We had thought seriously of moving our now 29 year old autistic son to a special needs kibbutz in Israel, we're there an opening. Israel does so much better by young adults like him than we're ever likely to do in the States. Post-Oct 7th I wondered and worried about the residents of that kibbutz, what with sirens and rockets and all. Still, crazy as it sounds, Israel in the main has something we lack here: mutual caring, a can-do attitude, and an astonishing generosity, especially in the worst of times. Maybe that's the true light. It's just harder to see in the midst of so much darkness and pain. Your son is a lucky young man.
Jacki I feel your pain so deeply. The attempt to continue on with some kind of normalcy when life right now in the Middle East is anything but normal.
My 29 year old has autism, and when we were in Israel in the summer we realized that he would not know what to do if he heard an air raid siren. He wouldn’t have the instinct to find a safe room. We tried to explain as well as we could, and amazingly there were no sirens where we were for the entire two weeks we were there.
When we came back
To the US I was telling a social worker friend of mine, kind of sheepishly, that my son would not do well living in his birthplace right now…she looked at me and said, “You do realize that in this case he is the one with normal responses. It’s not actually normal to know what to do with an air raid siren!”
And she’s right-the situation that you are all living with is not normal…thank you for your words.
We had thought seriously of moving our now 29 year old autistic son to a special needs kibbutz in Israel, we're there an opening. Israel does so much better by young adults like him than we're ever likely to do in the States. Post-Oct 7th I wondered and worried about the residents of that kibbutz, what with sirens and rockets and all. Still, crazy as it sounds, Israel in the main has something we lack here: mutual caring, a can-do attitude, and an astonishing generosity, especially in the worst of times. Maybe that's the true light. It's just harder to see in the midst of so much darkness and pain. Your son is a lucky young man.
Jacki I feel your pain so deeply. The attempt to continue on with some kind of normalcy when life right now in the Middle East is anything but normal.
My 29 year old has autism, and when we were in Israel in the summer we realized that he would not know what to do if he heard an air raid siren. He wouldn’t have the instinct to find a safe room. We tried to explain as well as we could, and amazingly there were no sirens where we were for the entire two weeks we were there.
When we came back
To the US I was telling a social worker friend of mine, kind of sheepishly, that my son would not do well living in his birthplace right now…she looked at me and said, “You do realize that in this case he is the one with normal responses. It’s not actually normal to know what to do with an air raid siren!”
And she’s right-the situation that you are all living with is not normal…thank you for your words.