My child just got diagnosed today. What do I need to know?

Dear carer.

Everything and nothing has changed.

When we arrive we get handed a set of default character traits from a lotto basket, and sent off to the world without a user guide or a walkthrough.

All of us.

But two things are known.

There are those who understand that kindness and cooperation is the only path, not just between equal adults but between all living things on the earth. ALL living things.

And there are those that believe they control this world and things or other people in it.

Be the former. There's no control over your life.

There's just learning to surf the waves that would drown you with style, reveling in that with others, learning the skill or teaching it. Control is the dream, the illusion we all want to share.

I'm going to be counting on you to teach me when you learn, because my waves are the kind that put people under the ground early more often than normal.

But dude, if I lick it, you're gonna watch me surf some epic waves.

People will try to stop you seeing me as a person like you. They will tell you what to do or think or feel or believe, as they try to determine how to get me to behave.

Aim to misbehave. It's said no well behaved woman ( or for that matter man) ever made history. Think on that.

Trust the ones who try to understand what YOU think. Who help you better understand what other people are thinking by helping you hear and see them better when they try to tell you.

Those are the good ones with the knowings of the way of life.

And remember I'm not little you, or less you, or kinda you, or you plus.

I'm just you. We all are. We are all one thing, and the same thing: Sentient.

Forget literally everything else you think you know. I'm about to matrix your life.

You can let that break you.  You can try to fight the sudden break in your world and sell me out for a steak and some potatoes and the illusion of that comfortable reality back again...

Or you can realise that for the most part there really is no spoon.

I don't need to speak, or write normally to communicate.

I don't need to hit milestones to develop.

I don't need to recover from being different. We're literally all different.

I am also sentient like you. Nothing changes.

But things just got real because someone noticed I'm off the proscribed child behavioural script and are trying to put me back on track.

I'm likely not liking that track.

Get me out of here if you need to. I might not be able to run. But I can show you if you watch me closely. Watch my eyes.

We're going to need to stick together, you and I, if we want to get through.

But you got this.

Up to you. Blue Pill, Red Pill.