To My Family Who Read Autism Daddy — Please Read This… :-)

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January 10, 2012

I think more and more members of my personal circle (friends & family) are becoming Autism Daddy readers. This was not my intent in the beginning. Back in April when I started the FB Page and even in September when i started the blog I was doing my best to cover my tracks and keep it from my loved ones. It’s not because I was ashamed of anything I wrote, but because the stuff I was writing was becoming more & more personal and because I was using the FB Page and Blog as a place to vent and sometimes complain about them a wee little bit.

If you go back and look thru the thousands of status updates on FB and the 50+ blog posts I can probably count on one hand, ok maybe two hands 🙂 the amount of times that I’ve REALLY complained about my family…

But with everything about the way FB works and the wide openness of the Internet, slowly but surely friends and family started to “discover” my Autism Daddy persona. First a dozen or so, then someone would “like” it and that like would show up on their news feed and someone else would see it. And pretty soon, there were close to 50 FB friends and family following Autism Daddy.

But for the ones who did follow it, it kinda felt like the elephant in the room when I would see them in person. They now knew more about me than the probably ever wanted to, but
they would never bring up the Autism Daddy page and I never would either.

Anyway, after awhile having some FB savvy family & friends know about it and not others seemed strange to me. It seemed more unfair. So a few weeks back I just wrote on my personal FB Page something like “wondering why I’ve been so quiet on FB recently, well I have a secret identity with 3000+ followers…” and I included links to the FB Page and blog and left it at that. I got a few nice comments and a few new official followers, but now I get the sneaking suspicion that there’s more people from my life following than I even know…

And I didn’t think it would feel this strange, but it does. I feel really naked and open. If you know me in real life, you know I am not the most confrontational guy in the world. I can be kinda quiet and awkward around small groups of people. So some would say it’s out of character for me to write this page and blog and be so open. But if you really know me, you know that this is right up my alley. I’ve always been better in big groups than one on one. If I’m in a big group with maybe 2-3 people I know in that group, well then I can be the life of the party! But when I have to have an intimate personal conversation with one or two people, I clam up and get very awkward. So, an anonymous page where I get to be funny and rant is right up my alley! The fact that I’m revealing really personal intimate details of my life? That part is surprising me too, but the anonymous part helped make it easier.

Anyway, so I think there’s alot more family and personal friends reading this page and I think they are getting rubbed the wrong way by some of the stuff I’ve written. And there’s maybe one or two things I’ve written that I can see people getting their feathers maybe a little ruffled. But if you read what I actually write, most of the times what I write is actually not that bad. What makes it worse many times (in my opinion) is people’s comments who misinterpret what I wrote and bring their own family baggage in and say “yeah my family is just like that, they do ___”. I’m not one of those bloggers who replies to every comment on my blog, but very often I’m sitting home saying, “THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT AT ALL!”

So let me take a step back and say that my wife and I have an AMAZING FAMILY! They get Kyle and are totally and completely in our lives. They understand the challenges that we are dealing with and they really try to bend over backwards to help out as much as they can which is ALOT. They almost all live close by and we see them all the time. Kyle has lots of young cousins and their patience and understanding of him and his ways rivals their parents (this was not meant as an insult :-). The wife and I completed our wills last year (I’m writing another blog post about this) and we are completely at peace that because of our amazing family Kyle will be well taken care of.

And I know from reading many of your stories how lucky we are to have such a loving supportive family. I get it. They are all rock stars too! So when I make the rare complaint about them, please chalk it up to old Autism Daddy & Mommy having a bad week and being more needy that your average autism mom & dad.

All that being said, I don’t want to change how I write this blog and what I write about. When I feel something I love the idea of writing it down immediately and getting it out there. I really feel like I’ve hit an un-tapped niche in this Autism experience, the old ranting, bitching, and complaining, hopefully in a humorous way.

So, if you are a close friend or a family member who’s reading this, first know that I love you very much, and my apologies if anything I’ve written has made you upset. That was NEVER my intent. But please understand how much I love writing this blog and page and how much it means to me. It has slowly crept up on me and become a very important part of my life. It is very cathartic for me and I don’t want to give it up. And from the feedback I get daily it really feels like I’m helping ALOT of people (3000 and counting) which is more than I ever expected to get out of this…

So, if you see me and want to talk about Autism Daddy, let’s talk about it. I’m sure the conversation will be awkward cuz that’s how I am one on one, but I’d rather have an awkward conversation than have an elephant in the room….

THANKS!!

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if you are going to leave an anonymous comment, please at least leave a name in your comment (even if it’s a fake name)…. this way i can respond to your comment and differentiate between one anonymous comment and the others…. thanks!

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Written by

Frank Campagna

I’m a 48 year old neurotypical dad with a 14 year old son with severe, non-verbal autism & epilepsy. I created this blog to rant about autism & epilepsy while celebrating my son who I affectionately call “the king” :-).

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