‘Head-Banging’ Is About as Funny as ‘Retard’

Kristina Chew

autism.typepad.com

Kristina blogs about parenting her teenage son Charlie at the URL above. This post was one of Kristina’s recent daily dispatches.

We just got through one of those begins-with-whacking-the-corner-of-the-iPad on the bedroom wall storms, though several degrees less bad than the one Charlie had the night before he went back to school, almost exactly a month ago. He called and called for his iPad after things were over but (powdery with plaster dust from the wall), the iPad remains on the brown chair: As we told Charlie, he needs to sleep first then he can have it.

It is past 2am and I want to take one fast glance at some things pertaining to Herodotus but I just wanted to say something I’ve had on my mind for years:

I really get all-out annoyed when people make references to head-banging and head-bangers and head-smack-on-desk and that sort of thing, in a heavy metal sort of way, in a haha funny black humor! aren’t I being so risqué way.

Charlie started banging his head / hitting it with his hand when he was a toddler for reasons that, with this late hour and Herodotus in mind, I will not delve further into at the moment. We’ve been through helmets, as well as helmet-caused impetigo on the head. I keep forehead-sized bandaids and neosporin in the car because you never know.

Charlie doesn’t need those tonight, fortunately.


A version of this post was previously published at autism.typepad.com.