I had a totally different plan for my first blog post of 2025. I intended my year to be focused on self-growth and the new landscape of autism as I approach 50. The theme is Love Louder. Maybe I can still get to that later, but there is something I must revisit first.

If you’ve been awake at all the past week, then you’ve likely heard about Elon’s Nazi salute he made twice at the Trump inauguration. Andrea Stroppa, a confidant of Elon, made a comment to excuse the gesture as “..simply Elon, who has autism…”

Bigotry cannot be excused by disability.

I felt like we already came to this understanding years ago when we were setting the default autism characteristics to define school shooters. Advocates worked day and night teaching the public about disability and how it is different from personality. People can be kind, empathetic, and generous and still be autistic. But they can also be Narcissistic bigots who only want power. Autism does not make them narcissistic.

Autism is a developmental disorder, not a personality disorder. Autism has made learning implied social rules difficult by natural extraction from the environment. While I might not tell you what you want to hear about the outfit you’re wearing today (especially if I miss the cue that you’re looking for approval instead of my true opinion) I know the difference between a simple hand gesture and a racist salute.

We must be careful. Young autistic people are working tirelessly to understand the world they are expected to thrive in. They spend hundreds of hours in therapy and social skills training so that they can get an education, hold a job, and connect with other humans. This drive for self-improvement is rooted both in our desire to be understood, but also in our desire to be kind to others. At least the majority of us, who are not narcissists.

But you can be a person, who means harm, and who also happens to have autism. Not because of autism, but because of negative personality traits, or a personality disorder like Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). We have to see where autism’s influence over a person begins and where it ends, especially when looking at people with the power and influence to re-frame the social narrative on autism to their liking.

So what do we tell our kids?

1) We tell them not to criminalize autism or any disability – we must be careful to show the edges of autism and how it effects our social perspective. It’s not a devil on our shoulder, but rather a type of blindness that needs support to see. Disabilities can alter some of our behavior, sure, but our personality drivers exist inside us as well. At our core, we are more than our disability; the good parts and the not so good ones.

2) We teach them to apologize, and then work to improve themselves. – If we say something that hurts someones feelings, we have to own it. If I said your pants were ugly and that offended you, I have to own that statement and should apologize, even if I felt I was truly being honest. If I say something I do not realize is racist, I have to own that too. It is my responsibility to learn how not to hurt others.

I actually have a personal experience with this.

For many years, and my presentations I would talk about my Italian grandfather and my German grandmother. For years I heard about how Germans were always on time, but Italians felt being relaxed was way more important. But they wanted us kids to show our respect for others and be on time. I heard them use the phrase “German time” referring to this idea of being precisely on time. What I didn’t realize was the racist origin of the term.

During World War II, after the Nazis would invade a town, they would set all of the clocks to the time in Germany. “German time” was an indicator that the party was in charge and everyone was to obey. When I learned of this, my heart dropped and I felt terrible for somehow missing this important fact when learning about World War II.

The very next speaking engagement, and for many after that, I openly apologized for my ignorance, and stopped using the phrase. I didn’t use my autism as an excuse. I learned from my mistake, immediately showed remorse, and changed my behavior because I AM NOT a narcissist.

3) We tell our kids to advocate for their disability by asking for support, not by searching for excuses. – We need to teach our autistic children about racism, bigotry, and sexism. We need to make autism-friendly tools to help them learn. (Yes, I am advocating for diversity and inclusion in social skills training for autistic children.) And when children are confused, we teach them to say, “Please help me to understand this” instead of “I’m autistic so I can’t understand this.”

4) We need to nurture their personalities. – Once we receive a diagnosis, we focus so hard on “correcting” autism that we forget to see the person. No, I’m not talking about person first language, I am talking about who we are, what we love, and what we desire outside of the autism.

I am a violinist, a parent, a writer, and a lover of nature. I am these things even if I wasn’t autistic. I need opportunities to nurture who I am and engage in acts of self-love. It is this person, the root of how I am, who wanted to apologize when I misused the “German time” phrase. It was my ignorance that caused me to use the phrase, and my autism that made it difficult to learn how to repair the damage did. My autism did not make me do it, my ignorance did. But it was me, the core being, that was motivated to change.

In an age where many adults are setting bad examples, lets be a light for our children. Hate is loud, but love is louder.

Love Louder.