my boy and his brain is racing with facts and data, I read quietly to him. Before bed I tell him that I love him but I also remind him that he is easy to love.

William Dodson, MD, estimated that children with ADHD receive 20,000 more negative messages by ten on average. The internet is full of parents sharing their child’s worst moment to showcase how ‘bad’ their neurodivergent child is. They talk about how a dead child would be better than having an autistic child and that’s why they won’t vaccinate - even though vaccination does not cause autism. People look for ‘cures’ for autism. The ableism feels endless.

I think about neurodivergent children. I think about the little neurodivergent child I once was. I think about neurodivergent adults healing the little neurodivergent children they once were.

You are easy to love, I say to him and me and them.

And in this corner of the internet at least - you are celebrated. And you are cherished. And we are so grateful that you’re here.