Autism Awareness Month: Diana and Brady’s Story

Every per­son is unique. The same goes for a per­son liv­ing with autism. Bring­ing aware­ness to this is impor­tant to Diana DeMoss.

Her son, Brady, is 16 years old and was diag­nosed with autism at age 3. ​“I get asked often ​‘how severe is Brady’s autism?’ I don’t even know how to answer that ques­tion, but it’s prob­a­bly the most com­mon one I get,” she said. ​“There is such a wide spec­trum with autism, and there are a lot of sim­i­lar aspects, but a lot of very dif­fer­ent ones too.”

Accord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol, autism affects an esti­mat­ed 1 in 59 chil­dren in the Unit­ed States today. Autism, or autism spec­trum dis­or­der (ASD), refers to a broad range of con­di­tions char­ac­ter­ized by chal­lenges with social skills, repet­i­tive behav­iors, speech, and non­ver­bal communication.

Diana said because the spec­trum of autism is so broad many peo­ple strug­gle to under­stand it. ​“I think there is def­i­nite­ly a mis­con­cep­tion on what peo­ple per­ceive as the nor­mal for autism. You look at some of the movies or shows that are on, and they show these kids that are high­ly func­tion­al and have these spe­cial abil­i­ties. It’s such a wide spec­trum. They all have their own quirks, and if you don’t know them on a per­son­al lev­el, it’s hard to know what those quirks are for that individual. ”

When out in pub­lic with Brady, Diana said her expe­ri­ences have been both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive. She takes those oppor­tu­ni­ties to edu­cate when she can, but doesn’t spend too much time dwelling on the neg­a­tive. ​“When they’re younger peo­ple see them as need­ing to be dis­ci­plined or think that they’re bad kids,” she shared. ​“Just to look at a pic­ture of Brady or anoth­er child with autism, you wouldn’t know. Peo­ple might say ​‘why don’t you just dis­ci­pline them?’ I wish it worked that way. And, for some kids, it may. For Brady, some­times it’s like he’s a 2‑year-old in a 16-year-old’s body. You can tell him no, but he won’t under­stand why it’s not ok.”

Prac­tic­ing more com­pas­sion and less judg­ment is the advice she has for oth­ers. ​“Some of my friends have said before they got to know Brady and me, they didn’t under­stand autism and just how preva­lent it is. It’s impor­tant to know when you see some­one, and they’re act­ing a cer­tain way, don’t pass judg­ment. This goes for any­thing, not just autism. If you see them out and you can offer any assis­tance, do that. There might not be any­thing you can do, but know­ing peo­ple are aware and under­stand means a lot.”

Being Brady’s mom is one of Diana’s proud­est roles. She, along with her fam­i­ly, has learned a lot from him. ​“He is very lov­ing. See­ing him with his broth­ers and how pro­tec­tive they are of him and their rela­tion­ship is neat to watch. He impacts every­one in the fam­i­ly, and I think it’s taught us how to be more com­pas­sion­ate toward others.”