I didn't really find the second half sufficiently inspiring to overwrite the horrible first half. I guess I see what they are trying to do, but the first half is way over the top - and why portray it like that, as so evil, why not just show the realistic challenges rather than make it sound like a psychopath out to insidiously destroy your life. I think the problem I am trying to articulate is that even though they have all that "hope" in the second half, they don't negate what they said in the first half. That bit is still presented as "true", and people shouldn't see that as the truth. It also only mentions the bad stuff, and fighting against that bad stuff. It doesn't mention anything that is valuable within the autistic child or person themselves, instead it is only autism and the people fighting it, and the actual person with autism is kind of a non-entity in this picture.
I thought more about my initial repsonse later, and the most interesting part to me is (my observation) that it doesn't mention the autistic PERSON. It is about AUTISM (the monster) and the FAMILY (and friends, etc). Where is the autistic person? They don't exist, there is only autism, and the battle, and the child is the battleground. It also implies the autistic person has no agency, no personal growth, no goals or achievements of their own, and any progress is the work of OTHERS.
